Two extra inning games and a bunch of early starts yesterday, including a shutout for the 'Cuse and a "Thrilla In New Hampsha." A 2-2 night for the farm.
Syracuse 4 @ Louisville 0
Ty Taubenheim continued his great start in AAA with the Blue Jays organization by throwing seven shutout innings, with just as many strikeouts as baserunners (3 vs a walk and two hits). 59 of his 83 pitches were for strikes. The partial pitch-by-pitch data available from Gameday shows that he only got six swinging strikes out of the 61 pitches I saw, and 11 fly outs vs 7 groundouts, which isn't great, but Taubenheim still has a 0.59 ERA in 19 innings on the young season. Shaun Marcum pitched the last two innings, and while he loaded the bases in the eighth, he was obviously able to get out of it without surrendering a run.
Rob Cosby, batting seventh for some reason, was Mr. Offense, driving home all three runs that were RBI-associated. (The fourth run was a result of back-to-back wild pitches.) A RBI double and a two-run homer was all Syracuse needed from him tonight. Elizardo Ramirez was actually just as effective as Taubenheim; all of the SkyChief runs came against reliever Ryan Wagner.
Binghamton 3 @ New Hampshire 4 (11 innings)
Adam Lind, who apparently decided "Okay, I'm going to become a pro baseball player, but I have to hit between .311 and .313 at every level," homered in the sixth and added two singles. One of those came in the bottom of the eleventh: Manny Mayorson singled with two outs, then a passed ball put him on second and Lind drove him home with a ground ball single up the middle. All 3,368 in attendance at the 11:05 am start went home happy. And, I did not know this until I read Kevin Gray's article in the Union Leader, but Lind is the youngest player on the team.
Jamie Vermilyea gave up the second and third runs in the top of the ninth to force extras in this one; he was not his usual self yesterday. Ryan Houston picked up the win with two solid relief innings: one hit, four strikeouts, a 1-2-3 tenth and three K's in the eleventh. Davis "The Other" Romero got the start and walked two -- his first walks on the season. He's got two of those versus 15 K's in 16 innings.
Dunedin 1 @ Lakeland 6
An 0-for-4 from Ryan Patterson? Say it ain't so. Not much else to report on from this game. And judging from the attendance of 610 (I think I passed that many Yankee fans on the Skywalk at 12:15 yesterday afternoon), it wasn't the hot place to be in Lakeland, either.
Lansing 1 @ Clinton 2 (10 innings)
Congratulations to Big City Joey Metropoulos, who got his first pro stolen base in the second inning last night. He didn't score, though, and it was scoreless through the first two innings. Clinton pushed one across in the bottom of the third, then Lansing tied it up in the fourth. I tuned into the game at 9:59 pm, just in time to hear the game-winning double for Clinton. I am a curse on the Lugnuts.
Russell Savickas actually lowered his ERA from its previous mark of 1.54 on this night, with six innings, one run, eight strikeouts and two walks. Let's hear it for the first relievers of each team -- Po-Hsuan Keng now has 13.2 scoreless innings on the season, with three last night, and Julian Cordero struck out five in four innings, allowing just one hit and facing two batters over the minimum.
The pitching coach, Tom Signore, was ejected in the seventh, ran out to argue, and promptly "threw three baseballs into shallow center field when he returned to the dugout."
Three Star Selection:
3. Adam Lind
2. Rob Cosby
1. Ty Taubenheim