Snakes sack X's
By Terry Hersom, Journal sports editor | Posted: Thursday, July 26, 2007
Maybe this has all just been a mirage, like the 5-0 lead the Sioux City Explorers took into the fifth inning Wednesday night against the St. Joseph Blacksnakes.
The flirtation with first place in American Association baseball's second-half North Division standings was certainly looking a little shaky after the last-place Snakes roared back to hand the X's a costly 11-5 setback.
Rocking starter Rory James for five runs in a game-tying fifth inning, St. Joe followed with a four-run sixth against little-used reliever Mike Nunes in a wild turnaround at Lewis and Clark Park.
Two more runs in the ninth were simply icing on the cake in a game that saw 38-year-old veteran Greg Bicknell shake off a rocky start to record an improbable complete-game win.
"He really showed me something,'' said X's Manager Ed Nottle. "That was a big-league effort and they're a scrappy ball club.''
Bicknell, who won a Northern League-record 16 games for Kansas City two seasons ago, rewarded the patience of St. Joe Manager Al Gallagher, his skipper also in K.C. the last three years. Blanking Sioux City over the final seven innings, he retired 23 of the final 27 batters he faced after yielding three runs in the first frame and two more in the second.
"I was getting some pitches up and facing a team for the third time in something like two weeks,'' said Bicknell, making just his fifth start since joining the Snakes. "My pitching coach saw something in my arm angle. I came in after the second inning and made some adjustments. Everything flowed from there.''
It was a loss even more deflating for Sioux City than a 5-3, 14-inning setback on Tuesday, when the X's coughed up a 3-1 lead after four innings, surrendering three unearned runs and failing to score over the final 10 innings.
This time, the early success against Bicknell wasn't nearly enough as a Sioux City pitching staff depleted by the Tuesday marathon couldn't hold back a St. Joe team hitting a league-worst .245.
And, after second-place St. Paul came up with a 9-5 win Wednesday afternoon in Lincoln, the X's and Saints, each now at 13-7 for the second half, begin a three-game series at Midway Stadium tonight as the North's co-leaders.
Resurgent St. Joe, winning for the sixth time in seven games since a 12-game losing streak, featured a pair of three-run doubles in its stunning come-from-behind triumph.
Casey Gordon got the first of those after the Snakes picked up their first run on James' four-pitch, bases-loaded walk to No. 9 hitter Terry Robles.
Taking third on a throw to the plate, Gordon scooted home on a wild pitch by James, the final delivery of the night for the 6-foot 9-inch rookie righthander. And, just like that, the 5-0 advantage was gone.
Nunes, pitching for just the second time in nearly two months, saw his sixth inning unravel after David Fowler and Carter McQuigg sandwiched bunt singles around a pop out. Then, after a walk loaded the bases, Robles delivered another three-run double with a drive to left-center that a diving Jason Tuttle was unable to glove.
Robles, also getting to third on a homeward throw, later scored on a sacrifice fly by Gordon, who matched him with a four-RBI night.
Held scoreless over the final 10 innings of a 14-inning loss on Tuesday, the X's bats somehow came to life in the first two innings of this one.
Bicknell seemed headed to a 1-2-3 first inning when he missed on a 3-2 pitch to Jake Daubert, coaxing a two-out walk. Jorge Moreno followed with a base hit, Alex Llanos ripped a two-run double to left-center and Paul Weichard's double to nearly the same spot made it a quick 3-0 lead.
Pete Pirman led off the second with a double high off the left-field wall and Bicknell plunked Billy Cox with a pitch. Tuttle's bunt didn't get far enough from the plate and Pirman, the lead runner, was gunned down at third. Still, Nick McCoola's single through the right side and a grounder to first by Daubert let another two runs cross.
The X's squandered a one-out double by Weichard in the third, then got nothing in the fourth after Cox and Tuttle started it off with back-to-back singles.
After managing just two hits in Tuesday's final 10 innings, they went the last five in this one with just a lone single by Tuttle.
X's AND OH's: Brian Campbell, a 22-year-old rookie from Media, Pa., pitched one-hit baseball for seven innings in his professional debut for the Lincoln Saltdogs on Tuesday, picking up the win in a 2-0 triumph over the St. Paul Saints. That was certainly above and beyond what the Dogs might have anticipated from a youngster who played four seasons at Widener University, an NCAA Division III school in Wilmington, Del., where he went 4-1 this spring with a nifty 1.37 ERA. Prior to this year, Campbell's career pitching mark was just 6-3 with a 3.92 ERA, but he was a four-year starter at shortstop....
Before Robert Wooley arrived Tuesday from the Frontier League, the X's had been operating with just eight active pitchers since Brad Guy made the final start of his 11-year pro baseball career last Wednesday. And, one of those eight was Nunes, a lefty who has barely seen the mound in an injury-plagued season. Since four appearances in May, Nunes' only subsequent outing before his 3.2 innings Wednesday had been two-thirds of an inning in a July 15 win over St. Joe....
Wooley, called on to pitch for the second night in a row, worked the ninth and surrendered two runs after back-to-back doubles by Dustin Yount and Fowler led things off. Nottle said the newcomer's start in St. Paul will be pushed back to Saturday. That will force Brian Buchanan to take the hill Friday, which will be his second straight start on three days' rest. That didn't faze him Monday in a 6-0 win....
Weichard, the Aussie outfielder/DH who had his contract purchased from St. Joe last week, didn't join the Snakes until June 1 and had his batting average up to .374 by July 1. Before his two doubles Wednesday, though, he had been mired in a 6-for-49 (.122) slump that included a 1-for-14 start with his new team....
Not only did Bicknell win a record 16 games for Kansas City in 2005, he was a 13-game winner in 2004, which ranks in a tie for fourth highest in Northern League annals. He was a hard-luck 7-13 last year, when his ERA jumped from 2.96 in the 16-win campaign to 4.10, and made four early-season starts this year for Winnipeg before being released....
Julian Benavidez went 0-for-4 Wednesday and extended his hitless streak to 21 at-bats. Meanwhile, the first-inning double by Llanos kept the veteran second baseman's on-base streak alive at 25 games.
The flirtation with first place in American Association baseball's second-half North Division standings was certainly looking a little shaky after the last-place Snakes roared back to hand the X's a costly 11-5 setback.
Rocking starter Rory James for five runs in a game-tying fifth inning, St. Joe followed with a four-run sixth against little-used reliever Mike Nunes in a wild turnaround at Lewis and Clark Park.
Two more runs in the ninth were simply icing on the cake in a game that saw 38-year-old veteran Greg Bicknell shake off a rocky start to record an improbable complete-game win.
"He really showed me something,'' said X's Manager Ed Nottle. "That was a big-league effort and they're a scrappy ball club.''
Bicknell, who won a Northern League-record 16 games for Kansas City two seasons ago, rewarded the patience of St. Joe Manager Al Gallagher, his skipper also in K.C. the last three years. Blanking Sioux City over the final seven innings, he retired 23 of the final 27 batters he faced after yielding three runs in the first frame and two more in the second.
"I was getting some pitches up and facing a team for the third time in something like two weeks,'' said Bicknell, making just his fifth start since joining the Snakes. "My pitching coach saw something in my arm angle. I came in after the second inning and made some adjustments. Everything flowed from there.''
It was a loss even more deflating for Sioux City than a 5-3, 14-inning setback on Tuesday, when the X's coughed up a 3-1 lead after four innings, surrendering three unearned runs and failing to score over the final 10 innings.
This time, the early success against Bicknell wasn't nearly enough as a Sioux City pitching staff depleted by the Tuesday marathon couldn't hold back a St. Joe team hitting a league-worst .245.
And, after second-place St. Paul came up with a 9-5 win Wednesday afternoon in Lincoln, the X's and Saints, each now at 13-7 for the second half, begin a three-game series at Midway Stadium tonight as the North's co-leaders.
Resurgent St. Joe, winning for the sixth time in seven games since a 12-game losing streak, featured a pair of three-run doubles in its stunning come-from-behind triumph.
Casey Gordon got the first of those after the Snakes picked up their first run on James' four-pitch, bases-loaded walk to No. 9 hitter Terry Robles.
Taking third on a throw to the plate, Gordon scooted home on a wild pitch by James, the final delivery of the night for the 6-foot 9-inch rookie righthander. And, just like that, the 5-0 advantage was gone.
Nunes, pitching for just the second time in nearly two months, saw his sixth inning unravel after David Fowler and Carter McQuigg sandwiched bunt singles around a pop out. Then, after a walk loaded the bases, Robles delivered another three-run double with a drive to left-center that a diving Jason Tuttle was unable to glove.
Robles, also getting to third on a homeward throw, later scored on a sacrifice fly by Gordon, who matched him with a four-RBI night.
Held scoreless over the final 10 innings of a 14-inning loss on Tuesday, the X's bats somehow came to life in the first two innings of this one.
Bicknell seemed headed to a 1-2-3 first inning when he missed on a 3-2 pitch to Jake Daubert, coaxing a two-out walk. Jorge Moreno followed with a base hit, Alex Llanos ripped a two-run double to left-center and Paul Weichard's double to nearly the same spot made it a quick 3-0 lead.
Pete Pirman led off the second with a double high off the left-field wall and Bicknell plunked Billy Cox with a pitch. Tuttle's bunt didn't get far enough from the plate and Pirman, the lead runner, was gunned down at third. Still, Nick McCoola's single through the right side and a grounder to first by Daubert let another two runs cross.
The X's squandered a one-out double by Weichard in the third, then got nothing in the fourth after Cox and Tuttle started it off with back-to-back singles.
After managing just two hits in Tuesday's final 10 innings, they went the last five in this one with just a lone single by Tuttle.
X's AND OH's: Brian Campbell, a 22-year-old rookie from Media, Pa., pitched one-hit baseball for seven innings in his professional debut for the Lincoln Saltdogs on Tuesday, picking up the win in a 2-0 triumph over the St. Paul Saints. That was certainly above and beyond what the Dogs might have anticipated from a youngster who played four seasons at Widener University, an NCAA Division III school in Wilmington, Del., where he went 4-1 this spring with a nifty 1.37 ERA. Prior to this year, Campbell's career pitching mark was just 6-3 with a 3.92 ERA, but he was a four-year starter at shortstop....
Before Robert Wooley arrived Tuesday from the Frontier League, the X's had been operating with just eight active pitchers since Brad Guy made the final start of his 11-year pro baseball career last Wednesday. And, one of those eight was Nunes, a lefty who has barely seen the mound in an injury-plagued season. Since four appearances in May, Nunes' only subsequent outing before his 3.2 innings Wednesday had been two-thirds of an inning in a July 15 win over St. Joe....
Wooley, called on to pitch for the second night in a row, worked the ninth and surrendered two runs after back-to-back doubles by Dustin Yount and Fowler led things off. Nottle said the newcomer's start in St. Paul will be pushed back to Saturday. That will force Brian Buchanan to take the hill Friday, which will be his second straight start on three days' rest. That didn't faze him Monday in a 6-0 win....
Weichard, the Aussie outfielder/DH who had his contract purchased from St. Joe last week, didn't join the Snakes until June 1 and had his batting average up to .374 by July 1. Before his two doubles Wednesday, though, he had been mired in a 6-for-49 (.122) slump that included a 1-for-14 start with his new team....
Not only did Bicknell win a record 16 games for Kansas City in 2005, he was a 13-game winner in 2004, which ranks in a tie for fourth highest in Northern League annals. He was a hard-luck 7-13 last year, when his ERA jumped from 2.96 in the 16-win campaign to 4.10, and made four early-season starts this year for Winnipeg before being released....
Julian Benavidez went 0-for-4 Wednesday and extended his hitless streak to 21 at-bats. Meanwhile, the first-inning double by Llanos kept the veteran second baseman's on-base streak alive at 25 games.
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ASHLEY wrote on Nov 30, 2007 4:39 AM: