Triangle Offense

DBAP/DURHAM It’s Game 3 of the four-game series between the leaders of the International League’s South and West Divisions, and so far the competition has been very close.

The Durham Bulls and Columbus Clippers have split their first two games here as well as the season series overall, and unless there’s a monumental collapse on the part of one of them they’ll be meeting in the first round of the Governors’ Cup Playoffs in September.

It’s warm but not overly hot in downtown Durham as Virgil Vasquez (4-1) takes the hill for the Bulls against Justin Germano (2-2).

The game doesn’t last forever but it seems like it, with Columbus winning 8-6 in a 12-inning affair that lasts 4:21.

DBAP/ DURHAM—I was sure it was Ernest Hemingway who gave writers the advice to "get in late and get out early," but it turns out to be either the playwright David Mamet or the anonymous wind Mamet received it from; it's one of those dicta that seems to have acquired the force of nature. Start your story (scene, etc.) somewhere in the middle, after the action has already gained momentum, and end it before the last "thing" happens. Better dramatic compression.

Perhaps it's good that the source of the quotation remains unclear, because it has to be corrupted a little in order to apply it to the Bulls' 7-0 victory over Columbus last night. Rain delayed the start of the game by 91 minutes—that's the in-late part, and there were three early gettings-out. One of them certainly affected the outcome, and the other two probably did as well.

But nothing affected Bulls' starter Richard De Los Santos, who looked good from his first pitch and went on to turn in one of his best starts of the season, perhaps trailing only his seven shutout innings at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on June 2. Last night he threw six scoreless innings against Columbus, his sinking two-seam fastball, slider and changeup all working beautifully in an 87-pitch, walk-free performance. The previous night's 12-walk debacle, which led to a six-inning bullpen burnout in the Bulls' 8-3 loss on Monday, "put a lot of pressure on me to have a great game," De Los Santos said, not long after he had just that. Only two runners reached second base, and none made it to third, thanks partially to a pair of pickoffs. "Those little guys like to run," De Los Santos said of Columbus's speedsters, although he was really just referring to Jose Constanza, who leads the league in stolen bases. "So I had to pay attention."

The early exits and the late entries after the jump.

DBAP/ DURHAM—When a team hits a slump, it generally isn't for just one reason, and no one wants to point fingers or make excuses. Asked an inevitable question, Jeremy Hellickson answered that no, his two-week break from pitching in anything but an exhibition (the Futures Game, part of the All-Star break pageant), for just two innings, had nothing to do with his poor outing last night. Nor was he interested in laying much blame on the toaster-sized strike zone of home plate umpire Derek Crabill, which helped along Hellickson's five-walk performance in a stint that lasted only 3 1/3 innings. Asked what he would do in order to pull his team out of its doldrums, manager Charlie Montoyo was quick to tell us that he wasn't planning on throwing chairs or yelling at his veteran team, which probably wouldn't take too well to being treated like disappointing children anyway. None of the Bulls' hitters agreed that having to wait out an interminable fourth inning, during which Hellickson and Dale Thayer threw 63 pitches (!), walked five men and gave up five runs on a sticky night at the ballpark, had anything to do with the lineup's failure to get another hit until the bottom of the seventh inning.

But anyone can see that there are causes and effects there, without question. The Bulls need a shakeup after losing to the Columbus Clippers, 8-3 last night, the fifth loss in their last six games. The tight strike zone was certainly a problem. Hellickson used up 46 pitches to get through the first two innings after his hiatus, and barely half of those pitches were strikes. The hitters looked overmatched again, this time by yet another guy with ho-hum stuff and a 5.61 ERA—and whom they hammered for 10 hits and eight runs back on May 14 in Columbus. Two of their runs scored on a flyball homer by Justin Ruggiano that got up in the air and somehow sailed over the Blue Monster. It was a surprise to glance at the scoreboard in the bottom of the fifth inning and see that Durham was still well in the game, only three runs down—the game seemed like it was over after the disastrous fourth inning, when Hellickson and Thayer, squeezed by Crabill, got burned for five runs, the big blow a three-run double by Jordan Brown on an 0-2 pitch, one that Thayer left out over the plate. That made it 6-3, and for the third straight game, the Bulls failed to score after the fourth inning.

Some thoughts on the Bulls' July retreat follow.

CHARLOTTE KNIGHTS STADIUM/ FORT MILL. S.C.—Hey, Bulls fans: your team will play five more games at Knights Stadium this season (August 16-18 and 28-29), and if you're one of those so-called purist types who can't quite handle the amusement park ethos of the DBAP, you ought to do yourself a favor and go down for a day or two. You'll get a whole new perspective on your team, and not only because you'll be seeing them in road grays. You'll see a bunch of guys trying, like every other Triple-A striver, to make a living and maybe break through to the other side, where the minimum salary is $400,000 per year and you fly in team-owned jets to play ball in glittering cities like Seattle and Chicago before tens of thousands of fans. The good folks at the DABP do their best every night to make the hometown boys look like rock stars. Go see them play in low-key, low-noise Charlotte (or, I'd wager, in Allentown or Toledo), and they look like a buncha no-name guys from the visiting team, whose fans have never heard of 'em.

And right now, they look like bums. Sure, Dan Johnson and Chris Richard homered on Sunday afternoon (Johnson's was his league-leading 25th), and Fernando Perez had three hits, but otherwise the Bulls—especially their pitchers—again looked glassy-eyed and overmatched against the suddenly potent and dogged Charlotte Knights, who beat Durham 8-4. The Knights took three of four from the Bulls in the home-and-home four-game series, shaving Durham's nine-game lead down to seven. "Right now I don't want to say they have a better team than we do," Charlie Montoyo said of the Knights after the loss; but the mere fact that he felt the need to preface his interview with that disclaimer was revealing. For the first time this season, the Bulls don't necessarily look like the best team in the South Division, let alone the International League. For the first time this season, they look flat and flimsy. For the first time this year, they look like a different team than the one we might have thought we had. Perceptions have shifted.

The new view, after the jump.

KNIGHTS STADIUM/ FORT MILL, S.C.—Yes, the dateline is correct. This morning Heather and I were feeling a need to get out of town, and it wasn't long before the Triangle Offense beat writer in me came up with the idea to see what the Durham Bulls look like in their away uniforms. Informed of this motivating desire, Bulls utilityman Elliot Johnson quipped, "Only reason we can get a road reporter." Yo, E. J., it's either that or money, and there ain't no money.

So I'm coming to you from a Rock Hill motel tonight, Heather already half-asleep behind me, with a report not only on the Bulls' 2-1 victory over Charlotte at Knights Stadium, but a little bit about Knights Stadium itself. I know what you're thinking, and in reply, let me just say: Hey, you're welcome. Somebody had to do it.

The basics of last night's Bulls victory are, well, basic, for those that would like to stop there: Two good starting pitchers kept two good-hitting lineups in check. (Elliot Johnson and Chris Richard both weighed in later with the old axiom that "good pitching will always beat good hitting.") The Bulls' Heath Phillips, who Charlie Montoyo thought was throwing a bit harder than he had been lately, perhaps emerging from a dead-arm period, allowed only a solo homer to Stefan Gartrell (Gartrell's 17th), an opposite-field salvo that barely cleared the very, very near right-field wall—it's only 347 to the alley at Knights Stadium. Phillips had one of his better starts in recent memory, using his breaking pitches very effectively. I think he throws a cut fastball (it could be a slider), but he was leaving the park as I went down to conduct interviews and so I couldn't ask him any questions. I'll try to get to him Sunday.

The Knights' Matt Zaleski was almost as good as Phillips; in some ways he was better; but a walk and a pair of hit batters cost him two runs, and the ballgame. Neither team scored after the fourth inning, despite some chances, especially for Durham, which stranded eight runners in scoring position. The Bulls still don't look good at the plate since the All-Star break ended, and although it probably made the team feel good to win a game in which they had just six hits—three by Chris Richard, who said afterward that he likes hitting here—there are really no excuses at this point. Plenty of other teams are hitting. Perhaps coming away with a quiet win will get the bats out of their cave.

More on the game, and notes on the Knights' roundtable diamond, after the jump.