Sloppy defense sinks X's
By Terry Hersom Journal sports editor | Posted: Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Coming off their best weekend all season, maybe the Sioux City Explorers were due for a letdown.
This one, however, was a bona fide stinker.
Gift-wrapping an astonishing eight unearned runs, the X's opened a nine-game homestand in rocky fashion, bowing 11-5 to the St. Joseph Blacksnakes in front of a sparse Monday night crowd at Lewis and Clark Park.
After defeating the Lincoln Saltdogs in the final two games of a weekend road series with the American Association's winningest team, Manager Ed Nottle's troops were their own worst enemies in a loss to the league's losingest club.
A season-high five Sioux City errors told the tale as the Blacksnakes took full advantage of a makeshift infield alignment for the injury-plagued X's.
Three Sioux City miscues came in a six-run sixth inning that snapped a 2-2 tie and provided yet another frustrating wrinkle to the ongoing misfortunes of veteran Sioux City starter Brad Guy.
Meanwhile, Nottle got tossed out of the game in the fourth inning and was still in a foul mood in a post-game meeting with a team that is now 15-28 with five games left in the season's first-half schedule.
That's only two games better than St. Joseph, which has a league-worst 13-30 mark but has now won five of its last 10 games.
"We've got some things going our way lately,'' said Blacksnakes first baseman Dustin Yount, who drove in four runs to lead a team that was outscored 31-8 while being swept in a three-game weekend series with red-hot St. Paul.
Prior to that, St. Joe had won back-to-back series with the league's two division leaders, claiming two of three each against Lincoln and El Paso.
"That definitely showed us we can play with every team in this league,'' said the only son of baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount.
Nottle, on the other hand, could only focus on the backward steps his team keeps taking every time things seem to be turning around.
"I feel that obviously the hitting's coming around,'' said Nottle, whose team reached double digits in hits for the fifth time in the last six games. "We've made some moves prior to now and we'll make some more in the future that will help our pitching.
"But if we don't stop making errors and other mistakes, things will be just the same in the second half as they have been in the first half. If we do (stop the mistakes), then it can be a fun second half.''
Alex Llanos tied the game at 2-2 in the fourth inning, belting his first homer of the season, an opposite-field blast to left field with a helpful breeze from the south.
Things fell apart, though, in the top of the sixth after Andy Wilson beat out a swinging bunt toward third base for an infield single.
Jake Whitesides hit a bouncer to Llanos, a second baseman playing first due to a pulled leg muscle, and Llanos threw high to second, turning a potential double play into the start of big trouble.
Paul Weichard, who singled three times for the Snakes, singled home the first run of the inning and David Fowler bunted the guests' two baserunners over to second and third.
Yount hit a bouncer to Julian Benavidez, a first baseman pressed into service at shortstop, and a misplay by Benavidez let one run cross while leaving two still on base.
Chad Sosebee, a .227 hitter, followed with a two-run double while Jacob Wallis and Casey Gordon also added run-scoring singles to help St. Joe blow open an 8-2 lead.
Earlier, Wallis, a light-hitting catcher batting only .183, lined a second-inning double that drove home two more unearned runs for the Snakes. Those followed a rare catcher's interference call on which Sioux City's Billy Cox was ruled to have impeded the bat of Sosebee.
Two innings later, Nottle was certain his team was due to same call on a swing by Cox.
Home plate umpire Thomas Newsom, though, wasn't hearing it and had a rather quick hook for the X's skipper, who had been thrown out just once previously this season.
"If they don't know how bad that call was then they ought to know,'' fumed Nottle. "But like I said in the dugout after the game, we have not lost one game this year because of umpires. We've lost our games because of us and because of me.''
Plagued by a lack of run support in most of his nine previous starts, Guy was tagged for 10 hits in seven innings by a St. Joe lineup batting just .249, 16 points worse than anyone else in the league.
However, there was just one earned run among the nine charged to Guy, who fell to 1-5 while actually improving his earned run average from 4.28 to 4.00.
X's AND OH's: Llanos, who had collected just three extra-base hits all season, added an RBI double to his home run while Dustin Jones contributed three singles and hot-hitting Nick McCoola picked up a pair of hits....
Singles in the first and fifth innings enabled McCoola make it eight multiple-hit games in a row, which is believed to be the best in the league this season. McCoola, who has a 10-game hitting streak overall, was 16-for-32 over the seven straight multi-hit performances prior to this one....
Working a man short in the starting rotation, each of three St. Joe starters slated to pitch in the series will be working on just three days' rest. Unlike Raab, now 4-2 with a 4.50 earned run average (exactly what it was prior to the game), Anthony Edwards takes a 0-5 mark and 5.33 ERA into tonight's game and Thursday's start goes to Brian Buchanan, 0-6 with a 6.99 ERA....
Hoping to give righthander Ty Marotz a little extra rest before the second half gets under way next week, Nottle will bring Jon Koch out of the bullpen tonight for a spot start. "Ty's okay, he's just got a little tired arm,'' said Nottle, who has Rafael Gross slated to start the series finale on Wednesday....
Sunday's 2-1 win in Lincoln was just the third victory in 13 one-run games for the X's, who are 7-15 on the season in games decided by two runs or less.
This one, however, was a bona fide stinker.
Gift-wrapping an astonishing eight unearned runs, the X's opened a nine-game homestand in rocky fashion, bowing 11-5 to the St. Joseph Blacksnakes in front of a sparse Monday night crowd at Lewis and Clark Park.
After defeating the Lincoln Saltdogs in the final two games of a weekend road series with the American Association's winningest team, Manager Ed Nottle's troops were their own worst enemies in a loss to the league's losingest club.
A season-high five Sioux City errors told the tale as the Blacksnakes took full advantage of a makeshift infield alignment for the injury-plagued X's.
Three Sioux City miscues came in a six-run sixth inning that snapped a 2-2 tie and provided yet another frustrating wrinkle to the ongoing misfortunes of veteran Sioux City starter Brad Guy.
Meanwhile, Nottle got tossed out of the game in the fourth inning and was still in a foul mood in a post-game meeting with a team that is now 15-28 with five games left in the season's first-half schedule.
That's only two games better than St. Joseph, which has a league-worst 13-30 mark but has now won five of its last 10 games.
"We've got some things going our way lately,'' said Blacksnakes first baseman Dustin Yount, who drove in four runs to lead a team that was outscored 31-8 while being swept in a three-game weekend series with red-hot St. Paul.
Prior to that, St. Joe had won back-to-back series with the league's two division leaders, claiming two of three each against Lincoln and El Paso.
"That definitely showed us we can play with every team in this league,'' said the only son of baseball Hall of Famer Robin Yount.
Nottle, on the other hand, could only focus on the backward steps his team keeps taking every time things seem to be turning around.
"I feel that obviously the hitting's coming around,'' said Nottle, whose team reached double digits in hits for the fifth time in the last six games. "We've made some moves prior to now and we'll make some more in the future that will help our pitching.
"But if we don't stop making errors and other mistakes, things will be just the same in the second half as they have been in the first half. If we do (stop the mistakes), then it can be a fun second half.''
Alex Llanos tied the game at 2-2 in the fourth inning, belting his first homer of the season, an opposite-field blast to left field with a helpful breeze from the south.
Things fell apart, though, in the top of the sixth after Andy Wilson beat out a swinging bunt toward third base for an infield single.
Jake Whitesides hit a bouncer to Llanos, a second baseman playing first due to a pulled leg muscle, and Llanos threw high to second, turning a potential double play into the start of big trouble.
Paul Weichard, who singled three times for the Snakes, singled home the first run of the inning and David Fowler bunted the guests' two baserunners over to second and third.
Yount hit a bouncer to Julian Benavidez, a first baseman pressed into service at shortstop, and a misplay by Benavidez let one run cross while leaving two still on base.
Chad Sosebee, a .227 hitter, followed with a two-run double while Jacob Wallis and Casey Gordon also added run-scoring singles to help St. Joe blow open an 8-2 lead.
Earlier, Wallis, a light-hitting catcher batting only .183, lined a second-inning double that drove home two more unearned runs for the Snakes. Those followed a rare catcher's interference call on which Sioux City's Billy Cox was ruled to have impeded the bat of Sosebee.
Two innings later, Nottle was certain his team was due to same call on a swing by Cox.
Home plate umpire Thomas Newsom, though, wasn't hearing it and had a rather quick hook for the X's skipper, who had been thrown out just once previously this season.
"If they don't know how bad that call was then they ought to know,'' fumed Nottle. "But like I said in the dugout after the game, we have not lost one game this year because of umpires. We've lost our games because of us and because of me.''
Plagued by a lack of run support in most of his nine previous starts, Guy was tagged for 10 hits in seven innings by a St. Joe lineup batting just .249, 16 points worse than anyone else in the league.
However, there was just one earned run among the nine charged to Guy, who fell to 1-5 while actually improving his earned run average from 4.28 to 4.00.
X's AND OH's: Llanos, who had collected just three extra-base hits all season, added an RBI double to his home run while Dustin Jones contributed three singles and hot-hitting Nick McCoola picked up a pair of hits....
Singles in the first and fifth innings enabled McCoola make it eight multiple-hit games in a row, which is believed to be the best in the league this season. McCoola, who has a 10-game hitting streak overall, was 16-for-32 over the seven straight multi-hit performances prior to this one....
Working a man short in the starting rotation, each of three St. Joe starters slated to pitch in the series will be working on just three days' rest. Unlike Raab, now 4-2 with a 4.50 earned run average (exactly what it was prior to the game), Anthony Edwards takes a 0-5 mark and 5.33 ERA into tonight's game and Thursday's start goes to Brian Buchanan, 0-6 with a 6.99 ERA....
Hoping to give righthander Ty Marotz a little extra rest before the second half gets under way next week, Nottle will bring Jon Koch out of the bullpen tonight for a spot start. "Ty's okay, he's just got a little tired arm,'' said Nottle, who has Rafael Gross slated to start the series finale on Wednesday....
Sunday's 2-1 win in Lincoln was just the third victory in 13 one-run games for the X's, who are 7-15 on the season in games decided by two runs or less.
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JJ wrote on Jun 26, 2007 4:10 PM: