Rainiers Go Up 2-0; Play At Safeco Tonight

What a game! Tacoma made it two straight road wins with an 8-5 win in Sacramento on Thursday night, taking a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five Pacific Conference finals.

After Wednesday night’s tortoise paced series opener, Thursday’s 2 hour, 59 minute game felt like it went by in a flash. It was a tense game, with the score tied for the majority of it.

The Rainiers scored a run in the top of the first against Sacramento starter Travis Banwart, but the righty quickly settled down and kept the Rainiers down until the sixth.

Meanwhile, Sacramento tied it with a run in the third against Tacoma starter Blake Beavan. Corey Wimberly tripled down the line, and scored on Eric Sogard’s pop-fly single over the drawn-in infield.

It remained 1-1 until the sixth. With one out, Justin Smoak singled to left, and Banwart walked Brad Nelson. Eliezer Alfono had a long at-bat but popped up on the eighth pitch, for the second out.

At this point Banwart was at 108 pitches, and I thought Tony D was going to pull him. But Tony let Banwart face Rainiers #9 hitter Jeff Dominguez, trying to get his starter through six full innings. Well, Dominguez had a great at-bat, working a full count and fouling off two pitches before walking to load the bases for Dustin Ackley.

Now, surely at this point Tony D would go to a fresh arm. Banwart was at a season-high 116 pitches, the bases were loaded in a tie game in the sixth, and Ackley was up. Michael Benacka was ready in the bullpen. But Tony D left Banwart in to face Ackley.

Ackley worked a full count, and then lined the payoff pitch off of the foul pole in the right-field corner for a grand slam, giving Tacoma a 5-1 lead. It was Banwart’s 122nd and final pitch of the night.

The decision to leave Banwart in was quite revealing: it seems to indicate that Tony D doesn’t have a whole lot of faith in his bullpen right now. Tony is a highly successful veteran Triple-A manager, he has three won PCL championships, and he’s in the playoffs every year. Typically, he has a deep and talented bullpen, and plays matchup games all night long – he’s been called the Tony LaRussa of the PCL, due to his frequency of matchup-based pitching changes.

This year, he doesn’t have this option available. The Rainiers have scored eight runs off the Sacramento bullpen in the first two games of the series.

And they needed to get to the RiverCats bullpen tonight. Beavan allowed three singles in the seventh, and it was 5-2, and the Cats had two on with two out, and the Rainiers brought in Levale Speigner to face Tommy Everidge. For some reason, Speigner threw a first-pitch fastball, and Everidge hit it a mile to tie the game, 5-5.

This was frustrating to watch. Having seen Everidge flail at first-pitch breaking balls in 200+ at-bats as a member of the Rainiers earlier this season, it completely confounded me that the battery in this instance – Speigner and Eliezer Alfonzo, both of whom have been with the team all season – agreed to give Everidge a fastball over the plate. Just throw him three sliders, moving each one farther off the plate, strike him out, and be done with it.*

So the game was tied, but the Rainiers quickly changed that. With 38-year-old former Mariners and Rainiers left-hander John Halama on the mound, Brad Nelson opened the eighth by reaching on an error, and Mike Wilson pinch-ran for him at first. Alfonzo sacrificed the runner to second with a perfect bunt.

Next up was Dominguez. Batting right-handed for his first time in the game, Dominguez hit a solid liner to center that looked like it would be a single. But Sacramento centerfielder Corey Brown made an ill-fated diving attempt at the sinking line, coming up a good 15 feet short of the ball. It hit the grass and bounced straight through to the fence for a triple, scoring Wilson with the go-ahead run.

This was a big development. The go-ahead run was going to score regardless, but Brown’s playing the single into a triple allowed the Rainiers to score two more runs in the inning. Ackley chopped a single over the drawn-in infield to bring home Dominguez, and after a HBP and a wild pitch, Mike Carp hit a sac fly to make it 8-5.

Josh Lueke came in for the bottom of the eighth and went the rest of the way, earning the save, and Tacoma claimed a 2-0 series lead.

Now the Rainiers come “home” to Safeco. Tonight’s game is at 7:00, and there will be plenty of great seats available at the door. This is a good opportunity for fans to see the Mariners of the future, up close, in seats that normally cost 4-5 times as much. Plus, the team needs your support – they would love to see a good crowd tonight. Safeco is a huge ballpark; it will be great if it doesn’t feel empty. This team is playing entertaining ball; that I can promise.

Tacoma starts LHP Mauricio Robles against Sacramento RHP Vin Mazzaro. The broadcast will air on 850 AM and stream via www.tacomarainiers.com.

Oh, and in case you are wondering why the games this weekend aren’t at Cheney, well, the old ballpark in Tacoma has a few issues. It seems that the Cheney Stadium dugouts have been attacked by robots: 

Mmmmm... Dugouts taste like chicken!

A couple of links: 

• Here’s the Rainiers game story from The News Tribune, with quotes from Jose Castro and Dustin Ackley.
• The Sacramento Bee was there as well, and Tony D says its going to take a couple “special games” for the RiverCats to come back.
• The American Conference playoffs are also 2-0 right now – but the home team has been winning. Memphis beat Oklahoma City last night, 3-2. The defending PCL champions have won eight straight league playoff games, going back to last year. Alert readers of that story will notice something that has escaped our friends in the local media. The series moves to Bricktown tonight.
• What is Felix Hernandez really like? Larry LaRue gets caught up with the Mariners ace.
• The Mariners Class-AA West Tennessee affiliate won the opening game of the best-of-three Southern League division playoff series.

That’s all for this morning – they are about to call our flight, and this would be a bad one to miss!

* I’m no expert in pitch patterns – it takes a long time for them to sink into my scrambled brain. But while Everidge was batting .229 after 249 at-bats with Tacoma, striking out 62 times, I noticed that everybody was pitching him the same way: first-pitch breaking ball over the plate for a called strike one, then breakers and fastballs down and out of the zone away to get swings-and-misses. Everidge didn’t adjust, and got traded to open a roster spot for David Winfree – which, needless to say, dramatically changed the 2010 Tacoma Rainiers season.**

** Everidge is a great guy and an excellent teammate, and I hope he makes – or maybe he has already made – the adjustments he needs to in order to get his career back on track, and rake in the big leagues – even if it is with Oakland!