This was a 1-0 spring training tilt until Detroit scored five runs off Jason Grimsley in the seventh inning. Cleveland would get a Jim Thome homer in and a play that I do not understand my scorekeeping for (it looks like Richie Sexson scored from first on a Russell Branyan fly to right which seems quite unlikely) to make it 6-2. For such an early spring game, there was a surprising lack of Indians substitution – Thome played the whole game with two singles, a walk, and the aforementioned homer.
This game was marred by an ugly injury to Tigers starter Willie Blair when he was hit by a Julio Franco line drive with two outs in the sixth. Blair would suffer a broken jaw but thankfully miss just a month before returning the mound to continue the best season of his big league career. And this was a good start, as he held the Tribe to just five hits and two walks with four strikeouts over his 5 2/3. John Cummings and Doug Brocail finished what Blair had started, with the only Cleveland baserunner for the rest of the game coming on a ninth-inning Franco walk.
Charlie Nagy pitched eight strong innings, although he uncharacteristically surrendered six walks. He departed after loading the bases with no one out in the ninth, with Paul Assenmacher and Jose Mesa cleaning up his mess unscathed, although the lack of Tribe offense made that a moot point.
A couple notes on the
I recently moved and in the course of packing found this scorecard and another that will I post when I get back around to 1996. They were both kept on ballpark scorecards at minor league parks, and I tried to retain some of that flavor in the scans. The scorekeeping is nothing special, and unfortunately there weren’t any big future stars in this Florida State League game (the biggest names are Ryan Freel, Chris Richard, and Placido Polanco). Freel had a game that you might imagine him having in A-ball, singling twice, reaching on an error, getting caught stealing, scoring two runs. Richard and Polanco were both 0-4 and made the final St. Petersburg outs of the game.
I didn’t write down the score, which was normal for my scorecards for years to come, but I also didn’t mark down the pitchers, which was not normal for me. It looks like the Blue Jays won it 8-1.
Given the recent low-scoring trend in All-Star Games, this
Other early candidates for most surprising status: Heliot Ramos, Christopher Sanchez, Jeff Hoffman
All good things must come to an end, and the Junior Circuit’s nine-game win streak was snapped by one of the names likely to stand out in the future as the most surprising all-star, Elias Diaz (other candidates at this early juncture include Brent Rooker, Wander Franco who might be whitewashed for his off-field indiscretions, Austin Hays, and Mitch Keller). Facing Felix Bautista down 2-1 in the eighth, Nick Castellanos walked and Diaz homered to flip the score to 3-2. The AL would try to rally as with two outs in the ninth, Kyle Tucker and Julio Rodriguez worked walks off Craig Kimbrel, but Jose Ramirez struck out to end the run of AL domination.
