California League Report: High Desert at Lake Elsinore, Game 1

The first game of the Southern Division playoffs took place Saturday, September 8, at the Diamond in Lake Elsinore. Pregame activities included the naming of Xavier Nady as team MVP and Eric Cyr as the club's best pitcher. Former teammate Gerik Baxter, killed in a July 30 car crash, also was remembered. Just prior to the game, four skydivers launched from high above the stadium and landed in left-center field, the last of the bunch bearing the American flag.

As for the game itself, it featured southpaw Luis Martinez against Jake Peavy, back with the Storm for the playoffs. Martinez, a 21-year-old out of the Dominican Republic, dealt low-90s heat but had trouble with his command and spent much of the evening working his way out of self-created jams.

After walking Elsinore leadoff man Todd Donovan on six pitches in the bottom of the first, Martinez allowed a solid single to center by Vince Faison. He proceeded to strike out Bobby Scales, Xavier Nady, and Ben Johnson in succession to end the inning, but not before unleashing two wild pitches, the second of which plated Donovan for the game's first run.

The score remained 1-0 until the third inning when, in the bottom half, Donovan again drew a walk. With Faison at the plate and Donovan in motion, Martinez threw wildly past first baseman Bill Scott and into the right field corner. Donovan never broke stride and scored all the way from first. Martinez ended up loading the bases on two walks and a single before inducing catcher Ben Risinger to fly out to right to end the inning. Despite the fact that Martinez escaped with only one run charged against him, he did throw 34 pitches in the third, to give him 74 to that point in the game.

On the Storm side, Peavy, throwing free and easy, dominated the Mudville batters. He registered 94 and 95 on consecutive pitches in the first inning according to the scoreboard gun (97 and 98 according to pitching coach Darren Balsley) but generally worked in the 88 - 92 range (90 - 95). Peavy painted corners with fastballs, breaking balls, and the occasional straight change. One thing I've noticed about pitchers in the Padre organization is that whether they're power guys or finesse guys, they know how to work inside to hitters. I'm not sure whether this is something they teach or whether they purposely draft and sign guys who are willing and able to do it, but it seems to hold down from Class-A to the big club.

Peavy breezed through the first five innings before faltering in the sixth, allowing a run on a two-out single up the middle that shortstop Luis Lorenzana dived for and snagged before firing to the plate in an effort to nab Dave Krynzel, who was trying to score from second. It would have been a close play but for some inexplicable reason, Peavy cut the ball off about 30 feet in front of the plate, and his throw to Risinger was a fraction of a second late. Peavy finished the inning with a swinging strikeout of Scott, and left the game with a nice 6-5-1-1-0-10 line. He fanned 10 of the 22 batters he faced and threw just 91 pitches. The only balls hit hard were a fly ball to right by Krynzel in the third, a broken-bat blast foul over the left-field fence by Cristian Guerrero in the fifth, a fly to deep center by Chris Rowan in the fifth, and a solid single to right by Krynzel in the sixth.

The following night, during the radio pregame show, Peavy intimated that he wasn't real happy with his stuff. He also said he hadn't met his own expectations for the season. The guy dominated at two different levels and finished the season pitching to standing ovations in his hometown of Mobile. Hard to imagine what he'd expected. Of course, Peavy's comments say more about him than about his stuff or his season. With his velocity, command, and drive, if there's a better pitching prospect currently in the minors (now that Josh Beckett is up with the Marlins), I'd like to know who it is.

A trio of relievers combined to shut down the Mavericks the rest of the way, and Elsinore added an insurance run in the bottom of the eighth. Nady, who struck out during each of his first three at-bats, lined a one-out double just inside the first-base bag on a 2-2 pitch and scored on a bizarre play. With two outs Risinger hit a high chopper out in front of home plate. High Desert catcher Joel Alvarado pounced on the ball but, rather than throwing to first to retire the slow-running Risinger, decided to take his chances on Nady coming home. Nady managed to avoid the tag and scored the Storm's third and final run. The Mavs' manager rushed out to protest on the grounds that Nady had gone out of the base line. But the umpires ruled that Alvarado, in attempting to cut off the run, blocked home plate before being in possession of the ball, thus causing Nady to stray outside the base line. Why Alvarado opted against simply throwing to first remains a mystery.

After the game, a good portion of the 5914 people in attendance stuck around to watch yet another outstanding fireworks display. Storm fans went home happy, with their club up 1-0 in the best-of-five series, and in the knowledge that tomorrow would bring another game.