Missed opportunites in Lincoln and Sioux Falls

After seven days and over 1,400 miles of traveling, I am back in El Paso. This past roadtrip was not a succesful one as we went 1-5 in six games played. In the first series against Lincoln, we were swept in three games. Kudos to the Lincoln starter Jarrett Gardner, who threw the third no-no in league history in the second game of the series against us. The three games really put an exclamation point on the teams inability to come together in all facets of the game. The playing surface in Lincoln is outstanding and is among the best in all of independent baseball. I always love playing in Lincoln. Haymarket Park, which is also home to the University of Nebraska baseball team, is pretty much a perfectly manicured field. It was good to fun into former teammate, CT (Chris Thompson), in Lincoln as he is now the Saltdogs' closer.

The trek from Lincoln to Sioux Falls, SD was three hours and I fell asleep immediately. We got into the hotel a couple hours after midnight. I threw the first game of the series against the Canaries on Friday Night Firework night and felt really good. I breezed through the first four innings without allowing a run before giving up one in the fifth. The offense scored early as after five innings, we were winning 3-1. In the sixth, I retired the first two battters of the inning before leaving an 0-0 changeup to Reggie Taylor (5+ years in MLB) over the outer-third and he put it over the right field wall. I would come out after the sixth inning with the lead but did not end up getting the victory as Sioux Falls scored a pair of runs late in the game to steal the win. This was the third consecutive start in which I felt great as I was moving my sinker around to both sides of the plate. I have really settled in lately in using my offspeed off of my fastball and have seen great success with it. In college and for the majority of last year, I did the opposite as I would throw my fastball off of my offspeed.

On my 30 minute run the next day, I had a chance to run next to a river in Sioux Falls. It was a very scenic run as the river had many small bridges, pretty landscaping, and was filled with fish. I could see it was a pretty popular spot for the locals. I also ran through a Veterans Memorial and made sure to touch the stone wall that represented those (both grandfathers) that fought in our wars. The temperature was in the low-80s so it made for a relaxing experience. I ran into a good friend of mine, J.D. Reininger, after the first game and we talked for a good bit. J.D. played with the Diablos last year and was one of my closest friends.

The team ended up splitting the final two game of the series as Justin Mallett threw game two and came away with a 6-2 victory. We were winning the Sunday's afternoon game as well but a couple late inning runs by the Canaries propelled them to victory. The interesting thing about this roadtrip is that we were in position to win in almost every game. Aside from the no-no thrown on us by Lincoln, we were leading into the latter innings in every me. It's tough to look back and see we went 1-5 on the trip because some quality baseball was played by our team. Ultimately, the decision is what is important and there is no doubt we should have been 5-1 on this trip.

The drive back home took about 20 hours and I filled that time with reading, listening to music, watching ESPN, etc. We actually tuned into an intesting VH1 segment on Punky Brewster, which was a popular girl that had her own TV show in the 1980s. When I got off the bus, I had to immediately go upstairs to do an interview for ESPN. The network is considering doing a reality TV show on the Diablos and they asked us a few questions about ourselves. It was nice to get back to El Paso for many reasons but the most being that Katie was back in town. She had flown in earlier in the day. She and my roomate picked me up from the field and Katie was waiting for me with open arms!

The weather outside today is quite gloomy and thunder is in the vicinity. I just checked the weather and a flash flood warning is in effect for El Paso as we speak. I am not sure if we are definately going to be able to get the game in tonight because El Paso does not hold rain that well. The streets flood easily as the city's drainage system is pretty brutal. Cardoza Tucker is scheduled to throw tonight in the first game of a three-game series against Grand Prairie and Josh Neitz is up for tommorow. I have the last game of the series on Thursday night. Today is my bullpen day and I am ready to throw after taking off yesterday.

A night of celebration

Last Friday, I threw the first complete game shutout of my professional career. The game came on the 20 year anniversary of the Diablos and close to 9 thousand fans came into the gates. It was one of those days where everything came together and will be a night I remember for the rest of my life. I was on short rest because I threw in Monday night's game against Grand Prairie but it did not affect me. I rolled zeros all across the board but had eclipsed 100 pitches at the end of the seventh inning. 100 pitches usually means giving way to the bullpen but since I had the shutout intact, Butch left me in. I did not dissapoint as I capped the CG shutout with a strikeout on the leagues best hitter, Pat O'Sullivan, as he looked at a fastball on the outerhalf for strike three. All in all, I ended up striking out eight Ft. Worth batters which warranted a hat pass. This was done immediately following the game and I collected $157 in cash.

Coming off the field after finishing off the shutout was one of the best feelings I have ever experienced. It was a moment that I wanted to live in forever and in the hours following the shutout, I just played out that final pitch time and time again in my head. The team saluted me for my performance that night and we celebrated with a couple beers.

I picked up my second win of the season three nights before in Grand Prairie with as I threw into the six inning and allowed four runs. I had good stuff but a two-run homer in the second inning and a couple timely hits in the sixth inning would run me off. The bullpen did an outstanding job in preserving my win. Our closer at the time, Chris Thompson, nailed the door shut. He has thus been traded to Lincoln as the team acquired the rights of Mike Cervera. Cervera played in EP last year and is not only a great guy/team player but was lights last season.

Currently, we are in Lincoln, NE after a 19 hour bus ride. The team left El Paso at 11 pm MDT and got into Nebraska last night at about 8 pm CDT. The first nine hours were great because we were on a sleeper bus with flat screen tv's and full air conditioning. I had the top bunk so the cold AC coming from the floor wasn't that bad for me. At about 10 am, the AC stopped working. The bus soon turned into a sauna and probably was about 120 degrees inside. The bus driver pulled over time after time to fix it but to no avail. It was about 100 degrees outside so imagine being in a closed area during that time. Also, I had a top bunk so all the heat rose upwards. A couple of the guys did not look so well but made it off the bus ok. The team spent a total of nine hours on that bus without air conditioning...a unforgettable and scorching hot experience.

The team has really come on lately and we are playing much better. Aside from missing a couple bunts in crucial situations, we are doing everything that we need to in picking up victories. We took the first two games against Ft. Worth by combining good pitching with solid defense and timely hitting. We have also picked up a couple solid players in Mike Provencher, Justin Mallet, and Cardoza Tucker. They have all done well so far and will help us in the long run.

Tonight is the first game of three-game series against Lincoln. The Saltdogs are struggling but that is no reason to look past them. Nick Martin will be taking the hill for us tonight and looks to continue his streak of good starting outings. Nick is a good guy with good stuff and has settled in real nice for the team. He has had alot of success with his change up so I had him show me his grip the other night. I plan on using this in my next bullpen session.

I am not scheduled to start again until Friday night. It will be first game of the Sioux Falls series. Sioux Falls is in South Dakota so following the series, we will look forward to a 20 + hour ride to the Sun City.

Clean it up Chief

It's a month into the season and we stand with a record of 13-14. If the offense is doing well, the pitching is not. If the pitching is doing well, the defense is struggling. There are new faces being seen in the locker room everyday as transactions have become very frequent as of late. Whether its team chemistry of just plain bad luck, it's the tale of a team struggling to click on all cylinders. This is a story seen very often and when (yes, when) things begin to click on all cylinders, it is teams like these that are often the most dangerous.

For the second consecutive weekend, we are in Ft. Worth to play the Cats. We dropped the first game of the three-game series to the division leaders last night. The loss was the second consecutive and the third in the past four games for us.

My last start was the second game of our last home series against the Grand Prarie Airhogs. I escaped any damage in the first but was touched up for five runs in the second inning. It was the most runs I have given up in a single inning in my professional career. The inability to make adjustments and leaving balls up in the zone played a pivital role in the doomed inning. The fire and anger within me after the inning carried over for me nicely over the next five innings as I would allow just two hits and one run the rest of the way. I left in the seventh inning with the score being 6-4 but a late inning rally let me off the hook from taking the loss. Thankfully, my next start is against these guys so I have extra motivation to put these guys away on Monday.

The past couple of days I have been working really hard on getting extension on my sinker. It is such a feel pitch and can be your best friend when you stay on top of the ball but also your worse enemy when you aren't getting out in front of it. The luxury of sinker is that it can be thrown in all counts and down the middle of the plate without much problem. My feel for my sinker has improved as I have moved my hand down on the ball and my index and middle finger off center from the laces. I am very confident in my repertoire now.

Today, I bought "Swimming to Antartica", which is a book written by long-distance swimmer, Lynne Cox. This is the woman that had the courage and determination to swim across the English Channel, Cape of Good Hope, and around Antarctica. I've already started reading it and am thoroughly inspired at how one can believe in themselves so much that they could actually swim in the freezing waters of Antarctica.

Today's temperature is 93 degrees with almost 100% humidity. An easy 1/2 mile walk to the outlets down the street brought about quite a soaked T-shirt. The humidity feels much like the East Coast in mid-August. For tonight, my roomate this roadtrip, De La Rosa has the ball. I have a bullpen scheduled in which I will work on throwing predominantly all strikes with my sinker and back door sliders.

There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen.

This is the time to make it happen.

Early June experiences

I just arrived back in El Paso after last night's 10 hour bus trip back from Fort Worth. As usual, the ride consisted of listening to my iPod and watching a movie here and there. I woke up just in time to see the sun rise over the mountains in West Texas, which may I add was a very beautiful sight.

As for the series against the Cats, things did not go exactly as planned. We dropped the first game but came back on Friday night and evened it up 1-1. The series ended with two consecutive losses on Saturday and Sunday night as we finished the series 1-3 and fell to five games back of Fort Worth in the South Division.

I threw Thursday night and through the first four innings, I was on top of my game. A two-run homerun and a single with a man in scoring position would run me off innings later as I finished the game in the sixth inning. I struck out four hitters and walked just two in six innings.

I have gotten to the point in my baseball career that I can now see how the smallest of mistakes can hurt you. On the two-run homerun that I gave up in the fifth inning, I had two outs and had the hitter 1-1. I threw a slider, which bit over the outer-third of the plate, but was left it up and the Cats cleanup hitter took it opposite field over the right-field fence. John Allen is a tough hitter, does not get fooled much, and will make you pay for mistakes. The good thing is that I am learning to how to pitch hitters at a much better rate than ever before in my life. I am understanding how to learn from mistakes such as these.

Neitz threw a gem on Friday night and a big homerun by my roomate TJ Johnson capped off a big win for the Diablos. Unfortunately, we could not keep the momentum going as we dropped the final two games of the series.

We open up a three-game series against Grand Prarie tonight at Cohen. The AirHogs are managed by one of my favorite players of all-time in long Philadelphia Phillie, Pete Incaviglia. There has been some sickness on the team as a couple of guys have passed around a flu like virus and it looks like tonight's original starter (Mark Michael) is not going to be able to throw. Joe Klein appears to be the guy picking up the start, which is the first of his career.

I am scheduled to throw tommorow night's game against the AirHogs. I will be throwing a short box (15 pitches at 55 ft.) before the game to get ready for tommorow.

How quickly time goes when you are having fun

Well here I am in Ft. Worth, Texas after an 11 hour bus ride. We left last night after our game against Wichita at about 11 pm (MDT) and arrived in Ft. Worth about an hour ago. We are staying at a beautiful Spring Hill Suites Marriot just off the highway.

I recieved some excellent news yesterday morning as it looks like I am going to be playing in Australia this winter as a member of the Geelong Baseball Club. Geelong (pronounced guh-long), is in the province of Victoria and although it is about an hour from Melbourne, its just 10 minutes away from beautiful Bells Beach. The season starts at the beginning of October and concludes at the end of February. The league takes about a month break during the holidays so hopefully I can get back to America during that time.

We went 4-2 on our past homestand including a three-game sweep over Shreveport. The week began with a hellacious 23 hour bus ride back from Pensacola (no joke). This put us back into El Paso at around 10 pm (MDT). My girlfriend, Katie, was supposed to fly into El Paso at 11 pm but due to a delayed flight in Baltimore, she missed her connector flight in Dallas. She would arrive the next morning. In the first game of the series, Juan Camacho knocked in the game winning run to cap a four-run ninth inning rally as we defeated the Captains 7-6.

I had the ball in the second game of the series on Saturday, May 30. I gave up a run in the first inning and escaped a jam in the second before cruising into the seventh inning. We were winning 2-1 going into the seventh but I would allow a single tally in the frame to even the game up. Garvis Romero relieved me with two outs in the inning and proceeded to strike out the only hitter he faced. We went on to score another run in the bottom half of the inning and our bullpen threw two scoreles innings to preserve the 3-2 Diablo win. The game marked my second consecutive game with seven strikeouts and I had the luxury of recieving the "hat pass", which is when a pitcher strikes out atleast seven hitters in a game people come down and put money into a helmet and it is given to the player. The money wasn't much but hey, I'll take it.

We registered the three-game sweep on Sunday as we picked up an 8-7 win. This time Jorge Alvarez was the game hero with a double to knock in the winning run in the bottom of the 10th inning. The win streak continued into the first game against Wichita when Nick Martin and two relievers blanked the Wingnuts. We scored one run in the first inning and it proved to be enough as we were victorious, 1-0. The fortune did not stay the same for the final two games of the series as we fell in both games.

I was talking to a few of the guys the other day in the locker room about how quick the season is going. Did you know after this roadtrip that 1/4 of the season is over? I have been out here for almost five weeks now and it is just flying by. Maybe its because we are winning or maybe its because we are having fun but regardless, I do not remember it going this fast last season. On a side note, it really was special having Katie in El Paso for the past six days and seeing her in the stands during the homestand. I look forward to seeing her in a month.

I am slated to throw the first game of the four-game series tonight against the Cats at 7:05. It is a big series for us because Ft. Worth holds a three game lead and is in first place in the South Division. I did not sleep that well on the bus last night so I am going to get some sleep before the bus leaves for the field at 5. These sleep number beds are so comfortable that I going to make sure I set my alarm!