(1-3) Glendale Desert Dogs 4, (1-2) Mesa Solar Sox 3
Box Score
Statcast
- Owen Carey, RF: 1-4, .393 OPS
- Tanner Baumann, RP: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 11.57 ERA
- Owen Hackman, RP: 1 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 3.38 ERA
- Tyler LaPorte, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 0.00 ERA
- Logan Samuels, RP: 1.2 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K, 3.00 ERA
It was a busy day for all of the Braves relievers that were sent to Arizona. Braves arms were responsible for 5 2/3 of Glendale’s ten innings with four pitchers making appearances, and the results for the crew were mixed. With a 1-0 lead on the table Tanner Baumann was brought in to try to keep Mesa at bay while insurance runs followed, and the inning got off to a concerning start. Baumann had trouble finding the strike zone with anything and walked the first two hitters he faced,
but he wiggled out of it to maintain the lead. He forced two ground balls off of his sinker, one of which turned into a double play, and the fifth inning was a smoother affair. Baumann never really found any of his secondaries, but his sinker was an effective pitch for him and kept him mowing through batters with two strikeouts in the fifth inning. Owen Hackman came in during the 7th inning with a lead that had been extended to three runs, and it took every ounce of effort for him to keep any lead safe. Hackman started off hot with a strikeout, but after running the next count to 1-2 an errant fastball hit the batter and derailed the entire inning. Hackman gave up a solid single, then his own throwing error scored the first run and put the tying run on base. Another base hit on what was honestly not a bad pitch brought home the next run, but Hackman received his first dose of good luck with an assist from his buddy in right field. Owen Carey threw out the runner trying to go first- to-third, giving Hackman his second out and putting him in position to shut the door on the inning with a strikeout of the next hitter.
Tyler LaPorte escaped the eighth inning and held on to Glendale’s one run lead, but it was awfully close to going south for him. His pitch execution wasn’t awful, but the Solar Sox hitters were able to make good swings when they needed to and started the inning with a hit and a walk. LaPorte gave up his hardest contact to the third hitter, but the ball found the second baseman for a force out and saved a run from scoring for the moment. LaPorte’s best at-bat came with his dismantling of the next hitter for an easy strikeout on straight sliders, but he had to get lucky and escape thanks to a hard hit ball finding a glove after leaving a slider over the plate to the next hitter. It goes in the books as a scoreless inning, but LaPorte didn’t make it too easy. We can talk more good news/bad news with Logan Samuels. The good news is his whiff numbers. He diced up hitters with his changeup and totaled ten whiffs on 18 swings in his 1 2/3 innings of work. The bad news was that Mesa managed some hard contact against him. The first was on a sinker that stayed up in the strike zone, a pitch that was the worst Samuels made in the ninth inning and led to a hard-hit double to lead off the inning. The next is one that you would be hard-pressed to blame on him. An infield single, even on a hard hit ball, is rarely the pitcher’s fault, and it’s less so his fault when the batter had to golf a chopper inches off the ground and beat the ball to first base. Samuels made french toast out of everyone else, so even though the game goes on his record as a blown save it was ultimately a well-pitched game that happened to not go his way. Owen Carey made an appearance in this game outside of his defensive work, notching an infield single in the ninth inning. It’s still his defense that was the highlight, though. Carey saw a ton of fastballs in this game but still kept chasing pitch after pitch outside of the strike zone and it led to ugly results. He made a lot of contact but none of it was quality, and pitchers don’t even have to make particularly good pitches to get him to swing right now.
