By the time August rolls around, the games tend to blur into each other to some degree. What happened in that mid-June 5-2 win against Pawtucket? Was it the 3-2 loss or the 4-3 loss when the winning run scored on the balk? It takes quite a lot to distinguish a game from the others in the season. Last night’s 11-6 Tides win over Indianapolis had quite a lot of distinguishing characteristics:

·         The Tides scored only one run more than twice the number of errors they committed. Now, it’s never a good thing when a team scores only twice as many runs as it commits errors. If they didn’t commit a lot of errors – say 0 or 1 – then the offense didn’t score many runs. Conversely, if the team scored a lot of runs, and still only scored twice as many runs as it committed errors, then they committed a LOT of errors. Last night, the Tides did score more than twice as many runs as they committed errors – but just barely. While the Tides scored 11 runs in their 11-6 victory over Indianapolis, they also committed five errors.

·         POCS2(13E6).3-H(NR);1-3(E6/TH). That’s the BAM scoring code for one of the more peculiar plays I’ve seen. It took four people to get the official scoring right and three people to get the code right. With runners on first and third and two out, Tides pitcher Zach Britton threw to first to pick off the runner. Alex Presley, on first base, broke for second. First baseman Michael Aubrey threw to shortstop Robert Andino, and Brian Bixler on third base broke for home. Andino dropped the throw, and Presley scampered back to first. Bixler scored. Andino, trying to catch Presley, threw back to first but heaved the ball into the dugout. Presley was awarded third base. Brandon Moss, the batter, followed with a home run. We decided that Bixler’s run should be earned, because he would have scored before Presley would have been put out for the third out; but that Presley’s run (and Moss’s run) should be unearned because had Andino not dropped the throw and threw wildly, then Presley would have been the third out of the inning and Moss wouldn’t have hit the home run. Obvious decision – charge Andino with a throwing error allowing Presley to move from first to third. If that’s the only error on the play, then we’re in a bind. We can’t give Bixler a steal of home, because he scored as the result of the misplay. So he’d have to score on the throwing error, which would ultimately make his run unearned. We decided that we had to charge Andino with two errors – one on the dropped catch and a second one on the throw. That served justice, but made for some complicated coding.

·         We’re convinced that the home-plate umpire overlooked a pitch. All of us in the press box were convinced that the batter had a count of 3 balls, 1 strike. The batter took a pitch and the umpire called it a ball, but the batter stayed put. Okay, it must have been a count of 2 balls, 2 strikes, and we missed a signal – except that the next pitch was called a strike and the batter still stayed put, with a 3-2 count. I was recording each pitch as it happened, and the others in the press box were paying attention, and we still don’t know what happened. Eventually the batter struck out.