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Showing posts with label we CAN'T WIN AT HOME. Show all posts
Showing posts with label we CAN'T WIN AT HOME. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Spirit Lose Heartbreaker; More Nails Lost

The blog's regular conntributor Joe is having trouble getting home at the moment...but is on his way home after a heartbreaking 9-6 loss against the Jackals of the Sewer State. He asked me to write up the report tonight.....but I'd like to get some sleep so I'm gonna cheat and put up the recap from the official North Shore Spirit website and add a few side-thoughts:

By Reid Cargan,SPIRIT Baseball Writer
LYNN,MA (SV)

"Sandy Madera hit a grand slam off Derek Drage to cap off a seven run ninth inning as the Jackals storm back from four runs down to shock the Spirit 9-6 Tuesday night at Fraser field in game one of their series.

It was a battle of the lefties for the first four innings as Luis Arroyo and Josh Brey held their counterparts scoreless. Then with two outs in the top of the fifth, Joe Mihalics singles and promptly stole second. Clay Kuklick hit what appeared to be the final out, but the fly ball tipped of Mike Torres’ glove and dropped in allowing Mihalics to score. New Jersey took further advantage of the error by scoring another run in the frame on a Francisco Leandro base hit to up the score to 2-0.

The Spirit struck for five in the sixth inning to overtake the Jackals. Mike Torres and Luis Lopez both with 2 RBI’s in the frame on a single and double respectively. Jerson Perez chipped in an RBI single as well that scored Lopez from second. The Spirit bullpen cruised through the seventh and eighth innings before Donny Langdon and Jamie Baker imploded in the ninth inning, all culminating in the Madera slam. New Jersey banged out five hits with two walks in the frame. The Jackals gave the Spirit a taste of their own medicine after the Spirit had strung together a few come from behind victories as of late.

Kyle George (2-3) picks up the win in relief, with newcomer Tom Atlee picking up his first save as a member of the Jackals. Drage takes the loss, moving his record to 3-4 on the season.

The two teams lock up again Wednesday night at 7:05. Gary Galvez will oppose Kevin Ool."



NOW...for my mini-rant and thoughts (I know Joe would've loved to do this in the main post XD):
First off may I start by askign the following questions.....Why can;t we seem to win at home,especially latye in the season? AND Why do we always have closer problems late in the season? NOW-we move on....

**Luis Arroyo did phneominal in his outing. His pitching line was 6 innings pitched with 4 hits and 2 un-earned runs (an E7) while stiking out 1 and walking 2.
** I liked the idea of,after Arroyo left,trying to use one pitcher per inning.....worked to a point ;]
** Fraser Field is porbably the only place that can go from active in the 6th to being a carbon copy of Pine Grove Cemetary when sound is NEEDED!!!! UGH!
** I hate how an usher told us to quiet down and then said "It';s only the Spirit" when we were cheering in the 9th....LIKE REAL FANS DO!
** Carl Schaefer is sick!!! He has some VERY good stuff. Maybe we should've kept him in a little later...
** Derek Gange shouldn't have gone in THAT late in the game (the 9th inning).....he's been bad lately,and doing that was suicide. Next time put him in earlier......this isn't helping him or the team at this point.
** Walking Fransisco Leandro (who?) to get to Sandy Madera (top league hitter) was a HORRIBLE discission! ALL of us agreed.....cause then what happened? BOOM! Grand Salami....just like Joe predicted and everyone thought might happpen.
** Why leave in Drage after doign badly and then giving up a grand slam?! Vic....stop being like JK,it's giving us heart problems.
** Vic.......make Carl Schaefer the closer--NOW! ^_^

ALSO: The press box is amazing....thank you guys for the Can-Am updates (they're important now) and thanks Pat for the enthusiastic Josue Lopez intro,you sound remotely like a Spanish soccer announcer subsituting Josue for GOOOOOOAAAALLLL!!!!! XD Can we do that every night? ;-]



NOW.....comment away!

PS: The Utica region of "Who's Now" will be forthcoming (AKA: This week)

Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Spirit lose a thriller

The celebrations will have to wait for at least one more day.

The Spirit lost to Worcester tonight, 7-6, in what turned out to be a thrilling game in front of an involved crowd at Fraser Field.

Worcester controlled the game early on by putting up 6 runs against Matt Bishop and chasing him after just 3.1 innings.

Bishop wasn't too pleased with his own performance:

Brandon Martin came in and pitched very well from there, getting the Spirit through the 7th inning with some quality relief work. Jamie Baker yielded a run in the 8th to give Worcester a 7-5 advantage going into the bottom of the 9th.

Then, all heck broke loose. With 1 out, Josue Lopez hit an absolute bomb over the rightfield wall to cut the lead to 1. Joe Hough walked to put a man on. Then, BJ Weed legged out an infield hit to put two runners on for Gary Roche.

Roche blooped a single into shallow left just out of the reach of a diving Alex Pena, who recovered in time to gun down Hough, who broke for home on the play.

A big topic of conversation after the game was whether or not Tommy should have sent Hough, but I think that's too easy of an excuse. It was a really nice recovery and throw by Pena and the play wound up being really close. It was simply well-executed by Pena.

That put the tying run on 3rd and the winning run on 2nd for Mike Torres, who hit a hard line drive that Pena snagged at short to end the game. The Spirit were literally inches away from at least tying the game twice, but Worcester escaped.

From a selfish standpoint, I was sad that the Spirit didn't clinch it tonight because I won't be there tomorrow - but all in all, you have to be pretty pleased with the game, it just didn't turn out our way.

Also, I got myself a white #16 Jon de Vries jersey with his name on the back at the Spirit pro shop, so I am VERY HAPPY.




I actually caught Worcester scoring a run on tape, but needless to say I have crappy filming skills:



Question: can we play all of our playoff games on the road? :)

Also, don't despair - The next phase of "WHO'S NOW" is coming tomorrow morning. Well, it's coming when I wake up, so realistically, tomorrow afternoon. ;)