In a baseball season with headlines dominated by pitchers, it was quite appropriate that the pitching staff for the National Division was primarily responsible for a 4-1 victory in the 17th annual Dream Team Baseball League All-Star Game.\u00a0 The game took place last Monday night, a day later that originally scheduled due to travel problems for yours truly.\u00a0 But fortunately we were able to get the game in a day later.\u00a0 A three run seventh inning proved to be the difference in the game as the National All-Stars picked up the victory at Cougar Coliseum, home of Kelly’s Cougars.<\/p>\n
Only two players from the host team made the National All-Star squad, but both played significant roles in the victory, including staff ace Adam Wainwright who got the start on the mound.\u00a0 He was opposed by early Cy Young Award candidate, Ubaldo Jimenez of the Gators.\u00a0 Both starters were sharp in this one, pitching a pair of scoreless innings.\u00a0 Jimenez did get into a bit of a jam in the bottom of the second though.\u00a0 Justin Morneau touched him up with a one out triple.\u00a0 However,\u00a0 successive strike outs of Robinson Cano and Hanley Ramirez ended the threat.\u00a0 The Ramirez at bat was especially dominating as Ramirez whiffed at three consecutive pitches.<\/p>\n
Chris Carpenter took the mound for the National Division in the third and was rudely greeted with a lead-off home run by Ryan Braun, giving the American All-Stars an early 1-0 lead.\u00a0 The National squad quickly answered in the bottom half.\u00a0 Cougars outfielder Josh Hamilton knocked a two out single to right-center scoring Joe Mauer who had singled to lead off the inning.\u00a0 The National team recorded three singles in the inning off league ERA leader Josh Johnson.<\/p>\n
The score remained tied until the bottom of the seventh.\u00a0 Neither team recorded more than one hit in an inning during the middle frames.\u00a0 Rafael Soriano took the mound for the American Division in the seventh and quickly retired the first two batters he faced.\u00a0 But it started to unravel after that.\u00a0 Soriano hit Torii Hunter and uncorked a pair of wild pitches on his way to walking Alex Rios.\u00a0 Billy Wagner then relieved Soriano with runners on the corners.\u00a0 An Adam Dunn single scored Hunter.\u00a0 Then Kevin Youkilis reached on an error by third baseman David Wright to load the bases.\u00a0 A bases loaded walk to Morneau increased the lead to 3-1.\u00a0 Then Cano followed with another single to score the third run of the inning.\u00a0 When the inning finally ended, the National All-Stars had built a 4-1 lead.<\/p>\n
The American Division never really had an opportunity to get back in the game after the big seventh inning.\u00a0 Mariano Rivera pitched a scoreless eighth inning and Brian Wilson retired the American hitters in order in the ninth, including a pair of strike outs.\u00a0 The game ended on a Wilson strike out of Albert Pujols after a lengthy nine pitch at bat.\u00a0 Jonathan Broxton picked up the victory for the National Division while Soriano took the loss and Wilson recorded the save.<\/p>\n
There was a small controversy regarding the selection of the game’s Most Valuable Player.\u00a0 OOTP chose Ryan Braun, but Dave and I immediately overruled that selection since not only was he on the losing team, but his solo home run was his only hit of the game.\u00a0 There were a number of candidates, including Dunn and Cano, but we went with Kings first baseman Justin Morneau.\u00a0 Morneau was one for two with a triple and two walks in four plate appearances.\u00a0 One of his walks was with the bases loaded, so he also had an RBI.<\/p>\n
National pitchers were completely dominating in this one.\u00a0 Not only did they surrender just the one run on a solo home run, but they gave up only four hits to a very impressive American lineup.\u00a0 National pitchers also recorded 10 strike outs with just one walk.\u00a0 American pitchers were not quite as dominant, but they gave up just two earned runs and struck out nine.<\/p>\n
Thanks to Dave and Nick for the time they spent making the final roster selections, setting their lineups and then showing up to manage the game.\u00a0 It was a well played game and a great way to kick off the second half of the season.\u00a0 Now we will just have to see if someone is going to make a run at the Darkhorses who appear primed to make it four in a row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a baseball season with headlines dominated by pitchers, it was quite appropriate that the pitching staff for the National Division was primarily responsible for a 4-1 victory in the 17th annual Dream Team Baseball League All-Star Game.\u00a0 The game took place last Monday night, a day later that originally scheduled due to travel problems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8,11,9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-star-game","category-cougars","category-darkhorses","category-kings","category-naturals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}