Guardians Baseball Insider

July 27, 2019

Columbus Clippers 7, Gwinett Stripers 3

Just a year ago, Danny Salazar was making his rehab starts to finally come back from mysterious shoulder and arm ailments. He managed to 1-hit the Stripers in four innings with a walk and five strikeouts.

Pitchers Cam Hill, James Karinchak and Phil Maton followed him along with Josh Smith to close out the win.

Hill went two innings while he was coming back too, from Tommy John surgery. He allowed two runs and struck out five.

Karinchak was coming back from a hamstring strain and walk one and struck out two in a scoreless inning.

Maton was just acquired by Cleveland on a waiver claim from San Diego, struck out three, walked one in one inning.

Smith allowed a run in an inning of work,

Fast forward to 2020, well we have a raging pandemic in the US which may shutdown baseball season four days into it. But Salazar is out of baseball, now Hill, Karinchak and Maton are on Cleveland’s big league roster. Smith actually made it up to Cleveland at one point in 2019 as well.

More current contributors such as Yu Chang had three hits in this win, and Eric Haase and Ka’ai Tom both homered. Chang is in Cleveland and Tom is working out, presumably, at home unfortunately. Eric Haase is now in Detroit on their taxi squad.

What a difference a year makes.

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In other games on this date..

Also 2019

Northeast Ohio native, Mentor grade RHP Kade McClure started for the Winston-Salem Dash against Cleveland affiliate Lynchburg. As of now there is no White Sox affiliate that would face any Cleveland teams until Triple-A, but under the next iteration of Minor League Baseball, maybe there will be.

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In 2007

Beau Mills, Indians first round pick that year, drove in four runs for the Lake County Captains 11-3 win over the Hickory Crawdads in the SAL.

But the story of that game was Cirillo Cumberbatch’s three homer, five RBI night.

Cleveland signed Cumberbatch in 2003 as a free agent from Panama. The three homers in this win were half of his season total for the Captains in 2007 and actually were 20% of his career total in the minors. His career ended in 2008 in Kinston with a .589 OPS.