Challengers 2, Bandits 3

Oli Outstanding, but Putrid Offense sinks Challengers in 10

Playing at Jona is always tough - and not just because this season they actually have a good team. Set aside the fact that there's no mound, or that the right field fence is about 20 meters away from the plate (all figures approximate). The difficulty is that area around home plate is, to put it charitably, an abomination. The main problem is that home plate is actually above the rest of the "batter's box", which itself consists primarily of loose sand with some grass around it. Any runner attempting to slide into home has a better chance of shattering both ankles and a couple of femurs than they do of scoring. The home plate umpire is also forced to stand in a sand pit, which throws off his (presumably already shaky) vision and puts the batter in a quandary: when trying to judge the strike zone, should he base that judgment on where the ball actually crosses the plate, or on where the ball WOULD have crossed the plate if it were placed at the same height as the rest of the batter's box? Anyway...

The theme of the game offensively for the Challengers was an inability to cash in on opportunities with runners on base. With two outs and no one on, Yusuke Azuma drew a walk, Nick "Big Daddy" Lehmann singled, and Daiki Sato walked to load the bases. That brought up Alex Gordon who also walked, forcing in Azuma for the game's first run. But the Challengers were unable to inflict further damage, as Michel Romang went down swinging to end the inning.

The theme of the game offensively for the Bandits was running themselves into outs. After the lead-off batter singled and stole second, the next batter followed with an infield single of his own, which SHOULD have given Jona runners on the corners with no outs. Instead, the runner decided that if reaching third was good, reaching home was even better...except that Kurt Kovac threw home and the guy was out by a mile. Oops. Two pop-ups later, the inning was over and Jona had nothing to show for it.

The C's put another runner in scoring position with two outs in the top of the second, when Kovac was HBP (employing the rather dubious strategy of trying to block the ball from hitting his buttock with his HAND) and then stole second, but Adderly Sarmiento struck out swinging to end the threat. In the bottom of the inning, Sato decided to make a routine pick off play more interesting by breaking for FIRST instead of staying at second base after Oli Christen had picked the runner off. While the less strategic minded on the team commenced hurling verbal abuse towards Daiki, his master plan was revealed as the next batter struck out...thus giving Oli an important counting stat for fantasy baseball purposes. Never question Daiki!!

In the top of the third the pattern continued: With two outs and a runner on first, Gordon and Romang drew back to back walks to load the bases...and then the next batter struck out to leave them all stranded. Sigh (just to warn you, another runner was stranded on third base in the top of the fourth). In the bottom of the third, Christen issued a walk to the lead-off (9th) batter, before inducing a double-play grounder to short...unfortunately, Daiki cut off Kovac in order to field the ball himself, tripped over the second base bag (whatever, still a force) and then - and it's really not that easy to describe this accurately in word - proceeded to fire the ball directly off the helmet of the advancing base runner, who was subsequently forced to leave the game. I don't even quite know how he was able to throw the ball in that direction given that he seemed to be literally on the ground by second base, but as I said, never question Daiki! Well, actually this time, you can probably question. Naturally the runner who reached on the "FC" got picked off by Oli (same guy who tried to score from second on a ball hit to the short stop), which meant that when the next two batters reached base on a single and a walk, Christen was able to escape any damage with a strike out. So far, Jona's lead-off man was our defensive MVP.

In the bottom of the fourth, a mental error came back to bite the Challengers: With one on and one out - thanks to a nice sliding grab in center by yours truly - Christen induced a come-backer to the mound. Normally, this would've been good news...easy double play chance. However, this being Oli, there are few WORSE places that a ball could be hit (from a defensive perspective) than right back to him. Rather than throwing to second, Oli threw to first...getting the second out, yes, but leaving a runner in scoring position. Naturally, the next batter, ex-Challenger Halvar Dill, singled to right to plate the runner and tie the score at 1-1.

In the top of the 6th, the Challengers wasted ANOTHER golden opportunity to score: Romang led off with a walk and then stole second. During the next at-bat, the pitch bounced slightly away from the catcher - but not far enough away for Romang to advance until the catcher inexplicably sailed a throw into left field, allowing Romang to take third with no outs. The next three batters though? Strike out, pop out to pitcher, ground-out to short. Sigh. Unfazed, Oli set the Bandits down in order in the bottom of the 6th, aided by a diving catch by Sarmiento at third.

In the top of the 7th, the Challengers regained the lead behind a lead-off double from Azuma, a wild pitch, and a Sac-Fly from Big Daddy Lehmann. Sadly, that 2-1 would not last: After walking two of the first three batters, Christen gave up a single to load the bases with one out. A grounder to short wasn't hit hard enough to allow a double play to be turned, and it was 2-2 with runners on the corners and two outs. The next batter hit a sharp grounder to short that seemed to be heading to the outfield, but Kovac scooped it up and threw the runner out at first to end the 7th.

After leaving the obligatory runner in scoring position in the top of the inning, the Challengers were lucky to escape the bottom of the 8th with the score still tied: With one out, the Bandits' hitter absolutely crushed a Christen fastball to deep left-center. Both Romang and Gordon converged, but it was hit too hard for either to catch up - the question, however, was whether it would even stay in the yard. And it did - barely. Luckily for the Challengers, not only did the ball hit off the bottom of the fence, but the batter had spent so much time staring at the ball instead of running, that by the time Romang threw the ball back into the infield the batter had only managed to advance to first (which was really inexcusable). Naturally, Oli picked him off before throwing the next pitch, and the Bandits had again run themselves right out of inning.

In the top of the 9th...you'll never guess...the Challengers failed to drive in a runner from third. With one out, Azuma crushed a ground-rule double to right. Lehmann went down swinging, but a wild pitch and a walk to Sato put runners on first and second and bringing up Gordon. With the count 3-1, and Sato having taken second on yet another wild pitch (not far enough for Azuma to advance though), Gordon took a called strike at the ankles (there's that problem of how to calibrate the strike zone, when your feet are well below home plate) to run the count full. Determined to avoid letting the umpire decide the outcome of such a key at-bat, Gordon took an ill-advised swing at what was likely ball 4 (high and outside), to end the inning. Damn.

Finally, in the bottom of the 10th, the Bandits managed to push the winning run across...but not without almost blowing it on the base-paths yet again: After singleing to lead-off the inning and then successfully stealing second, the Bandits' lead-off man...who you may remember from his prior starting roles in "trying to score from second on a grounder to short and failing miserable" and "getting picked off of first"...decided to try and steal THIRD with no one out. Azuma gunned him out, which was the THIRD time in five at-bats that the same player was thrown out trying to advance. The mistake was compounded by the fact that, following a walk, Christen surrendered another booming double again off the bottom of the fence in left center. With runners on second and third and one out, acting coach Gregg Zingg opted to intentionally walk the next batter, to set up a force at each base, and brought in Kovac to relieve Christen. The strategy almost worked: with the infield in and the outfield playing extremely shallow, Kovac induced a high pop-up to Azuma (who had moved from catcher to short with the pitching change). Unfortunately, Azuma muffed the catch and then had the ball hit off his leg as the winning run scored. Ah well. In typical fashion the Bandits celebrated just a little too much with a dogpile near first base, with at least one player (the lead-off guy I think) being moved to take his shirt off. Ok.

It was a tough loss for the Challengers, especially for Christen who was spectacular in working around the Bandits' dangerous 3-4-5 hitters. In the end, he was undone by two small mistakes: his failure to throw to second on the come-backer in the 4th inning, and a poor throw by Lehmann to second after the runner had been picked off in the bottom of the 7th. Nonetheless, 9.1 IP with only giving up 3 runs and striking out 5 ain't too bad. If you're going to blame anyone, blame the atrocious batting average with RISP. For the game, the Challengers had just 4 hits, and left 13 men on base (yes, the Mets went 1-26 with RISP yesterday, including leaving 25 (!!!!) runners on base...but they still won, so step off!).