Thunderchickens Losing in Bunches

Mike’s dog has as big an appetite as he does :)

Brando and I went to the lovely town of Colona to both play Papa Bunch and son on Saturday.  In both series, our team got off to a good start but ended up on a losing note.  We ended up losing 3-6 to Marcus and 4-5 to Mike.

That puts us at 61-83 and deeper in the basement, I’m sure. 

Some highlights:

In three straight games against the Bombers, Troy Tulowitzski went 9 for 13 with 5 rbis and 7 runs scored on three homeruns. 

Ryan Zimmerman had 3+ rbis in four separate games including Game 8 against the Bombers when he hit two homeruns and drove in five.  For the 18 games, he drove in 20.

Some lowlights:

Albert Pujols hit .222 with 0 homers with 1 rbi in 14 games and 45 at-bats.

In three straights starts, Manny Parra gave up a total of 39 runs and 21 walks. 

We have Molly Putts and the Beanos left.  We only need to two wins to avoid a 100-loss season.  Unless Albert picks it up, I’m only fairly certain we can do this.  Limit are good though if by good you mean I can pitch Manny Parra.

Hall of Fame Candidate: Kenny Lofton

This is the third in a series of articles about candidates for the Illowa League Hall of Fame.

It’s always difficult to predict how leadoff hitters will do in IAL Hall of Fame voting.  Kenny Lofton was one of the best for about six or seven years, but like Craig Biggio and Shawn Green before him in this series, his period of dominance was brief.  Lofton played 16 seasons in the IAL, but only played in more than 140 games five times, all in the first seven seasons of his career.  He ranks first all-time in triples, with 113, second all-time in stolen bases with 652 (over 200 behind Tim Raines) fell just short of 2,000 hits (ranking 24th all-time with 1,983), and scored 1,233 runs (also ranking him 24th). [more after the jump]

Read more »

Beanos pitching beat up on T-chix Offense

The Thunderchickens got the best pitching in a series in recent memory. We still lost six out of nine. John Lackey and Scott Olsen both pitched shutouts for two of our wins. In Game 2, Jeff Niemann gave up three runs to the Bamm Beanos in the second inning but he and Mark Hendrickson kept them scoreless for the rest of the game. We lost that frustrating game 3-2. Manny Parra advanced from a D to a B in Game 9 but again we lost 3-2.

But the ultimate was Game 8. Tommy Hanson pitched the best game of his young career. For 10 innings, he kept the Beanos scoreless allowing just three hits. It wasn’t till the 11th when Matt Kemp came up with a runner on base did he give up the fourth hit that made a difference… a two-run game-winning homerun.

As good as our starters were, our bullpen was just as good. Hendrickson, Jesse Carlson and Chris Perez (Jose Mijares, our A*, was out for the series) did not allow a run in 10 innings and only gave up three hits.

Nice job, pitching staff. I wish the offense could catch up with you.

Speaking of pathetic offense…

In Game 3, Casey McGehee got a hit, a pinch hit game winning homerun. It was his first hit of the season. Casey had 21 hitless at-bats before his heroic homerun. He’s now 1 for 28.

Geovany Soto probably had the best offensive game of any T-Chick against the Beanos. In Game 7, he drove in four runs on a double and a homerun. He was due. Coming into the series, he just had one hit. He is now 3 for 41 with a .073 batting average.

Thunderchickens lose ground against Champs

The Thunderchickens held their own for the March weekend going .500. The sad part for us was that we hadn’t gotten around to playing the Champions yet. A week later, we played them over Skype and fell to them 1-5. For the weekend, we were 13-17.

Our highlights:

Jason Varitek is fourth on the team in rbis and only two behind team leader Albert Pujols with 12. The kicker is that Tek only played 22 games and didn’t start all of them.

Despite hitting .217, Troy Tulowitzki is tied with Albert Pujols in team homeruns with six.

Our pitchers are striking batters out. We’re doing it at a pace close to 7 per nine innings (6.91). That’s over a strikeout better than last year. Big guys in that category so far are: Mark Hendrickson (11 Ks in 11 IP), Chris Perez (15 Ks in 10 1/3 innings), Homer Bailey (20 Ks in 25 innings) and K leader John Lackey (29 Ks in 38 innings).

Speaking of Lackey, he’s off to an unlucky start. He’s striking out batters and has a decent ERA of 4.26. Unfortunately, he’s also 0-4 for the season.

And while we’re talking about slow starts, anyone want Casey McGehee? He is still looking for his first hit in 21 at-bats. Rookie of the Year Geovony Soto looks even worse. He started the season in a 0 for 32 slump until he pounded a double in his last at-bat of March. Ouch.

Three rookie pitchers look real good so far. Bullpen ace Jose Mijares has yet to allow a run in nine innings and has collected five saves and one win. Jeff Niemann is 1-1 with a 2.32 ERA in 31 IP. Our #1 pick Tommy Hanson won his first two games of the year. He’s 2-1 with a nice 3.30 ERA.

Tom Glavine shines in his finale

   The final series of the year for the Twin Cities Thunderchickens was a bittersweet one.  We had to say farewell to a good friend.  It was Tom Glavine’s last series in the Illowa APBA League.  Fortunately, he gave us a good show to watch. 

In three appearances against the Bombers, he was 1-0 with one save and didn’t allow a run in eight innings pitched.  He got his save in game 3 when we were up 4-3 and I’d exhausted my bullpen.  In comes Tom Glavine and he cuts down the Bombers 1-2-3 with two strikeouts.  Nicely done!

The next game, Glavine comes in game in the top of the 11th inning.  He once again keeps the Bombers scoreless thanks to a double play.  He helps himself by striking out Brendan Harris.  An rbi single by Jacoby Ellsbury in the bottom of the inning secures the win for TG.

Glavine got the nod in game 162 in favor of perhaps better pitchers.  It was a good call as Glavine is on his game.  He only allows four hits and two unearned runs in six innings.  We eventually win the game 4-2.  If only I could give Glavine the win. 

Obviously, this was not going to be a great year for Glavine being his swan song.  His DW and limited innings just didn’t allow it.  But let me say this.  In 24 games and 16 starts, he didn’t do half bad.  His 4.93 ERA was below the team average and better than starters like John Lackey, Manny Parra and Dustin McGowan.  And he did manage a respectable 6-7 record. 

Not many Illowa managers can say they’ve had one player on their team for 19 years.  I’ve teased Tedd endlessly for practically handing me Glavine just before the 1991 IAL season.  To his credit, Tedd has taken it well.  But after a few years with the team when I knew exactly who I had gotten, I made a pact with Mr Glavine that he would never be traded and would retire a Thunderchicken.  Such is my gratitude for getting one over on Mr Champion. 

To put it mildly, Glavine has serviced the Thunderchickens well.  He’s given me 235 wins.  There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll be a first-time IAL Hall of Famer.

Thanks Tom Glavine.

Thunderchickens rebound after 0-5 start versus Molly

With Molly Putts Marauders on the schedule for December and both Don and I having busy holiday schedules, John was nice enough to pinch-manage Molly Putts today.  We took over a table at the local coffee shop for four hours and got the series done.

The Molly Putts took six of nine games from us Thunderchickens.  We’d be complaining ‘cept we feel pretty lucky.  They took the first five games and we managed to win three of the last four.

Our first win was Game Six and was pretty sweet.  Hendrickson a D plain versus Volquez a A with a W.  Well, we capitalized on that W with 10 walks for the game and demoted Volquez twice.  The score was 14-8 and Hendrickson got the win. 

The series ended with Joe Crede hitting a pinch hit walkoff solo homer giving us the win 6-5.  That was only the beginning of interesting and odd things about that game:

• There were TWO pinch hit homeruns by us (Eric Hinske hit a three run shot in the 5th).
• Manny Parra was taken out after 5 innings with a perfect game going (manager enforcing strict pitch count, I’m sure).
• Reliever Jesse Carlson gave up 4 earned runs… and got the win.

Hinske was our big bopper for the series.  He hit 4 homers with 10 rbis.  Mark Hendrickson didn’t exactly pitch well (he pitched terrible… 18 earned runs in 23 2/3 innings) but thanks to incredible run support, he got 2 of the 3 wins for us. 

Congrats to Don and Molly Putts for the 6-3 series and thanks to John for helping us out!!