The postseason finally had a series that wasn't a sweep as Lake Elsinore took Rancho Cucamonga to a 4th game. Unfortunately for the Modesto Nuts, San Jose was not taken to a 4th game, and they're back in their second straight championship. This will be a best of five series like the previous round, and it's a rematch of the 1998 series which San Jose won. The Giants reached back to back championships in 1998-99 but lost the second one.
Game One: Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Arenas) v. San Jose Giants (Fitzgerald) Thursday 9/16 7:00 PM PT
Game Two: Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Richards) v. San Jose Giants (Marte) Friday 9/17 7:00 PM PT
Game Three: San Jose Giants (Woodruff) v. Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Chaffee) Saturday 9/18 7:05 PM PT
Game Four (if necessary): San Jose Giants (Odle) v. Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (Flores) Sunday 5:05 PM PT
Game Five (if necessary): San Jose Giants (TBA) v. Rancho Cucamonga Quakes (TBA) Monday 7:05 PM PT
Radio Broadcast: 1510 AM (Rancho Cucamonga), www.rcquakes.com, www.sjgiants.com and www.milb.com
TV Broadcast: TV Broadcast: CHN (San Jose, game 3 and games 4-5, if necessary)
San Jose easily shook off a subpar second half and swept Modesto to advance to another championship. Justin Fitzgerald set the tone in game one with a great start, and San Jose didn't trail in the series until the first inning of game one. Eventually, the Giants pulled away and won in convincing fashion, and they seemed to be one step ahead of Modesto the entire series. They got contributions from all parts of the lineup and pounded out a lot of hits that eventually led to plenty of runs. Kyle Woodruff also made a good start in game three, and the bullpen was solid despite allowing runs in two of the three games.
Rancho Cucamonga defeated regular season champion Lake Elsinore in four games in the last round. They split the first two games in Lake Elsinore and took care of business at home, winning both games at The Epicenter. They did it with the help of one ringer in Joel Pineiro, game two's starter, but their regular starters did very well too. In game one, they made a ridiculous seven errors and shot themselves in the foot, but they settled in and played a little better the rest of the series. In shocking walkoff fashion, Angel Castillo hit a two run double with two outs against Brad Brach to send Lake Elsinore home.
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Here's a table of head to head results. The two rows at the bottom cover home and away splits for the matchup.
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Here are tables that show batting stats against the other team in the regular season.
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Continuing to get production from all parts of the lineup will certainly help. As I mentioned in the Modesto/San Jose series review, the Giants hit the Nuts' staff pretty hard, and the top of the lineup was responsible for it. Francisco Peguero and Jose Flores, the first and third hitters in the lineup, combined to go 14/28 and scored seven of the team's 21 runs. On an individual level, Peguero will want to continue his hitting streak, and the leadoff hitter reaching base obviously always helps. Brandon Crawford, a ringer in his own right although he's not a major leaguer, has hit well in the five hole, and Michel Sandoval was a big part of San Jose's eight run outburst in game three against Modesto.
The bullpen will need to lock down leads late. Jason Stoffel's overall season numbers don't look that good, but I think, like a lot of relievers obviously but moreso with him, his numbers were inflated due to a few bad outings instead of consistently giving up a run or two. San Jose's bullpen only has two scoreless appearances in September, but that's partly because they've had to work a lot of innings. Rancho Cucamonga has been relentless lately, and they've made some late comebacks and also shown a knack for tacking on runs to leads. San Jose cannot waste good efforts from their starters.
How will Rancho Cucamonga win?
The Quakes can't afford to give San Jose extra outs or make mistakes on the bases. Both teams play fundamental baseball, and the Giants will likely take advantage of the extra chances given to them by the Quakes that Lake Elsinore couldn't. Seven errors in a game was obviously an anomaly, but they have to get back to their generally mistake free baseball that they played all year until the Lake Elsinore series. In addition to the errors in the field, the Quakes didn't run the bases very well, particularly in game four. Angel Castillo getting a bad read and Darwin Perez getting picked off both took run scoring opportunities off the board.
Joel Pineiro won't be back for this series, so the starters are going to have to step up without a major leaguer pitching solid innings. The SP ERA posted earlier is pretty ugly, but generally I'd still say these starters have been pitching okay lately. Orangel Arenas pitched well in his first playoff start, but matching up against Justin Fitzgerald can always be difficult. Garrett Richards walked four in his playoff start, but that appears to be an aberration since his control has otherwise been good with the Quakes. Ryan Chaffee has been very good lately, but Manny Flores hasn't been very sharp in two postseason starts so far.
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