May 28 - 29

May 27, 2020, 03:15:45 AM

Upset alert! The Robots take down the mighty ACLs with a 9-6 road win on May 28th. Primarily this win for the Robots was about one disastrous mistake in the 6th inning - with no men out in the top of the 6th, Profar hit a grounder to the shortstop and Encarnacion flat-out dropped the ball. That started a cascade of problems for the ACLs. Alex Gordon was then HBP which loaded the bases. Hosmer struck out next, but that was followed by a run-scoring grounder, a double, and then Paxton fell apart. Two walks in a row loaded the bases and then Willy Adames bombed one deep to left for the grand slam. Paxton's official line was 0 earned runs in the 6th. Those 7 unearned runs are all on Encarnacion's parrot-carrying shoulders.

We had a bunch of great pitching performances on the 28th with shut-outs galore - the Blues with a 3 hitter against the Koi to win 5-0, the Kraken won 1-0 on the strength of a 4 hitter against the Rattlers (and obviously Cole wasn't a slouch either), Cache Hogs won 2-0 against the Devils (Mikolas of the Devils also pitched 8 IP), and the Brewers won 5-0 with 7 IP from Rodriguez, but for the performance of the night, I'll give it to the Rougarou against my own Miners. Aaron Nola of the Miners was great (8 IP, 4 hits, 0 BB, 11 K), but the one run he gave up was enough against Jonathan Gray who went 7 IP with only 2 hits, 3 BB, and 9 K. Rougarou relievers than came in and limited the damage with particular ferocity from Anderson and his 1.2 IP with 4 K.

One thing can be said about the ACLs this year - they learn from their mistakes. Watching from the bullpen the night before, Hyun Jin Ryu identified the Robots weaknesses and just capitalized. 9 IP, 5 hits, 2 BB, and 10 Ks shut-out the Robots in game 2 of this series in Ankeny. And ACLs batters made the most of their chances - many of which came off erratic Robots pitching - 9 walks given up over 8 innings. Ji-Man Choi was seeing the ball particularly well today with 3 walks.

On the 29th, we had a pair of wins tonight in the bottom of the 11th - first the Cutthroats walked off the field on a 2 out Hedges solo shot and then the Bums followed up with an 11th inning hitting clinic - double, IBB, BB, and single to right center to score the winning run. We also had one road team who won in the 11th - after Leury Garcia led off with a single, Francisco Meija hit a screamer down the line that then caromed off an upright in right center for the run-scoring triple. Whit Merrifield had the follow-up sacrifice fly. Those two runs were enough for the Rattlers relievers and they won 9-7.