While spring training gets all the hype when it comes to baseball in Arizona, locals know that the Arizona Fall League is where the true baseball joy is to be found. The weather is typically much more conducive to spectating, and while Cactus League prices are barely indistinguishable from a regular season game, basically the price of a movie ticket – $14 – gets you any open seat in the park. Of course, you will be watching prospects rather than (five innings of!) major-league players. But that just
gives you bragging rights, as many future stars pass through the AFL. 27 players in this year’s MLB All-Star Game were AFL graduates, so you will get to say “I saw him when…”
Last night, I met up with ish95 and Mrs. ish95, and went to Peoria. There, the Rafters (including players from the D-backs farm system) were taking on the Javelinas. It’s been a while since I’ve attended a game at the Peoria Sports Complex. I think the last time I was at the stadium was getting a COVID vaccine! But I do like that it’s right in the middle of the 83rd Avenue Entertainment District, offering lots of options for food before or after the game. We went to Firebirds’ Grill, and their Phillie Cheesesteak Egg Rolls come highly recommended. From there, it’s only two mins to the park, with free and easy parking. The announced attendance of 397 certainly helps in that department!
I will say, the park is beginning to show its age. Built in 1994, of the six AFL stadiums, only Scottsdale (1992) is older – and it underwent a $50 million renovation in 2020. Peoria has had little more than a lick of paint in the past decade. It’s still serviceable, to be sure. But I noticed stuff like a folding table, parked upside down on top of the visitors’ dugout. It had clearly been there for a while, going by it being full of water, presumably from the rain over the weekend. Hoping I don’t come down with West Nile Virus. There were plenty of other insects around – Mrs. ish95 was freaked out by the arrival of CricketZilla. But that’s probably an inevitable result of baseball under the floodlights.
The game ended 5-3 to the Javelinas and was… interesting. It wasn’t very well-played, to be honest. Was chatting to Jack Sommers about it, and he said, “The quality of the AFL has gone down in recent years. There are fewer and fewer good pitchers, and it has skewed towards younger, less developed position players. Fifteen years ago it was much better quality.” Certainly, last night was… interesting. The teams combined for only six hits, but the pitchers issued no less than twenty-two free passes – nineteen walks and three hit batters. Add to that, three wild pitches, a balk (more on which shortly), a disengagement violation and three pitch timer violations. Yeah. Not exactly crisply pitched.
But if anyone had a bad night, it was Salt River Rafters catcher Miguel Rodriguez, despite delivering the entire visitors’ offense with a three-run homer in the second inning. For the Javelinas ran wild, stealing twelve bases on him, in thirteen attempts. Worse still was his error in the eighth (one of a total of four in the game). I can’t be certain – no replays – but it looked like he dropped his mask on a foul ball before it had been called dead. That gave all base-runners an extra base, and brought home the go-ahead, and what turned out to be the winning, run for the Javelinas. I kinda feel that kind of thing would be barely excusable at the high-school level.
Three Diamondbacks prospects got into the game. Demetrio Crisantes started at 2B, batted second, and settled down after an ugly K in the first, drawing a pair of walks. Nathan Hall played LF, and got an extra life in the second inning, when a foul pop-up was dropped by the Javelina’s 1B. Hall then was hit, and scored on the Rodriguez homer. Hall then had the only other Rafters’ hit, with a solid double to left-center in the fourth. Joe Ariola came into the game as relief in the seventh, trying to protect what was a 3-2 Rafters’ lead at that point. But he walked the first two batters faced, and after a steal of third, still with no-body out, was in serious trouble.
To Ariola’s credit, he almost escaped. He got a comebacker to the first-base side of the mound for the first out, then a shallow fly-ball to right for the second. But the runner on third was dancing down the line, and coaxed Ariola into a throw over, called as a balk and scoring the tying run. Hard to tell – again, no replays. Ted Tom, the Rafters’ manager (he works in the Nats’ system) seemed unconvinced, and came out for a lengthy discussion with the umpires. I also noted at the end of the inning, Ariola had a significant conversation of his own with the home-plate official. I’m guessing he was getting clarification of what happened, and it was good to see him looking to learn from the experience.
To be honest, I think we were all a bit glad when it was over. Between the walks and the strikeouts (23 of those!), there weren’t very many balls in play, and the game felt considerably longer than its 2:58. The company was definitely better than the baseball, all told! Though a pro-tip: it may be Arizona, but the temperature will still drop after the sun goes down. Evening games can get more than slightly chilly by the time of the final pitch. But it is still something you can’t do anywhere else except Arizona. And with the lockout looming, who knows when the next chance we will have to watch professional baseball?
AFL updates
Just to fill in the overall progress of our guys. The loss dropped the Rafters to 13-13, leaving them 2.5 back of the league-leading Javelinas and Surprise Saguaros, with just three games to play before the playoffs at the end of next week (the AFL All-Star Game takes place this weekend). Four teams get in, and it’s between the Rafters, Scottsdale Scorpions and Mesa Solar Sox for the third and fourth places. Crisantes is batting .258, but has as many walks as strikeouts and a .734 OPS. Hall is doing even better there, with a K:BB of 7:13 – that gives him an OBP of .424, despite batting only .161. But 3B Yassel Solar continues to struggle, having gone 5-for-46, an average of just .109.
On the mound, despite Ariola’s wobble last night, he’s still doing well. Those were the first two walks of his AFL campaign, and a K:BB of 10:2 across 7.1 innings is pretty respectable, along with a 3.38 ERA. Patrick Forbes is also looking impressive, his K:BB being 11:3 over 8.1 IP, to go alongside is 2.16 ERA. Unfortunately, Luke Craig has not been able to complete a trifecta of quality. His seven outings in the AFL have covered a total of just four innings, giving up seven hits, five walks and nine runs (albeit three unearned), with three strikeouts, and an ERA of 13.50. John West (ERA 14.29) has also struggled, and Connor Foley has somehow managed to make five scoreless outing, and is 2-for-2 in save opportunities despite walking seven batters in four innings.
