Scoreboard for April 3, 2008 (Opening Night)

Rochester 9 at Richmond 5


Richmond's Wes Timmons makes it back to second safely after attempting to steal third during Thursday's game against the Rochester Red Wings at the Diamond. Rochester's Howie Clark missed the ball and Timmons stole third on the same play.
(Eva Russo / Times-Dispatch)

Record 1-0

W: R. Barrett (1-0, 0.00); L: D. Moss (0-1, 20.25)
HR: None.

E: Perkins (1, pickoff).

From redwingsbaseball.com: Garrett Jones had three hits, scored three times and drove in a pair of runs, as the Red Wings came from behind three different times en route to an 9-5 Opening Day victory Thursday over the Richmond Braves. It was Rochester's fifth straight season with an Opening Day win, and it came at the expense of the defending Governors' Cup champion Braves - who were playing their final opener in Richmond.

The game started late due to wet weather in Richmond during the day, and it was 4:27 PM EDT when Denard Span took a called strike from Buddy Carlyle to officially open the 2008 season. Carlyle got three quick outs, then watched his teammates parlay a walk and two singles into a 1-0 Richmond lead against Rochester starter Glen Perkins.

The Wings quickly came back to tie the score in the top of the second. Jones doubled into the right field corner to open the frame, and moved to third on a ground ball out by Brian Buscher. Randy Ruiz followed with an RBI single to plate Jones and make it a 1-1 game.

Playing through light rain that seemed to affect the pitchers more than the fielders, the Braves regained the lead in the second inning. Perkins hurt his cause with a pair of walks, a throwing error and an balk which brought in Wes Timmons. In the third inning, Jason Pridie led off with a double, moved to third on a passed ball then scored to tie the score again when Carlyle was charged with a balk.

Ruiz put the Wings in front in the fourth, clubbing a double to bring in Jones after Jones walked, then stole second base.

Perkins' day was over after just three innings, after allowing four hits and two runs (one earned), while walking five and striking out four. Casey Daigle (1 2/3 innings) and Mariano Gomez followed Perkins on the mound for the Wings. Gomez struck out Joe Thorman to end the fifth inning, then gave way to Julio DePaula after walking J.C. Holt to start the sixth. Richmond worked an ineffective DePaula and put together a three-run rally, which included DePaula walking one batter, and hitting another. Heath Totten issued a game-tying, bases loaded walk to Brandon Jones; Barbaro Canizares then knocked in a pair with a hit off Totten, putting the R-Braves up 5-3.

Wings reliever Ricky Barrett was sharp, keeping the game close while stifling the Braves over two innings. Barrett (1-0), who allowed one hit and struck out two, got the win for his effort when Rochester made the most of a one-out, eighth inning rally against Damian Moss (0-1). Span started the rally with a single, his second of the day. Alexi Casilla followed with a hit, and both runners advanced on a wild pitch. Jose Morales drew a walk to load the bases, setting up an RBI single by Jones. Thorman's two-run throwing error on a ball hit by Buscher allowed the Wings to go ahead, and Howie Clark added an insurance run with a sacrifice fly that brought Jones home.

Rochester pieced together four more hits and took advantage of another Richmond error to add a pair in the ninth, highlighted by Jones' third hit and second RBI of the game.

Bobby Korecky, who led the league in saves with 35 while setting a team single season record in 2007, pitched the ninth inning in a non-save situation and faced three batters. Korecky struck out Canizares (three hits, three RBI) and allowed a single to Joe Borchard, then started a game-ending double play on a ball hit by Thorman.

NOTES: After allowing the fewest walks in the league (331) in 2007, Rochester pitchers issued eight walks in the 2008 season opener... The Atlanta Braves, owners of the Richmond franchise, are moving the club to the Atlanta suburb of Gwinnett for 2009; Thursday was the start of the 43rd and final Triple-A season for the Braves in Richmond.... The winningest franchise in International League history, Rochester is now 8,841-8,401 since joining the league in 1885, the IL’s second season. Rochester played in the IL from 1885 through 1889 and in 1891 and 1892 before re-joining the league for good in 1895. Rochester’s 10 Governors’ Cup titles represent a league-record as well....14 of the 24 players on the Red Wings' Opening Day roster have appeared in the Major Leagues (9 position players and 5 pitchers). Eight of those players have enjoyed Big League time with the Twins......Rochester hasn’t spent a day under .500 the last two seasons. In fact, the Red Wings haven’t been below .500 since June 18, 2005 when they had a 34-35 record (span of 362 games) ....23 of the 24 players on the Red Wings 2008 Opening Day roster have Triple-A experience. Only Gomez had never played above Double-A before Thursday, and Gomez made his Triple-A debut in the game. In addition, 15 of the 24 players played for the Red Wings last season....The 2008 season is Clark’s fifth season with the Red Wings (1998-2000, 2002 & 2008). Clark joins outfielder Josh Rabe (2003-2007) as the only two players to play five seasons in a Red Wings uniform since catcher Floyd Rayford in 1980-84, 1986 & 1987....

The Angels beat the Twins 5-4 at the Metrodome Thursday afternoon. Kevin Slowey left the game with a right biceps strain, and will be re-evaluated Friday...OF Carlos Gomez has hit safely in each of the Twins four games…he is hitting .375 (6-16) on the season thus far...Jason Kubel homered in the eighth inning, Minnesota's first home run of the young season...Other Opening Day starting pitchers for Twins farm clubs Thursday: Double-A New Britain, LHP Ryan Mullins...Class A Advanced Ft. Myers: LHP Francisco Liriano...Class A Beloit: RHP Mike McCardell...You can listen to Liriano's start for Ft. Myers at MiracleBaseball.com. Liriano is scheduled to start for the Red Wings Tuesday in Norfolk before rejoining the Twins, regardless of Slowey's status.

(Not what I heard. I heard if Slowey was put on the DL, Frankie would go directly to Minnesota.)

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Red Wings/OSC
R-Braves
Democrat
Times Dispatch
R News

Portland 3 at New Britain 0


MATT MOSES squares up a pitch from Justin Masterson, lining a two-out double in the fourth inning. It was the Rock Cats' only hit off Masterson to reach the outfield.
(STEPHEN DUNN / April 3, 2008)

Record: 0-1

W: J. Vaquedano (1-0, 0.00); L: A. Gabino (0-1, 9.00); SV: B. Vaughan (1)
HR: None.

From rockcats.com: The season got off to an interesting start with a power failure that delayed the game. Once play resumed, it was the pitchers who threw lights out. Portland used a late-game surge to down the Rock Cats, 3-0 in the 2008 season opener at New Britain Stadium.

Rock Cats starter Ryan Mullins delivered five shutout innings. Mullins limited the Sea Dogs to two hits while striking out three. Zach Ward threw one scoreless inning in his Double-A debut and Jason Miller added another shutout inning of relief.

Justin Masterson, the Red Sox’ number four prospect, threw four shutout innings in his 2008 debut. Masterson allowed three hits while walking none and striking out three.

It wasn’t until the top of the eighth when Portland struck first with an RBI single by Sean Danielson that put the Sea Dogs ahead, 1-0. Rock Cats’ reliever Armando Gabino (0-1), who didn’t allow an earned run in his 16 innings of work with the Rock Cats last season, allowed the run.

The Sea Dogs added two more runs in the ninth. Jay Johnson had an RBI double and Iggy Suarez (3-for-4) knocked him in with a single. Ben Julianel allowed the runs in the ninth in his Rock Cats’ debut. Portland’s Jose Vaquedano (1-0) picked up the win with 1 1/3 scoreless innings in relief. Beau Vaughan notched the save.

For the Rock Cats, catcher Drew Butera had two hits.

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Wrap
Rock Cats
Sea Dogs
Courant
Press Herald


Sarasota Reds 8 at Fort Myers Miracle 6


Wilson Ramos

Record 0-1

W: J. Smith (1-0, 3.60); L: F. Liriano (0-1, 6.75)
HR: SAR: C. Valaika (1). FTM: W. Ramos (1), D. Valencia (1).

E: Liriano (1, throw).

Francisco Liriano gave us a chance to win the game, but sloppy fielding by the Miracle and a poor performance by Cole Devries did the team in. Late in heroics by Danny Valencia made the score look a lot more respectable than it should have been.

Valencia took a two out walk in the first and then Wilson Ramos put one over the left field wall to give the Miracle an early lead. The Reds answered back though with Jan Francisco doubling, then coming home on a throwing error by Liriano. Drew Stubbs added a second after drawing a walk, then coming home on a sac-fly.

Yancarlos Ortiz walked, moved to second on a throwing error, then to 3rd on a Brian Dinkleman single. He'd come home on Valencia's sac-fly to give the Miracle the lead again, which would stand until a tired Lirano was pulled from the mound in the sixth.

Francisco doubled again in the sixth and Stubbs singled before Devries was brought in. With Chris Heisey at the plat, Francisco stole home after Ramos threw the ball to the left of second base, which also allowed Stubbs a steal. Much as I like Ramos power, his defensive skills leave something to be desired, even for the FSL level. Heisey singled in Stubs then stole 2nd, but Devries got Jason Louwsma to fly out to center to end the inning.

Chris Valaika homered in the 7th to add two more to the Sara total, before a Francisco double, a Stubbs walk and a Heisey double led to two more. Jose Lugo was finally brought in, as Devries confidence was shot at the point.

With most of the crowd gone, Whit Robbins drew a walk of Sean Watson, but Dinkleman hit into a ground out. With 2 outs Juan Portes drew another walk. Valencia then went yard over the left field wall.

Terry Ryan, Rob Antony, and Jim Rantz were all in attendance to watch Liriano throw. Antony said they were flying out today. Lots of injured guys in the stands including Kyle Waldrop, Errol Simonitsch, and Alejandro Machado.

The two teams rematch tomorrow for a Fireworks game. Tickets are available for free at Dunkin' Donuts.

Answers to questions that were plaguing us: Zack Ward is being used in a relief role in New Britain, which explains his promotion.

The Twins Released RHP Adam Hawes, Landon Jacobsen, Dan Leatherman, and Caleb Moore; LHP Kevin Fox, Sean Land and Randy Keisler; C David Hernandez, Korey Feiner and Kyle Geiger; and OF Kevin Harrington.

The new lighting is nice for picture taking, but it makes the scoreboard virtually unreadable.

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MiLB
Miracle
News-Press
Breeze
NDN


Kane County at Beloit

Postponed - Rain

From snappersbaseball.com:

Tonight’s game between the Beloit Snappers and Kane County Cougars has been postponed due to inclement weather. It will be made up as part of a doubleheader on Saturday, April 5th at 2:00pm. Both games will be seven innings long with a half hour break in between.

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Snappers
Cougars
OSC

Liriano to kick off 2008 Miracle season

Click on image to enlarge.

The Minnesota Twins and the Fort Myers Miracle have announced that Francisco Liriano will make a re-hab start Thursday for the Miracle home opener against the Sarasota Reds.

This will be the second time Liriano has worn a Fort Myers jersey.

He started 21 games for Fort Myers in the 2004 season, compiling a 6-7 record with a 4.00 ERA. Liriano struck out 125 batters in 117 innings.

Following his start on Thursday, the 6-foot-2, 225 pound left-hander will join Triple-A Rochester for a start in Norfolk before heading to Minnesota to join up with the Twins.

The Miracle hold their season ticket holder meet-and-greet tonight at Hammond Stadium with Season Ticket packages available for pick up. New field manager Jeff Smith will be introduced as well as the 2008 opening day edition of the Fort Myers Miracle.

Right hander Jeff Manship will be returning to start the season as well as Kyle Waldrop and reliever Robert Delaney. Alex Burnett, Cole Devries, Matt Fox, Adam Hawes, Jose Lugo, Winston Marquez, Tyler Robertson, Anthony Slama and Danny Vais are join them to round off the pitching staff.

Ramos Wilson, who won a championship with the Tigres de Aragua youth squad, and Aussie Allen De San Miguel will handle the catching duties.

Edward Ovalle and Dwayne White return to the outfield joined by Hialeah native Danny Santiesteban.

Johnny Woodard and Whit Robbins will split duties at first base, Brian Dinklelman returns to 2nd Base for the Miracle squad while Daniel Berg joins Danny Valencia as a potential 3rd baseman for the club. Yancarlos Ortiz will be the team's new shortstop.

Juan Portes and Toby Gardenhire, two versital players who can move around the field round out the roster.

The Miracle play two at home, Thursday and Friday before heading to Dunedin and Clearwater for a six-game road trip.

Tickets to all games are available at the Miracle box office.

Who was that masked man?

Did I see, or do I have any good pictures of, Carlos Gomez? I'm sure I saw him. I was watching outfielding drills. However, they were WAY out there in the outfield and I was up at the top of section 115 hoping for a bullpen session.

So unless he's the guy in the red sleeves - and there was a good deal of speculation on that point - I don't know. Put a warm up jacket on and you might as well be wearing mask as no one can see the numbers on your jersey and therefore, tell who you are.



Interestingly enough, there wasn't as much speculation on Kevin Mulvey, Deolis Guerra or Philips Humber, the other three players that came over in the Johan Santana trade. Nor did I, to the best of my knowledge, see any of them - at least at spring training.

I did see the other two candidates for the position...Jason Pridie, whose picture I posted yesterday, and Denard Span...



Span is the guy in the middle with his hands on his knees. I was keeping an eye on Span for several reasons, not the least of which was that he does have fans hoping he'll land the job this year.

Someone - maybe Gomez, maybe Span, maybe someone else - was making some nice saves during outfield drills. The problem with outfield drills being that their held in the outfield and unless you can catch the jersey numbers, it's too far away to figure out who is who.

And batting practice is, to my mind, pointless in trying to rate a hitter. He's facing a coach throwing balls that a batter is supposed to hit. I'd be more concerned about a guy that wasn't hitting during batting practice.

That means I likely won't have a good report on him until the Blue Jays game when I - hopefully - can see him in a game situation.

While I won't discount the battle for center, I'd say given his reputation, it will be Gomez's to lose.

The other two outfielding pics I have are Cuddy and Kubel mulling around in the "garden"...





The rest of the shots are on Photobucket or will be once I've finished editing them.

Spring Training Sunday

If you haven't been over to Hammond Stadium for Minnesota Twins spring training, you'll find some new trappings aside from the new seats and lights. Shade has been added over the SRO and Drink Rail area, and the stadium as had some bling-bling added:





Unlike the bling-bling on the Reds Stadium in Sarasota, I know what these numbers mean!



Owen doesn't, yet, but he's only three and getting read to start Bitty-Ball.



Twins Field Manager Ron Gardenhire was his usual jolly self. Here he was watching what turned out to be catching drills. Virtually everyone in the park left Justin Morneau alone to infielding drills to watch catching drills.



Not that Justin minded.



Jose Morales looks like he'll be the first catcher called up should an injury happen to either of Twins main catchers, Joe Mauer and Mike Redmond, but Eli Whiteside was gathering a lot of attention from the staff as well.



Australian catcher Allan De San Miguel will likely start the season in High A with the Fort Myers Miracle.



There was no bullpen session on Sunday (bummer) but here we see former Miracle Kevin Slowey taking fielding drills.



Newly acquired outfields Delmon Young...



and Jason Pridie await their turn for batting practice.

Spring Training was lightly attended on Sunday, but don't expect it to remain that way. The Twins open their Grapefruit League season on the road Thursday, February 28 in Sarasota against the Reds. The first home game is Friday night against the Boston Red Sox. Tickets to select games are still available at the Hammond Stadium box office, but games are selling out fast!

Tigres lock up winter league championship

Photo courtesy of los Tigres de Aragua

Aragua 9 at Lara 2

W: J. Silva (1-2, 3.18); L: G. Gonzalez (2-3, 4.19)
HR: None.

Boosted by late player additions, los Tigres de Aragua wrapped up their second straight Venezuelan Winter League Championship with a 9-2 trouncing of los Cardenales de Lara. It was the Tigres fourth championship in the last five years.

With one out in the top of the second inning, Hector Gimenez (Tampa Bay) and former Miracle Alex Romero (Arizona) hit back-to-back singles to get onto base. A Luis Maza (LA Dodgers) ground out and a Ronny Cedeno (Chicago Cubs) single plated the pair giving Aragua its first two runs.

In the top of the sixth, an Edgardo Alfonzo (Texas) double lead to another run. Alfonzo moved to 3rd on a Miguel Cabrera (Detroit) ground out. Following a pair of walks to Romero and Maza, Cedeno singled to drive him in, making it 3-0, Tigres.

Jesus Silva (Florida) kept Lara off the board through five innings. Cesar Izturis (St Louis) doubled in the bottom of the inning, moved to 3rd on a Luis Ugueto (F/A) ground out, and scored on a Marco Scutaro ground out. A walk to Jose Lopez (Seattle) would bring Yohan Pino (Minnesota) up to the mound. Pino, who is recovering from bronchitis, did not appear to be on his game. He'd walk Robert Perez (F/A) to load the bags and allow a single to Selwyn Langaigne (F/A), however, Lopez would be taken out at home for the 3rd out.

Alberto Callaspo (Kansas City) singled in the top of the 7th, then moved to second on a Luis Rodriguez (San Diego) sac bunt. Following a ground out to Alfonzo, Cabrera would be intentionally walked by Lara's Ivan Blanco (Seattle). A pitching change to Roger Luque (F/A) also saw Gimenez draw a walk, loading the bases. Martin Prado (Atlanta) would come into the game to pinch hit for Romero, and yet another pitching change saw Marcos Carvajal (Florida) take over the mound for Lara. Prada would triple to clear the bags, making it 6-1 Tigres.

Pino would stay in the game to start the bottom of the 7th, allowing a walk to Guillermo Rodriguez (San Francisco) before being removed in favor of Kevin Tolar (F/A). Tolar would put up two outs before allowing a double to Isturis what plated G-Rod, giving Lara their second run of the game.

An Alex Delgado (F/A) single and a walk to L-Rod paid dividends when Alfonzo doubled the pair in to tack two more runs onto the Cat's total.

Delgado would bring in Prado with a line drive in the top of the 9th to finish off the Tigre's scoring.

Cabrera was 0-for-3 with 2 walks and a run for the Cats. L-Rod was 0-for-4 with a walk and a run, Romero was 1-for-2 with a walk and a run, and Maza was 0-for-4. The last three were all former Twin prospects. Victor Moreno, currently with Baltimore, was also in the Twins system at one time, throwing 1.2 innings for Aragua and allowing a single during that period. Only Ugueto, 0-for-4 for Lara, represented a former Twin prospect on the Lara team.

The game finishes off the Caribbean Winter League season. I have received the minor league spring training schedule from Brad Steil in the Twins office, and will get that posted in the next day or so.

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MLB

The Twins traded lefty Johan Santana to the Mets for outfielding prospect Carlos Gomez and pitchers Philip Humber, Deolis Guerra and Kevin Mulvey. Minnesota will receive New York's Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 7 prospects, according to Baseball America's ranking.

Humber, a 25-year-old right-hander, has made one start and four relief appearances for the Mets during the past two years, and went 11-9 with a 4.27 ERA last season for Triple-A New Orleans. The 22-year-old Gomez batted .232 in 125 at-bats with New York last year and .275 with 19 steals in the minors.

Guerra, who turns 19 in April, was 2-6 with a 4.01 ERA at Class A St. Lucie, and Mulvey, who will be 23 in May, was 12-10 with a 3.20 ERA in 26 starts at Double-A Binghamton and one at New Orleans.

New York and Santana have until 5 p.m. EST Friday to reach an agreement. If the Mets and Santana strike a deal, the players would have to pass physicals and the pitcher would have to formally waive his no-trade clause in order for the deal to be finalized.