Larry Jewell

3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. You won two in a row now and it turned out to be a pretty good showing last night against Feather River. Yeah, we played very well last night. I thought we came out after the long trip and after the hard day and a half of travel, I thought we came out swinging the basket very well. 15 or 16 hits, played great defense and. And got real key pitching. Brian, what we talked about exactly, we were keeping him on a pitch count. He threw about 85 pitches and I was pretty accurate on the innings pitch because he went about five innings and he's a guy that'll do that. He'll throw a lot of pitches. And he wasn't really getting a low strike last night. He was throwing the ball down around the knees and what I thought were strikes and just wasn't getting those. Again, a little bit frustrated with the umpiring. It was a little inconsistent. The strike zone was a little inconsistent, I thought. But Jason Cena came in and did a nice job for us. He was probably the key to the win. Got the win and then Pushota comes in and gives us four outs and does a real nice job. Got in a couple jams, but started. He thought he had dead arm, which for a pitcher, it's not sore. It just doesn't feel like you've got anything on it. And then you overcompensate and try to throw harder. He said he feels like he's coming out of that. So it was a good day overall. In fact, that was the wildest outing that he has had walking three batters in one outing. Yeah, and you look at it too. He was throwing a lot of balls right down on the knees and balls that. And you'll never see Mark complain on the mound. You know, he's a veteran and knows that if you do that, the umpire's probably going to tighten up on you. Especially the guy last night that was behind the plate. He's the kind that'll do that. So he just got the ball back and kept throwing and threw with bases loaded to Garcia, threw three balls that he fouled off with full count and then came back and got him to fly out to right. And that was a key at bat right there. You know, a double there ties it up or a base hit, you know, put some one down. So we did a good job. I thought a key. One of the key at bats was when Trippie got on base and stole third and they made a bad play at home. You know, two outs and the balls hit back. The pitcher all he had to do was throw Belk out and he throws the catcher and he throws it away. But the key there was stealing third. They just kind of gave us third base and Joe took advantage of it. He was on a green light, which means he can go whenever he wants. And it happened to pay off for us right there. On the other hand, if he gets thrown out with Tim Belk at the plate, you don't want that. But it worked out well for us. There's a whole bunch of guys we can talk about. We mentioned Mark, let's move back one more pitcher Jason Cena. Why the difference now? He's had three pretty good outings after that shaky first. I think you can attribute it to confidence. I think obviously the first time you come in and you're home, he was a little shaky and almost just scared and wide eyed. First professional outing against some pretty good hitters and just, you know, made a bad pitch to an ex major leaguer in Dax Jones and he let him and he made him pay and he did that back to back nights, but. Or at the same time in the series. But right now it looks like he's spotting his curveball a lot better, throwing it for strikes when he wants to and throwing it for a ball when he has to. And then it makes his 80 mile an hour fastball look a lot harder than it really is. So that was a key two and a third or whatever innings he threw for us. Two and two thirds. I thought that was real key for us. I noticed in the middle of that you went out and visited with him and it looked like you were talking with him about not shaking off the catcher. Well, you know, that's one thing I was talking to him. Another thing I was talking to him about is being tentative. You know, he walks a guy or a guy gets a hit and then he kind of reverts back to being tentative and trying to be tricky with him. And we talked about this earlier yesterday on the pregame show that with this team you just need to go at them. If they hit a home run, they hit a home run. But they don't have the hitters in the lineup. And I don't want to jinx myself, but they don't have the hitters in the lineup where they're going to get four or five base hits in a row. So you have to be aggressive with them, let them hit into double plays, let them pop out. And you know, the good hitters you might want to be a little bit careful with. But you know, I just Went out and told them, you need to be aggressive here. Throw it right where Chris gloves at and don't try to trick them. Don't try to bounce your fastball or your curveball at 58ft. Throw it 60ft and throw a first strike and let them see if they can hit it. Brian Mazone, let's move back to the starting pitcher. Now. He ends up with two shots hit right back at him. He did. Brian didn't have his best stuff last night and that's probably normal. I think he was real excited when he came in in relief and he knew he was only going to throw a couple innings and so he kind of turned it loose. I think yesterday he came out and was trying to pace himself and so we didn't really have. He's throwing his fastball 85 to 87. In Chico he was probably around 87, 88, which makes a big difference. And so with that, with the lack of the velocity on his fastball throwing, not having great spot, I think what happened is he wasn't getting that low pitch so he felt like he had to come up. He did that to Dresos and Dressos, made him pay for it. If he gets that low strike, then he's going to consistently stay there. If he doesn't, he's going to probably move up a little bit to try to compensate for that umpire strike zone. He did it last night and calls one of his better friends and hits it off his leg. And I went out there one time and I said, all we need to do is wipe that target off your back and you might be alright. But you know, I didn't hit him in bad spots. I hit him in the thigh. If you don't want to call getting hit by a baseball coming back at you 90, too bad, but that's probably what a hitter feels like. Now he knows what a hitter feels like getting hit by a pitch. Chris Call, who's an old San Diego University graduation, he hits him. Well, he got a double off of him too. I think what Kahl knows is that he's not going to be wild, he's going to be around his own. And I've talked to Brian about that. If he faces him again, he needs to probably throw him way inside, maybe even nick him on the leg or something to let him know that maybe I don't have my best control today and get these guys on their toes a little bit. Hitters will really feel comfortable. If you go two or three innings and you're so much around the zone, that's what happens with Mike Smith. But Mike Smith, you'll notice today, he'll probably go high and tight or go way in on somebody. And he's going to do that on purpose just to show them that if he wants to throw it inside, he can throw it inside. And he's not just going to throw it around the plate every single time, because if you do that and try to hit the outside corner every single time, hitters are going to start leaning out over the plate and start feeling comfortable. So you'll see Mike probably go inside a little bit and kind of establish the plate, that it's his own plate. Let's talk about a couple of the Feather river hitters. Justin Drizos, he's on a hot spell right now, got a home run last night, almost hit another one. And Arnie Chivera, who's been hitting the ball well, but you handled him last night, I think, with Drizos. Yeah, Drizos is being more aggressive than he was early in the year. And I think when I went out to talk to, I think it was Brian, maybe in the fifth inning when Melendez was up with a guy on and we had a one or two run lead, I said, let's make sure that we go right at Melendez, make Melendez hurt us with two outs and not Drizos. We don't want Drizos to hurt us because he's swinging it. Melendez ends up grounding out. I'd much rather have Drezos up leading off an inning than I would with guys on second and third and two outs. So it worked out well there. Chivera, I think we just found a weakness in him in throwing curveballs out of the zone. I think he's probably susceptible to that a little bit. And if we can keep doing that and throwing curveballs out of the zone, that's what we're going to do. I called three straight curveballs against him and he was out. Very simple. And Jason did the good job of just throwing it and letting it bounce on the plate. Those are the times when you need to know whether to bounce it on the plate or throw it for a strike. He let off bouncing one on the plate, bouncing two on the plate, bouncing three on the plate, and Chivera was done. So, you know, there's a reason why these guys are here. That's probably the reason why Arnie's here, is lack of ability to hit that curveball. And it took us a while to find that out, but we did. And we'll just keep we'll keep throwing him until he proves he can hit it. Mentioned Drizos first shot against Cena. He almost hits the thing out. Tim Belk makes a good play in right field. And Belk made another great play, robbing Melendez. A little later he did in right center. And it looks like his ankle's fine. You know, I talked to him last night and said, is your ankle okay? And he said, it's not going to get better, not going to get worse. It's just, you know, it's like a putter. We call him putter because it's stiff. You know, it's not going to move. You could putt with that thing. And he did. He said that the Drizos ball got almost above the fence and just dropped straight down. The wind was blowing in last night, most of night, which probably helped us on that fly ball and the one he hit before that four home run I thought was way out and just maybe hit 10ft over the fence. Let's talk about Robert Merrill. He is hitting the ball now. Had a home run last night. Almost had another home run when you sent the runners. Yeah, he, you know, that ball right there, the wind's blowing straight in. So it was hooking on him a little bit. It started out 35ft fair and just kept hooking and ended up about 15ft foul. But Robert looks like he's just sitting back and not trying too hard. He's not pressing. Looked good in BP today. Just getting the fat part of the bat on the ball, and so that's good to see. We need him swinging it in our lineup. We'll be back and talk about tonight's game and look ahead to what's happening in the rest of this series after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood. Before we get to tonight's ball game and the rest of this Feather river series, this is a very special day of celebration you and your wife would be celebrating if you were together. That's right. It's our 15th anniversary. I want to make sure I said happy anniversary to Danny at home. And I've talked to her today, so thanks. I appreciate that. Happy anniversary. I got to find out a little background. High school sweethearts or was it pre high school? Well, you know, actually, we knew each other when I was in third grade, she was in second grade. So we lived, you know, we lived probably a mile from each other all the way through and got to know each other more at Bennion Junior High School. And so it goes way back. And you Know, we weren't going steady or anything in second and third grade. Probably played on the playground a little bit, but we were going out all through high and just one of those things that we knew each other real well and got married young and it's worked out, it's been great for the romantics in the audience. When did it click to say, hey, I'm going to ask Dandy to marry me? You know, to tell you the truth, I think we were sitting in church one day and I was a freshman at BYU and I would come home every single weekend, and we were just sitting there and we just said we ought to just get married. You know, it was one of those things, I mean, so I'd hate to burst any bubbles out there and make anybody feel bad that I'm not a true romantic. And Danny would be the first one that knows that. But it was just kind of that, and, you know, maybe sometimes that's better. We both kind of, I guess, knew it was right and we just did it. And so it's, you know, it's been, what, 20 something years that we've known each other, and we're not that old really, so it's been great. And we got four great kids out of it, too. 15 years of marriage. Now your oldest one just turned 13. So now you're a father of a teenager. Yeah. Amazing. I can't believe it. Seems like yesterday we were getting in a wreck on the way to the temple on our wedding day, we got in an accident and, you know, it just seems like the time flies, especially when you have kids and obviously, you know that. But they just. They grow like weeds and sprout up. And I'm looking at trying to buy a car for somebody now, you know, in a couple years. And that's. That's amazing to think of. It's amazing what happens with fatherhood that we can understand that. Now we better get back to Feather River a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about one other hitter that did very well last night, Heath Haze. Eat. Looks like he's on a hot spell again. We've seen that Heath is going to be hot and cold. If he gets his pitches to hit, he's going to take the same swing all the time. Some nights he's going to see it well and some nights he's not, but we're going to just keep him in that six hole and let him just go battle for us. And again, we talked about more than anything, it's the presence with the home run numbers. 8 or 9 or whatever he has. And, you know, just the presence of Ben and aaa, people are going to show them respect, which means they're going to have to pitch Rod tough, and they don't want to pitch to Rod. So it just kind of goes down the line from Robert to Tim to Rod to Heath, and then you have DG coming back behind him. And Brionis is swinging the bat really well right now with a lot of confidence. And Freddy's just always a guy who. See you look at our lineup, and I think we've got one of the most. I think we've got one of the best lineups in the league, but we've got a team that we can go cold and we can be hot. It's not one of those teams that's going to be steady for a month, and we know that. And so you just kind of have to battle through those times, and hopefully we'll keep swinging it tonight. Got to mention Chris Brionis. He brings that up. Five runs batted in last night. Got hit by a pitch, hits four shots, one of which happens to be grabbed by the first baseman. Yeah, Melendez just happened to be 6, 8 right there and was hit right at him, and, you know, probably would have been a double. And, you know, Chris is swinging the bat with a little confidence. He's got his girlfriend, Aubrey, up here, and maybe that's a little bit of a. She traveled up from St. George and staying with friends a little while away, but, you know, maybe something is there to give him that little extra boost. You never know with these guys. When you get in the hot heat, dead heat of the summer, and you're just kind of going through every single day. Anything that's going to lift your spirits a little bit might help you swing the bat, or you just never know. But we'll sure take Chris swinging the bat like he is. Let's talk about the matchup tonight. Mike Smith, who threw a shout out last time he faced Feather River, Phil Hagler, who has had some good outings against you already this year, he's a good pitcher, and, you know, a lot of guys on our team know him, and I've seen him. Nate Yeske played with him in the minor leagues. And, you know, he's got a good fastball, he's got a good cutter. His breaking pitch is very average, and I think that's what we need to take advantage of. Make him throw that breaking pitch in the zone. If he throws it in the zone, you know, take a good swing at it. And leave the curve balls and the sliders out of the zone. But when we get a fastball in the zone too, just go ahead and go after that. Because he's not going to trick us, I don't think too much with his curveball or his off speed stuff. He's pretty much going to go right at us. And you know, we're going to catch Heath Hayes tonight. His ankle is feeling a little bit better. And so he and Smitty worked in Chico. I thought they did a nice job together and it's a perfect game to get Heath back there and see what they can kind of do together. The matchup with Feather river, now you're in a ballpark where you roughed up some of their relief pitchers and they've struggled. They've had some good relief pitchers, but it hasn't been a consistent effort out of the bullpen for them. Well, I know right now they just got done after last night. They used a couple guys and. And they played Chico three games before. And Chico is a team that can really take a toll on your bullpen. I don't know who had thrown for them. It's hard. You know, I haven't seen the box scores or anything. But I would imagine from who they used last night, they probably didn't have anybody to use. They'll probably be more refreshed tonight and maybe not. Maybe they had to use their bullpen a lot against Chico, but always following Chico is nice to come in to play somebody because you know their pen's going to be a little bit light. Chico's a team that just swings a bat up and down the lineup and they're going to take a toll on your pitching staff. I thought we got out of Chico a little bit. We got a win and we got out of there not in too bad shape with our pitching staff and was able to actually come in here pretty darn fresh. The key tonight against Feather River. What's going to be the key for the Pioneers? I think Mike's going to give us a good game. We know that. And just carry the confidence into play the same way we've been playing the last couple nights and carry the confidence of knowing that when you step on the field you're going to win. Keep that same attitude going. We've got a great attitude right now. Believe it or not, the guys are really talking about the series at home. We want to come in there and play Sonoma real well and win the Series, if not sweep them. They're a team right now that we don't want to win that second half, just probably for personal reasons. Keep those guys out of there for no other reason. I know there have been some roster changes that are popping up now. You've added another pitcher. Has that beneficial now? Yeah. Matt Rubel who just was released from Ottawa is going to come in. Former big league pitcher, left handed guy who's going to come out of the pen for us. We've released Steve Cook. We're letting him go home and take care of some business back home. So Mike Smith and Mark Pichotta have been helping me, especially Mark Pushota has been really helping me a lot with the guys in the pen, watching their side work which is important to keep an eye on those guys. Making sure like Jason Shivers hasn't thrown a lot in the last week and a half. So making sure he gets his side work and getting his work done is important for him. And Mark's been kind of overseeing that and so we'll kind of put a team effort into the pitching staff. But you know we hate to see, we hate to see Cookie leave but you know he's got more important stuff to take care of and so hopefully Matt will come in and give us the boost we need. He's a guy who can probably throw, come in against those real tough left handed teams. Chico to name one and get some guys out. When will he join the ball club? I believe Thursday. He lives in Oklahoma City. I believe Thursday he'll join the team at home. So it's going to be nice and you know, we don't want to jump the gun on anything but Marty Jansen has contacted us. He's in Mexico right now and looks like he may join our playoff roster and maybe be available to, to throw one start for us at the end of the year. So as you look down, things are looking semi bright. You never want to jinx yourself in situations like this, but it looks pretty good right now and we're pretty excited. I know there's one other player that's been with the Pioneers off and on this year that may be headed to another ball club right now. It's Hiroshi Fujimoto. Yeah, Hiroshi just I got a call from Charlie Kurfeld today and Hiroshi's just been doing some catching bullpen catching duties for us and has been doing a great job. Guys love, just love Hero. But Charlie needs a catcher. His Clark broke his thumb and Aronson's caught 21 games in a row for him and so they need some catching help. And Charlie, I told Charlie that Hero can really catch maybe one of the best defensive catchers in our league. And that's what he needs. He doesn't care if he hits the ball at all. And I think Hero will go in there and hit.230,250 for him and catch. So tomorrow morning, Hero is going to leave the team and go play for Chico. And I'm excited for him. He's got a good chance now either way of winning a ring. And I think with the Pioneers or Chico, I think it's great for Hero and we wish him luck. He's going to actually catch tomorrow in Sonoma in a day game for Chico. Manager Mike Littlewood, best of luck tonight. Best of luck and celebrate your anniversary with the wind tonight. Thank you for being with us. Sounds good. Thanks, Larry. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood, you not only gained a game on Sonoma county, you leaped into second place with Yuma losing last night. Congratulations. Well, thank you. I haven't even looked at the standings because, you know, we really, at this point just want to take care of ourselves. And, you know, it doesn't to us, the standings really don't matter. Again, we want to keep pace with Sonoma and not let things get out of hand. I think we owe it to the other two teams in our league that are not in first or second place, Valley and Yuma, to keep playing well and try to beat the teams that are in front of them. So, you know, it's more of just going out and playing well every night instead of thinking about, you know, catching Sonoma or doing this and that, but just. Just playing good baseball. Talk about playing good baseball. Let's start with the pitching last night. Jeff Garf. That's his second good start. Yeah. And Jeff, you know, I wish I could have let him go the complete game and I could have. He threw 120something pitches and going into the ninth inning, you know, I thought, let's let him try to get the complete game. And I think he had 108 pitches going into that inning. And I thought, well, if he can get out of here in four or five pitches and, you know, just if I let him go one more battery, it could be a 10 or 13, 15 pitch at bat. And I didn't want him to throw into the 130s. And I didn't even want to let him go that ninth inning. But I thought, you know, he's got a chance and he's throwing real well. And after talking to DG who was catching him last night, he said, let him go. One more. And so, yeah, I did. And DG actually said, let him go one more batter. And then I thought, I got to get him out of here, just simply because his pitch count was high. And also, JT needed some work out of the pen. And even to come in and get 10 pitches or whatever he threw, I think is going to help keep him sharp, because you saw the first battery is a little bit sketchy and then settled down and went right at him. So I think it was good overall for Jeff. The curve ball was much better than it had been, and he has a good curveball normally, but it was excellent last night. To me, just from the side, and I haven't talked to anybody. It looks like he's changing speeds with his curveball and changing trajectory and, you know, throwing some high, some low, and really mixing it up. And he was throwing it for strikes the last four innings. I think he let off, you know, 90% of the batters with curveballs for strikes and just did a nice job working ahead. And when he did get behind, he seemed to battle through it and get a key ground ball. You know, he looks like in a starting role, that's where he feels comfortable. He's been trying to talk me into it the whole year, but he's also understood that he's really. Jeff helped us win the first half out of the pen. I mean, you think of all the games he came in and helped us, the only. He's had two shaky outings, really, and those have been against Chico and right. Almost back to back right in the middle of the season. Other than that, he's been really effective for us. Let's talk a little bit also about the first run he gave of Kevin Mitchell. He thought he'd thrown a pretty good curveball, and it was the former major leaguer that drilled it out of here. He came in. Jeff came in after and said, that was the best curveball I threw. And I said it was up at the belt. So different perspectives right there. I thought the ball was up in the zone. I thought it was probably thigh high when he hit it, but it didn't look like Kevin put too much effort into that, and the ball went a long way. Let's talk about the home runs on your side. Begin with Kendrick Wallace. You've been kind of working him against hitting a home run. He began with his first as a grand slam. That was pretty impressive. Well, you know, lately he hasn't really been getting the bat head out on the inside pitch. And so actually, the last couple times we've taken bp. We've, we've really been working with him on getting the bat head to that inside pitch and not trying to inside out it. When the ball's outside, try to go to left field, but when the ball's in, try to get the bat head on it. Obviously that ball was hit well and it was a key, I think a key at bat. You know, he pops up there or strikes out or grounds out and gets out. It's a whole different game. You know, we're down one run, but taking a 41 lead in a second. That was the Kiat bat of the night for sure. Before we move on to that key at bat, all four at bats. He pulled the ball last night on that inside pitch and he hit the ball hard when he got doubled up. Just happened. If there wasn't a runner at first base, that would have been a double. Eric White made a great play on that. After he booted a ball, misplayed it the pitch before he happens to be right on the base, grabs it and tags a base and you know, they throw. I think it was Freddie out, but that's baseball. You know, you can play one ball terrible and then come back and make a great play. And Eric did it that time. Here, let's go back to that Kiat bat. That grand slam home run. It looked like Sonoma county was very confident, but it got a little bit wishy washy as far as their attitude after that at bat. Yeah, you know, there's no reason for them not to come into this game confident. Winning six straight and sweeping Chico and you know, which, no matter where you play Chico, whether it's out at their place or at your own place or in the parking lot, they're tough to beat three games in a row, let alone just kind of snagging one from them. So, you know, they were out, they were without Gennaro and you know, of course, Cooper, their shortstops out. So their lineup was a little bit weaker. But still, I mean, to beat them is a feat. So coming in here, they should have been a little bit high. And I thought it was good of us to come back and just kind of shut them down and, you know, hopefully we can do that the next couple nights. Rod McCall. Two run home run, a solid double, solid single. Then Gadget's interference. He had a great night. He did. And the ball that he hit for a double was the hardest ball he hit out of even a home run. It was, you know, five feet from the top of the wall and a pitch that was down in the count or down in the strike zone. His first home run. We had a little miscommunication between Joe Trippy and myself with first third when Tim Belk hit at the left. Originally I told Joe, I said, because all Joe's really doing is he might look back and try to see when the ball's going to be caught. But at first I said, let's try it. And then you saw the left fielder take about 15 steps in. He kind of misplayed it. When I saw him do that, I said, bluff. And so you know in the translation whether Joe just heard the first thing and was going, but the guy made a great play and Joe hustled. And so Rod's at bet was actually key to come up with with two outs right there and gets a 30 count and hits it out. So that was another Kia bat. DG Nelson, his first home run in quite a while when he drilled that one over the left field fans. He's been struggling a little bit. Just, you know, I don't think he's got too many bats that he really likes right now. He's got one that he's holding off until later in the season, you know, and just we've got so many bats, but not the certain type that he wants. And they're a little tough to get in right now. But, you know, you have to make the adjustment. He's been doing a good job. He got a few hits at Feather river, and he's just a guy that is a presence in the lineup just like everybody else. And there's not a better 7 hitter in this league for sure. I mean, he should on most teams he'd be hitting four, five, something like that. So to have him hitting that seven hole is a bonus for us. We made comment about him being the catcher, too. It seems like every catcher that you use Briones, Hayes and Nelson and Fujimoto before you let him go, each one of them seems to be a very positive influence on those pitchers, I think. So all of them have the communication skills to look at hero. Even though he doesn't speak hardly a word of English, he knows baseball. And all those guys, Jeff and DG work real well together. Jeff feels comfortable with DG back there and certain guys like Chris, so I try to accommodate that. And we're going to get Nate in there. Yes. Key, who's throwing tonight? We'll get Heath in there. And it's nice for me because we keep everybody rested. Nobody gets dead legs out there. And you know, the pitchers can throw to who they want to throw to and we'll kind of go from there. I know you had a couple of errors last night, but you also had a lot of great plays defensively last night. And Freddy Diaz, once again, right in the middle of things. Freddy just played incredible defense. He had a little spurt there, oh, I'd say a month and a half ago where he booted every ball that went at him. You know, playing defense is just like hitting when it comes to streaks. You can play solid for two months and then all of a sudden you're not getting the right hops. And like Calen did last night, he just rushed himself into a couple bad hops and got what we call tweeners which bounce in front of you and you can't judge where they're going to hop up to you. But you know, those are, I think that's what the biggest, probably the biggest strength of our team is. We play solid defense. You look at Robert Mearo, I don't think he's had a throwing error all year. I don't want to jinx him or anything, but any ball that's hit to Robert, he's going to make the play on it. And so it's nice to. It's got to be nice as a pitching staff to know that if you make good pitches, have them hit ground balls and most of the time fly balls, we're going to make outs. We'll be back and talk about this game too with Sonoma county and look ahead after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Manager Mike Littlewood, we mentioned you were going to go with Nate Yeske tonight. His first appearance ever was against Sonoma county and he seems to be getting better each start. We're going to try to extend him a little bit tonight and hopefully we don't know inning wise, but pitch count wise, we're going to let him extend maybe up to 100 pitches and we'll talk to Nate and see how he feels about it. E. Jenning, you know, probably from the 4th, 5th on, I like right handed pitchers against these guys. They're a right hand, dominant hitting team and you know, right handers can come in there. And if we can use Chivers and Cena tonight, Rubel will be ready tomorrow night. But if we can use those guys, maybe if Nate gets in trouble in a key spot against a left hander, they've got a left hander that hits eight for them and you know, just certain situations. But we're looking for Nate to give us a strong outing. And he has, he's looked very good the last couple times out. So if he can just keep it going, we'll get another win tonight. I know last time out he walked six batters, but he didn't miss the strike zone by very much on any one of those six. Yeah, the guy up in Tri Cities was a little bit shaky. He was all over the place. And when you admit to me when I go out to the mound that he messed up on the last battery, you know, that shows you that the six walks are probably not true to the fact because he was right around the zone pretty much all day. He did lose it a little bit with two outs and I think in the fourth or fifth inning where he walked three straight. But a couple of those pitches were still pretty close and he only gave up two hits. Those in the one run scoring fifth inning. What Nate does is when he gets in trouble, he'll really bear down and he'll make good pitches. He's an intelligent guy, he's a thinking pitcher and so he's going to make those. He's going to make an adjustment and maybe bear down a little bit harder when he gets guys on and pace himself when there's nobody on and things are going well for him Tonight you're matching against Nick Cast. One time he was in relief and you hit him like crazy. Another time he started, you beat him on a very close pitch ball game. Another time he beats Mike Smith on a very close pitch ball game. He's normally pitched very well against you guys. Yeah, what he does too is he kind of neutralizes the running game that we have because he has the ability to hang a little bit and decide if he's going to throw over to first and kind of reads the move over there. So our running game might be shut down a little bit tonight and if we do run, we might do some hit and run and run in his face and just maybe do some bunting and try to move runners like that. But for the main part, we just need to go up there and swing it, play good defense and just kind of go at it. You know, we've always said that our team is a much better team against a right handed pitcher. And that's not a secret, everybody knows that. So it's going to be nice, it'll be a nice challenge tonight to come out here and try to beat a right handed or a left handed starter. As we mentioned at one time you did hit him well when he was on in relief. So there are those times that it comes around. I think that the key with him is he keeps the ball down in the zone pretty well if he elevates the ball in the zone. And you think too, Tim Belk's in our lineup now, which changes the chemistry of our lineup tremendously. And Brian Greybeck's going to be back in a good right handed hitter tonight. So, you know, we'll just see how it goes. I think I feel pretty comfortable. We've put up 59 hits in the last couple games, in the last four games. I don't see any reason why we'd be all of a sudden shut down like that. You mentioned Brian Greybeck coming in. He replaces Freddy Diaz tonight. Yeah, Freddy's got the flu tonight, so he won't even be at the ballpark. So Brian will play short, Kalin will play second base. I was going to give Kalin a rest tonight against the left handed pitcher, but since Freddy's ill, we'll put Brian over there at short and he'll do a great job at short. He'll make all the routine plays and he'll even get to some balls that he probably shouldn't and make the plays on those. So we don't lose much defensively, although Freddy has been playing tremendous defense lately. How is Brian's knee? Brian, you know, it's sore. He's torn his posterior ligament in his knee which is one that runs across the back of the knee. And so, you know, he's got a big brace he's got to wear. There's not going to be any further damage. It doesn't really inhibit him in any way except maybe left or right a little bit. So we're going to. We'll probably end up giving him a rest here and there throughout the rest of the season and try to keep that knee strong for him. But I think he can go out and play. It's been one of the advantages. You have enough bench strength now that you can rotate people and enough ability. You can rotate them through different positions. Yeah, not number wise, but guys who have the ability to play different spots. You know, you look at it, we've got pretty much Kendrick on the bench tonight for us with Freddy not being here, but with the ability of Kalin to play, come in and play the infield and DG can play third or first or catch or left. Heath Hayes can play third or catch first. We just have a lot of guys that can, that can play a lot of different positions. So then you can, you don't have to go with as many guys and you know, we're probably end up, if we can get. Something's happening a little bit with Marty Jansen, he may join us at the end. So we may, we need to finalize our playoff roster by the 15th. We may go one short through the rest of this month in hopes that Marty can come back and join us for the playoffs. You mentioned Matt Ruble would be eligible. He's eligible now, but probably would not pitch tonight. Yeah, we just barely activated him so he's ready to go tonight. He just threw a bullpen last night and you know, we don't really know how sharp he's going to be and so his first outing, I'd hate to put him in there in a real key spot with a new team and have him have that pressure, added pressure on him. You know, he's a former big league guy and he understands what's going on. So I don't think that's going to matter to him a whole lot. We would like to get him to where he's going to be real solid for us the last two or three weeks of the season. Mark Fashota is back now. He's taking his two game suspension and he's out of that. Yeah, I heard you had fired him from the radio, so. I'm just kidding. Yeah, we're happy to have Mark out of the radio booth and back on the field, you know, and it just gives you the confidence that if you're close, if you have a close, you know, one or two run lead in late innings that you can go to Mark and you know, he's starting to get his feelback on the mound and lost it there for a couple outings. But I think he's in talking to him, he's got the feelback and so he should be well rested and ready to go. Even when he's had some rough outings, he still has a 1.42 earned run average. That's pretty good for a closer. It is. And against Chico, I know he's real upset he gave up a run there and the whole thing with him is slider's his best pitch and if he can come in and establish that and spot his fastball, he's pretty much unhittable. Let's talk about one more thing in connection with this Sonoma county team. I know you mentioned the team wasn't concerned about quote unquote, Sonoma county until it was time to play. Now you've got Sonoma County. What's the concentration like on the team? Are they exceptionally happy that they won last night or is it just like any other win? It's just like any other win. On the exterior, I think anytime you beat the team that's in first place, I think that's probably an added little boost of energy. But it doesn't really matter. They've got a lot of games to play and like I said, they've been playing exceptionally well the last two or three weeks and if they can sustain that, they're going to take first. If they can't sustain it, they're not going to take first. And that's pretty much the just of it. And if they don't do it, they don't make the playoffs. So there's more pressure on them for sure than there is on us. We just need to go have fun and play. Try to keep playing solid baseball. Where they're looking at. We need to win this game, you know, every single game they need to win. But Valley and Yuma also have to do their part. And if they're not winning their games, it doesn't matter what Sonoma does. Key tonight for this game, I think Nate to come out and have a solid outing and again with Brian going over shortstop, playing solid defense there and hopefully his knee will hold up. We think it should. But you know, to hit Cass would be a great thing. So we don't have to put ourselves in situations where we have to run because it's going to be a guessing game with him, I think, from first to second when we're running. And so, you know, going up there and swinging it, not giving extra outs defensively and just kind of going up and playing our game. One other thing, I know you mentioned that Kalen foulds was going to be playing tonight and you were going to sit him, but it looks like he's swinging the bat better right handed than he had when he got off of that injury initially. Yeah, and I'm just looking for an opportunity to get everybody a little bit of rest. You know, Joe Trippy is the guy who we haven't really had a chance to do that with and he's got a lot of energy anyway. And so until he says I need a day off, I'm probably going to keep him in there. All he's got to do is stand out on the grass anyway. It's softer than the dirt, so, you know, that's all I was really going to do. And if we had the opportunity to get another, obviously you're not going to just take Freddy out if he doesn't need the rest. And so that's what we're thinking. Just getting Brian in because Joe seems to hit left handers. Right hander's the same. He hits them both well. But Kaelin's going to do a nice job. We did move the lineup. We moved Kalin down to nine, you know, so he doesn't have the added pressure of having to get on base right handed every time right now until he gets back into where he's swinging it. Then we'll move him back up. Manager Mike Littlewood, thank you for being with us and good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry.