August 21, 2009 Salem Keizer 7 Everett 2

With the playoffs on the line, the Aquasox need to win 5 of their 7 remaining games with the Volcanoes in order to recover their 3 game deficit.

The Aquasox sent Taylor Stanton to the mound. He lasted 5 innings and gave up 6 runs. The Frogs had only 1 base hit through 6 innings and the game wasn't really much of a contest...

Of note for the Aquasox were some defensive plays. Welington Dotel threw a strike to the plate to keep a runner from scoring from second in the third innings. Beautiful throw - we've noted before that Welington has an excellent arm and like to show it off.

Matt Cerione threw out a runner at third with a very nice one hop throw.

And the "I've never seen that before" moment of the game (there seems to be one in every baseball game) was in the 8th inning when Caleb Curry flew out to right field. The runner at second base, Juan Martinez (Volcano third baseman) went maybe 15 feet off the bag and then retreated to tag up. Welington Dotel made the catch in right and then made a nonchalant throw to Anthony Phillips who was sneaking up behind the slowly retreating Martinez. And by the time Martinez realized the ball was coming so close to him and made a jump for the bag - Phillips put the tag on him for the out and double play. Very nicely done by both Dotel and Phillips.

It's unfortunate that all of the highlighted plays by the Aquasox involved defensive plays with Volcanos on the bases (which was the case for much of the night).

Anthony Phillips had a single batting lefthanded and then hit a ball off the rightfield wall when he turned around to bat right handed against David Quinowski (who throws left handed).

We were surprised to see James Jones batting average at .315 until we heard Pat Dillon mention that he had "snapped a 1 for 27 stretch Monday night"...

Other items of note...

Third baseman Chris Dominguez looks very good for the Volcanos. He was a third round draft pick and is a big player who hit the ball hard. He had two hits and a walk in 5 plate appearances. Looking at his numbers though, he only had 6 walks versus 42 strikeouts coming into the game. He had a walk and a strike out in the game. He's hitting .248 and his OPS is .765 - so his season isn't going all that well overall.

Volcano first baseman Luke Anders made a nice diving play and throw to the pitcher to get Cerione at first.

Volcano pitcher Jason Soffel looked very strong. His fastball hit 93 mph and was hurt by a couple errors in his inning of work.

As bad as this game was, it paled compared the the following night's "must win" game where the Aquasox got no-hit by the Volcanos...

Here's the box score.

Here's the Herald story.