Freezing in Lansing
On a chilly night in mid-Michigan, fiber_cable and I went back to Jackson Field at Thomas M. Cooley Law School Stadium for another Lansing Lugnuts game. We wanted to see Jacob Turner pitch for the West Michigan Whitecaps, the Lugnuts' cross-state rivals, or we probably would have waited for better weather. Turner, who doesn't turn 19 for another week and a half, was the Tigers' first-round draft pick last year, and is considered the team's No. 1 prospect.
The Game:
Like I said, it was cold tonight, plus it was a Monday night in May and it's Class-A baseball in a Midwestern city that has been hit very hard by the recession. But even considering all that, the crowd was pathetic. The announced attendance was in the mid-900s, but by my sight estimate there were no more than 200 people there. One kid went home with three foul balls, and the "gates were open" (meaning basically that anyone could walk in) from about the fourth inning on. If not for Retro Joe and his crew trying to create some excitement, it would have been completely silent.
Kurt and I were approached by one of the ballpark employees to go out on the field for a promotional game. We both declined but then felt a twinge of regret, thinking we might have missed out on a nice prize like free tickets. Then the game took place and we realized that the prize was just a Labatt's T-shirt. No thanks.
Jacob Turner:
We went over to the visitors' bullpen before the game to watch him warm up. (We were about 20 feet away.) The first thing I noticed was that he was tall (6'5"), which is pretty normal for a pitcher, and fairly slender. He doesn't have the big legs and butt that a lot of power pitchers have. He also didn't seem very "friendly" or animated. I don't think he cracked a smile and he didn't seem to be having much fun. That's probably normal for a pitcher on his game day.
Turner is supposed to be a flamethrower, but he didn't throw especially hard tonight. During the game, I think he topped out at 92-93 mph, with his fastball typically coming in at around 90 mph. He definitely wasn't overpowering, but the Lugnuts didn't hit him particularly hard either, managing just three hits, including a double, in 4+ innings. His best pitch tonight appeared to be a 78 mph curve with a huge break that made a couple of hitters look foolish. He was on a strict pitch count for the game, so he only pitched into the fifth inning.
If you had never heard of him and just saw him in this game, I doubt you would be impressed. He is coming off a mild injury, so maybe he's taking it easy.
Interesting Scoring Situation (for clyde_park only):
In the third inning, Lansing first baseman Balbiiiinoooooooooo Fuenmayoorrrrrrrrrr led off with a double. The next batter hit a grounder to the shortstop, who threw to third to get the lead runner. From where I was sitting, it looked like he had Fuenmayor by a few feet, but the umpire saw it differently and called him safe. It was scored as a fielder's choice (no hit, no error), but Fuenmayor was safe at third and Eric Eiland was safe at first.
The next batter again hit a grounder to the shortstop, who threw home this time to try to get Fuenmayor. The catcher bobbled the throw and Fuenmayor scored, and Kenny Wilson was safe at first. Again this was scored a fielder's choice - no hit, no error. So a run scored, and there were two runners on base, but there had only been only one hit and no errors in the inning.
That means that if those two baserunners would have scored (one of them did), they both would have been earned runs, because no errors were made in the inning. Even though both runners reached base without the benefit of a hit or a walk or a HBP, even though Turner did exactly what he wanted to do by inducing two infield grounders that didn't lead to hits, those runners were considered debits to Turner's account.
I'm sure everything was scored correctly, but it was weird that Turner would be held accountable for those runs, even though it wasn't his fault that they reached base, and their at-bats were marked down as failures (0-for-1) in their personal ledgers. That's kind of a scoring anomaly - a runner reaching base on a ball in play without a hit, an out, or an error being recorded.
The Game:
Like I said, it was cold tonight, plus it was a Monday night in May and it's Class-A baseball in a Midwestern city that has been hit very hard by the recession. But even considering all that, the crowd was pathetic. The announced attendance was in the mid-900s, but by my sight estimate there were no more than 200 people there. One kid went home with three foul balls, and the "gates were open" (meaning basically that anyone could walk in) from about the fourth inning on. If not for Retro Joe and his crew trying to create some excitement, it would have been completely silent.
Kurt and I were approached by one of the ballpark employees to go out on the field for a promotional game. We both declined but then felt a twinge of regret, thinking we might have missed out on a nice prize like free tickets. Then the game took place and we realized that the prize was just a Labatt's T-shirt. No thanks.
Jacob Turner:
We went over to the visitors' bullpen before the game to watch him warm up. (We were about 20 feet away.) The first thing I noticed was that he was tall (6'5"), which is pretty normal for a pitcher, and fairly slender. He doesn't have the big legs and butt that a lot of power pitchers have. He also didn't seem very "friendly" or animated. I don't think he cracked a smile and he didn't seem to be having much fun. That's probably normal for a pitcher on his game day.
Turner is supposed to be a flamethrower, but he didn't throw especially hard tonight. During the game, I think he topped out at 92-93 mph, with his fastball typically coming in at around 90 mph. He definitely wasn't overpowering, but the Lugnuts didn't hit him particularly hard either, managing just three hits, including a double, in 4+ innings. His best pitch tonight appeared to be a 78 mph curve with a huge break that made a couple of hitters look foolish. He was on a strict pitch count for the game, so he only pitched into the fifth inning.
If you had never heard of him and just saw him in this game, I doubt you would be impressed. He is coming off a mild injury, so maybe he's taking it easy.
Interesting Scoring Situation (for clyde_park only):
In the third inning, Lansing first baseman Balbiiiinoooooooooo Fuenmayoorrrrrrrrrr led off with a double. The next batter hit a grounder to the shortstop, who threw to third to get the lead runner. From where I was sitting, it looked like he had Fuenmayor by a few feet, but the umpire saw it differently and called him safe. It was scored as a fielder's choice (no hit, no error), but Fuenmayor was safe at third and Eric Eiland was safe at first.
The next batter again hit a grounder to the shortstop, who threw home this time to try to get Fuenmayor. The catcher bobbled the throw and Fuenmayor scored, and Kenny Wilson was safe at first. Again this was scored a fielder's choice - no hit, no error. So a run scored, and there were two runners on base, but there had only been only one hit and no errors in the inning.
That means that if those two baserunners would have scored (one of them did), they both would have been earned runs, because no errors were made in the inning. Even though both runners reached base without the benefit of a hit or a walk or a HBP, even though Turner did exactly what he wanted to do by inducing two infield grounders that didn't lead to hits, those runners were considered debits to Turner's account.
I'm sure everything was scored correctly, but it was weird that Turner would be held accountable for those runs, even though it wasn't his fault that they reached base, and their at-bats were marked down as failures (0-for-1) in their personal ledgers. That's kind of a scoring anomaly - a runner reaching base on a ball in play without a hit, an out, or an error being recorded.