What a nice start to the season! Great starting pitching and clutch relief pitching and not to mention home runs and timely hitting. Tonight, the Sounds’ bullpen answered the bell again and Brendan Katin’s clutch RBI single in the tenth inning, gave Nashville a 2-1 victory over the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines tonight.
Marco Estrada, the former Washington National, started tonight and made his pitching debut with the Brewers’ organization a wonderful success. Estrada hurled six scoreless innings as he retired 17 of the 19 batters he faced.
Ray Olmedo made his first start of the season at second base while the regular second baseman, Eric Farris, was given the night off. Olmedo did not disappoint as he tripled in the first inning and scored the first run on Trent Oeltjen’s RBI single to give the Sounds a 1-0 lead. They had a chance to score some insurance runs in the 8th inning as they loaded the bases against Jeff Stevens with no one out. However, Jeff Gray took Stevens’ place and put out the fire immediately when he got Adam Heether out on called third strikes and induced Catcher Ben Johnson to hit into a 1-2-3 double play. Iowa would tie the game with a run in the 8th and had the chance to take the lead. However, John Axford came in to strike out power hitter Jason Dubois to end the inning. The I-Cubs would threaten again in the 9th when Chris Robinson doubled with two outs. Sam Fuld came in to pinch run for him. However, Fuld was left stranded at second when Shortstop Darwin Barney struck out to end the inning. The situation resulted in the Sounds’ first extra inning affair and Nashville didn’t waste any time getting things going. Ray Olmedo led off the 10th with a single against I-Cubs’ reliever Mitch Atkins. For Olmedo, it was his third hit of the night. After Trent Oeltjen advanced him to second on a sacrifice bunt, right fielder Brendan Katin singled to left to score Olmedo from second with the eventual winning run.
Chris Smith came on to relieve in the bottom of the tenth inning and picked up his second save of the season in spite of giving up a two out single to Bobby Scales and the Sounds increase their record to 3-0.
During the day, I had a chance to go downtown again and visit the Iowa Hall of Pride Museum. The Museum featured a lot of great notables in the Arts, Academic and Athletic World. Casey Blake, John Wayne, Andy Williams are among the famous Iowa natives who were featured. There was a game room and interviews were accessible on the screen by pressing a button and you can hear how these people would achieve the success they would eventually have. It is a must-visit should you ever visit Des Moines.
This first series has been a great experience for me and it was nice to receive a few compliments on my work. I always aim to please.
Well, we have one more game with Iowa tomorrow and then we bus it to Omaha for a couple of hours after the game. it will be one of our rare bus trips in the Pacific Coast League and this season. I’ve been so impress with the poise these men have. After all, it is Triple-A baseball and the players are certainly capable of being in the major leagues right now. The clutch strikeouts have been awesome to watch and the starters have turned in quality outings. As they say, good pitching stops good hitting and that has been certaiinly the truth when it comes to the 2010 Nashville Sounds pitching staff so far. There is still quite a ways to go, but no one can complain about this great start for the Sounds.
Well, tune in to www.nashvillesounds.com for the finale of the 4 game set at 12:50PM Central Time tomorrow. Until then, so long. It is always a pleasure to bring the games to you!,
- Posted on April 11, 2010 at 12:03 am
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