Monday, February 27, 2023

2023 Bonus Game---CLE @ CIN, 2/25/2023


This was the spring opener for both the Reds and Guardians and the first game played under the pitch clock that I had the opportunity to score, so I’m including it here as an example of how I handle pitch clock violations. Namely, I put an “a” prefix in front of the normal letter used to designate the pitch, or in the case of a violation for ball four or strike three, in front of the “W” for walk or “K” for strikeout. There weren’t any of these terminal violations in this game, but they would be “aW” or “aK” (actually, it would be a backwards K as it’s pretty obviously a called strike and not a swinging strike, but that’s not easy to render in text).

In this game there were three examples of violations:

* Bottom of the 2nd: First pitch from Cal Quantrill to Jose Barrero is an automatic strike

* Top of the 3rd: First “pitch” from Daniel Norris to Mike Zunino is an automatic ball

* Bottom of the 5th: Seventh “pitch” from Xzavion Curry to Jason Vosler is an automatic ball (watching Curry pitch in the fourth I declared that if he was allowed to pitch much more, he would commit a violation)

As for the game, Cleveland’s regulars led off the game with three straight singles against Brandon Williamson to get a run, and later unlikely sources David Fry and (especially) Roman Quinn hit solo homers. Quantrill allowed a run in the first and another in the second and had to be relieved with one out, but from that point Cleveland pitchers retired sixteen in a row before Cincinnati tied it in the eighth and won it on Matt McLain’s one-out solo homer in the ninth.

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