A’s Storm back, but Storm stands strong

 The A’s gave Storm a little more than they bargained for in game 2 of the playoffs. Storm started strong, scoring five in the first. Mills made a great play in the second inning throwing a runner out at second from the outfield and setting the tone. Storm continued strong scoring three more in the second as Rene hit yet another triple. 

The third inning showed both teams putting up large goose eggs. The A’s got some luck and took advantage of it. Feeling great about his earlier throw to second Mills charged hard on a ground ball in the outfield, but missed it. It went for a triple and put the A’s on the board. They would score three to make it an 8-3 score. 

Storm responded in the bottom of the 4th with a max 6 doubling up the A’s output and putting themselves what would appear to be firmly in the lead. 15-3 seemed safe. However, Storm bats lost their thunder, and the A’s bats found some because the A’s scored four in the top of the sixth with a massive home run. Storm still took a 14-7 lead into the final frame, but things started to get uncomfortable rather quickly as the A’s strung together a few hits and then hit a massive three run home run to bring them to within three. That was followed by a double, but Storm would record the final out to hold onto a 14-11 win. 

Storm will need to figure out how to score after the fourth if they are going to be successful on Sunday.

Even without Brad, Storm have "Sac Fly" Controversy Again

Storm defeated the A’s 21-4 and Duran hit for the cycle. Some things went as expected. And then there were some things that were less expected.

With Brad MacInfield Fly out of the lineup (but his favourite umpire present), Jeff stepped up to the plate for some more infield fly controversy. He hit something between a line drive and a fly ball over the pitcher’s head between second, short stop, and pitcher. The umpire’s voice was not heard on the play, and the ball dropped harmlessly to the ground before the second baseman could make the play. None of the A’s defenders looked like they were going to make the play. After the ball dropped, the A’s complained it was an infield fly. The umpire said, “yeah, that’s right, batter’s out.” At which point Jeff and many other members of Storm complained. 

MLB states , “An infield fly is any fair fly ball (not including a line drive or a bunt) which can be caught by an infielder with ordinary effort.” Here is the first problem. None of the A’s players looked like they had a shot at getting to the ball with extraordinary effort, let alone ordinary effort. But the bigger issue comes later in the definition. “In these situations, the umpire will declare ‘infield fly’ for the benefit of the baserunners as soon as it is apparent that the fly ball qualifies as an infield fly.” This ump claimed that because he said, “infield fly in effect” before the pitch was thrown, the batter was out because a ball was hit in the air in the infield. However, that is not what the rule says. The rule says that the umpire must call it when it is “apparent that the fly ball qualifies as an infield fly,” which implies that a ball can be hit in the air in the infield and not qualify.

This is the third time this umpire has made strange calls surrounding infield flies. The first was an out called on a foul ball (look back at the definition). The second, the umpire overcompensated by telling the opposing team they had to touch an infield fly that had dropped before it went foul. And then tonight. 

But more upsetting than the infield fly was the A’s treatment of Rene. With two strikes Rene hit a ball back up the middle that bounced off the pitcher’s leg. That sucks. But it wasn’t intentional. Rene was obviously upset about having hit the pitcher. But the next two times Rene came to the plate, the A’s intentionally walked him. If he had hit the pitcher multiple times, maybe that would be understandable. But hitting a pitcher once on a two strike count when he was just trying not to strike out? 

For a game that was pretty much over after the first inning, there was a lot more controversy than you’d expect. Maybe if Storm just hit all the balls to the outfield their problems would end.

Storm    21  -   A's 4

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
A's	0	0	0	1	0	3	0	4
Storm	5	4	3	5	0	4	x	21

Storm over A's

Storm started slowly, scoring only two in the top of the first inning, but they picked up the pace in the next few innings. Many teams think Storm are evil, and Storm did appear a little satanic as the scoresheet for the next three innings read 6,6,6. Storm then slowed it down over the final few frames with Al ending the game with a bunt attempt that resulted in an automatic out. 

Some highlights from the game:

Bob’s return. He actually saw two pitches in his first at bat, but that was because he swung and missed the first pitch he saw. After that, he was back to being himself, smacking the first pitch every time he came up.

Duran missed a ball and complained it was because he was tired from chasing Mills’s balls. We’ll let you read that statement however you wish.

Speaking of Mills’s balls, there was a ball that got by Mills, who then looked at it, took a few steps, and then seemed to decide not to go after it. This led to an inside the park home run. It might also be one of the balls that Duran was referring to in his statement.

Sam hit a grand slam, which is pretty awesome.

I am Sam, Sam I am

I hit the ball like no one can

Home runs are so very fun 

And if you hit them you don’t run!

Near the end, Storm started mixing it up defensively, with Al taking a turn at third and Mills taking a turn at second. Then Duran made a reappearance at second after quite some time. Brad Infield MacFly grabbed the ball and wanted to pitch, but Storm wasn’t willing to go that far.

Storm    27  -   A's 8

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
A's	2	1	0	2	1	2	0	8
Storm	2	6	6	6	3	0	4	27

 

Storm blank A's

Storm started shorthanded against the A’s. They were eight men out on the field to start the game. Al took care of business, though, and set the A’s down in order using only five pitches. Storm then batted through the (very short) order in the first scoring five runs as Mills arrived just in time to bat.

Jeff showed up in the top of the 2nd to fill out the field and the A’s were blanked for the second inning in a row. Storm added six more runs in the bottom of the second inning on six consecutive hits. 

Storm slowed down slightly with three in the third and four in the fourth. The fourth was more interesting for the outs than the hits. Mills and Jeff were allegedly a false bottom since they were both only there because they showed up late, but they hit like a true false bottom. Mills struck out on a foul ball reviving the nickname Special K. Jeff then decided to do as Mills did and hit a foul ball on what would have been strike three, but the catcher took pity on him and caught the ball saving him the ignominy of having to make fun of himself in the writeup and finding a way to stick a K into his name (You use Thomas, and go to the nickname Thomas the TanK engine and capitalize the K there, but we don’t have to, because the catcher caught it). Interesting that the two late arrivals had similar experiences at the plate. Rene launched a home run, and the game was officially out of reach.

More notable than Storm’s offence was the defence. Al pitched a gem of a game, and there were some nice defensive plays made and Storm managed the extremely rare slo-pitch shut out. 

Storm    21  -   A's 0

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
A's	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Storm	5	6	3	4	0	3	x	21

Storm wins meaningless game against A's

Storm won a game that meant absolutely nothing to anybody on a warm Wednesday night. Storm had already clinched first place, and the A’s had a tight grip on the title of horse’s ass, so the game was for pride, or whatever slopitch players play for.

There were some highlights for Storm defensively. In the first inning, Al recorded all three outs (two by strikeout and one on a ground ball). Ken was looking like Cal Ripken, no wait, he was more bionic than iron, so maybe he was channelling  Col. Steve Austin. Either way, he looked great at short, which allowed Joey to hop around the outfield. Joey made a couple of nice grabs, but he was behaving rather like ET as every throw from the outfield looked like it was going home, rather than to the appropriate cutoff person. There were no obvious holes in the defence, though, and Storm held the A’s to one home run and five runs total.

Offensively, Storm was storming around the bases, their bats were made of thunder, the lightning struck more than twice as they rained down runs on the A’s. Or something like that. The only person with something to play for was Duran, who needed six home runs for the league lead. Storm actually hit enough that his spot in the order came up six times, but he was only able to launch one for a homer, and sprayed the rest around the field for a couple of singles and a double.

The whole team batted well, and the defence was strong, but there is one area of the game that has been haunting Storm all year, and that is baserunning. We saw another couple of baserunning blunders in this game. The Thane of Whitby wandered too far off third on a ground ball to the pitcher. He said he was trying to distract the pitcher, but when the pitcher bobbled the ball he took another step or two. He was now in blood stepp’d in so far that should he wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er, and as he tried to go o’er, he was tagged out in a rundown. Brian seemed to think that Brad’s running was textbook, and on a groundball to short LATER THE SAME INNING, Brian wandered too far off the base. He stopped, and the shortstop threw behind him to third. Brian pulled out some ballerina moves nobody knew were in his repertoire as he did the splits sliding back into third avoiding a tag.

Storm    29   -   A's 5

Boxscore
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	Total
Storm	0	4	5	6	4	10	x	29
A's	3	0	0	2	0	0	x	5

 

Notable Boxscores:

Everyone hit well except Al, which makes his 2 for 6 stand out (though the last one felt like a mercy ground out to help the A’s out of an inning)

Sam went 5 for 6 and claims his final out (which was the final out of the season) was a mercy out to end the inning