{"id":167,"date":"2011-07-15T20:56:29","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T03:56:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2011-07-20T06:43:42","modified_gmt":"2011-07-20T13:43:42","slug":"national-division-wins-3-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"National Division Wins 3-2"},"content":{"rendered":"
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All-Star Game MVP Alex Rodriguez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Friday night, the National Division defeated the American Division 3-2 at Jackalope Stadium in the 18th Annual DTBL All-Star Game.\u00a0 In a game full of missed chances, the National All-Stars pulled out a little small ball to scratch out the winning run in the top of the 9th inning.\u00a0 It was the second straight year the National Division picked up a win despite a seemingly over-matched roster.<\/p>\n

Justin Verlander was the starting pitcher for the National All-Stars and was opposed by Roy Halladay.\u00a0 Both aces pitched two scoreless innings.\u00a0 Verlander retired all six batters he faced.\u00a0 Halladay allowed the leadoff man to reach base both innings, but prevented those runners from scoring, which became a theme of the game for both teams.\u00a0 The game was scoreless through four innings.<\/p>\n

Dan Haren took the mound for the American Division in the fifth and got knocked around, but was also betrayed by his defense.\u00a0 Carlos Gonzalez led off the inning with a single to right and advanced to second when Jose Bautista had trouble fielding the ball.\u00a0 He advanced to third on a wild pitch and then scored the first run of the game on a double by Alex Rodriguez.\u00a0 Two batters later, Jose Reyes lined a hit into center to score Rodriguez.\u00a0 He also moved up to second on a booted ball by center fielder Curtis Granderson.\u00a0 Jacoby Ellsbury then singled to left, but Reyes was inexplicably unable to score from second on a single with two outs.\u00a0 So the National All-Stars settled for a 2-0 lead.\u00a0 If you take a look at the box score, it says both runs were unearned, however I believe this is incorrect.\u00a0 Based on the sequence of events, both runs would have scored anyway if the errors had not been made, so they should have been earned runs.\u00a0 Chalk that up as a bug in OOTP.<\/p>\n

The National lead didn’t last long.\u00a0 Kings pitcher Tommy Hanson quickly gave back the two runs his Kings teammates knocked in in the top half of the fifth.\u00a0 Brian McCann starting the frame with a double and scored on a two run home run to right center by Granderson.\u00a0 So after trading pairs of runs in the 5th, the game was tied at 2.<\/p>\n

The next three innings were filled with missed opportunities, especially for the American All-Stars.\u00a0 In both the 6th and 7th innings, they had runners on first and second with nobody out and failed to score.\u00a0 Again in the 8th, they had two men on with one out, but the inning ended when Brian McCann hit into a double play.\u00a0 He had done the same thing in his previous at bat in the 6th.\u00a0 Prior to those at bats, he had been an early contender for the game’s MVP award with a pair of hits and his throw outs of Reyes and Ellsbury on stolen base attempts early in the game.<\/p>\n

The ninth inning featured something you don’t see very often in an All-Star game:\u00a0 a sacrifice bunt.\u00a0 Drew Storen was pitching for the American Division and surrendered hits to David Ortiz and Matt Holliday to start the inning.\u00a0 Then Brandon Phillips came up and laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to move the runners up.\u00a0 Alex Rodriguez took advantage of the opportunity and hit a sacrifice fly to score Ortiz and gave the National Division a 3-2 lead.\u00a0 It was Rodriguez’s second RBI of the game.\u00a0 Brian Wilson and his beard then came into the game in the bottom of the 9th to pick up the save.\u00a0 He allowed a one out walk, but retired the next two hitters to secure the win for the National team.<\/p>\n

Although OOTP disagreed, Rodriguez was a pretty easy choice as the game’s MVP.\u00a0 He was involved in all three National runs, knocking in two and scoring the third.\u00a0 Not bad for a guy with a bum knee who probably won’t play in a real game for at least another month or so.\u00a0 Cole Hamels picked up the win thanks to his scoreless 8th inning.\u00a0 Drew Storen took the loss and Brian Wilson earned the save.<\/p>\n

Some interesting stats from the game.\u00a0 11 leadoff batters reached base safely, but only three of them wound up scoring.\u00a0 The National squad put the first man on in six innings, while the American team did it five times.\u00a0 With numbers like those, you would have expected this to be a very high scoring game.\u00a0 But both teams hit into a pair of double plays to kill some of those rallies.\u00a0 Also, there were a lot of strike outs with men on base.\u00a0 National batters whiffed 11 times; 7 for the American All-Stars.\u00a0 Three different American players left at least four men on base with their at bats:\u00a0 McCann (4), Troy Tulowitzki (4) and Rickie Weeks (5).\u00a0 As a team, they stranded 11 men on base to end innings.<\/p>\n

I think the live video streaming of the game went very well.\u00a0 I know from my standpoint, it was a lot easier being able to describe the action through speech rather than having to type it all.\u00a0 In addition to the three active participants, I know we had at least one other onlooker.\u00a0 Hopefully you all enjoyed it as well.\u00a0 I am quite certain we will try something similar again next year.\u00a0 Feel free to check out the archived video which is available on the LiveStream channel.\u00a0 Thanks to everyone for showing up on Friday night!<\/p>\n

Box Score<\/a><\/p>\n

LiveStream Channel (with archived video)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday night, the National Division defeated the American Division 3-2 at Jackalope Stadium in the 18th Annual DTBL All-Star Game.\u00a0 In a game full of missed chances, the National All-Stars pulled out a little small ball to scratch out the winning run in the top of the 9th inning.\u00a0 It was the second straight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-star-game","category-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":170,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}