The positive thing about pitting two last place teams against each other is that when they split a series, winning percentages go up across the board. At least that’s how I’m choosing to look at my Thunderchickens opening series against Keith Smith and his Kentucky Kernels for the Illowa APBA League.
Keith (brother of Don Smith, by the way) and I played his four home games tonight over Skype and we split 2-2.
I’m giving some kudos to backup catcher Christian Vazquez who spelled Yan Gomes in Game 3. Now Vaquez is a Catcher-8 but isn’t blessed with a lot of power. He has a 66-6 and an 11-6… and that’s it for power. Give him credit though. He made the most of it. In four at-bats, he hit four doubles.
Now someone with a less positive attitude might think, “Tom, you rolled two 66s and two 11s on a player and only got four freakin’ doubles!?” Well, that wasn’t the biggest problem. I blame the third base coach. The worst part of the problem was that in each of Vazquez’ first two at-bats, there was a runner on base and he didn’t score. Because Gordon Beckham is not fast and because there was less than two outs, Gordon had to hold up at third.
Vazquez got his due, though. In his third at-bat, there was a runner on first again… Pablo Sandoval. BUT, there were two outs. When Christian hit his double, you can bet the third base coach was waving him around. Sure enough, Kung Fu Panda chugged around third, huffing and puffing, and scored that run.
In case you’re wondering, Christian Vazquez got another start in Game 4.
Keith and I will resume our series next Tuesday to play my home games.
Isn’t coaching Gordon Beckham a lot of fun? #innocuous #notgoodatbaseball