If there’s one thng that can be guaranteed about this Vancouver Canadians season, it’s that as soon as I sledge a player, he’ll have a career game the very next day.

Take, for example, my talk of Don Sutton (left) being injured and needing a
big show in the remainder of the season - he then goes out and hits a
dinger. Then it was talk of Matt Sulentic needing some baseball
knowledge to go with his Major League hitting ability - and he goes out
and rips up the league, even getting profiled in Baseball America. Andre Piper-Jordan wore my scorn early in the season, and now he’s hitting like Mickey Mantle.

Of course, on the other side of the coin, I glowed about Mike
Affronti’s offense after the first week of the season, and he then
started booting balls left and right. Then, of course, the day I start
talking about his slump, he busts out with a home run.

Truth be told, I should really say something mean about every player,
every day, to guarantee an overwhelming victory filled with homeruns
and one-hitter pitching performances, because yesterday I referred to
Casey Myers as being a player who is "terminally non-hitting", and
tonight he went out and smacked 3-3 with a double and an RBI.

So with that in mind, here is my prediction for tomorrow night’s game:
every Vancouver player will suck. Now watch them win by 23 runs…

Tonight’s outing was a heartbreaker, as Andrew Bailey, who was lights
out in his last start in Vancouver against Spokane, continued on the
road to filthdom by throwing six innings of one-hit ball to perfectly
set up the C’s for a victory against the 1st place Salem-Keizer
Volcanoes.

Sadly, six innings isn’t a complete game, and thus it was left to
Derrick ‘The Commissioner" Gordon to keep the blank going (he didn’t -
he gave up three runs in the 7th), and after the C’s drew level at 3-3
in the 8th, Pat Currin was given the task of keeping the C’s in the
game in the bottom of the 9th, but instead gave up the winning run to
the Lava-Men.

Of course, you can’t blame the pitching entirely - with such a great
foundation for a victory, you’d hope the offense could do more than
score just two runs in that first six innings, but the Salem-Keizer
outfit are a tougher unit to score against than, oh, let’s say any team
in the NWL East. And most in the NWL West.

Aside from effort of The Mighty Casey Myers, both Alex Valdez and
Howling Greg Dowling managed two hits each and scored a run a piece,
with Sulentic going 1-4 with a double and a run scored. Sulentic and
Mike Affronti each struck out three times on the night, with S-K
pitcher Ben Snyder pitching strongly over five innings, striking out 7,
walking none, and allowing no earned runs.

C’s starter Andrew Bailey, for his part, struck out eight batters over
his six innings pitched, and also walked none, to lower his ERA to a
stingy 1.50.

The C’s now go into game two of the road series tomorrow against the
molten rock crew, with San Francisco Giants 1st round draftee Tim
Linecum due to start the game for the bad guys, and with any luck,
Jermaine Mitchell will get his first start in almost a week.

Come on, Magnante - no point saving him against the division leaders…
 

	July 25, 2006
	Final 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 R H E Vancouver 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 3 10 1 Salem-Keizer 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 4 7 2 box | log W: R. Paul (1-0, 0.00); L: P. Currin (2-4, 6.43) HR: None.