Cards off balance

Springfield pitcher P.J. Walters, top photo, kept San Antonio in check on Friday through six innings, before running into trouble.
BDN photos by Pat Dailey

By Pat Dailey
BDN Sports Editor
pdailey@bransondailynews.com

SPRINGFIELD — Wade LeBlanc had Springfield hitters guessing from the get-go on Friday, particularly Cardinals outfielder Colby Rasmus.

Rasmus struck out looking his first two times at-bat, letting fast balls across the heart of the plate go by for strike three as he obviously was waiting on LeBlanc’s famed breaking pitch instead.

The Cardinals saw plenty of LeBlanc’s off-speed stuff the rest of the night while falling to San Antonio 3-2 in Game Three of the Texas League Championship Series.

LeBlanc yielded one run over the first six innings to earn his 14th win. He excelled, despite barely cracking 80 mph on the stadium’s radar gun.

The lefty collected one of his six strikeouts on a 67 mph breaking pitch.

“Good hitters, they don’t like facing the changeup because it looks like the fastball,” said Missions pitching coach Glenn Abbott, a big-league pitcher of 11 seasons. “They can pick up the spin of the breaking ball, a curveball. But with a changeup, they see a fastball.”

LeBlanc escaped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth after he walked three straight batters. He retired Allen Craig and Bryan Anderson to keep the score at 1-all.

Missions catcher Nick Hundley capped what has easily been his best season in the minors. After hitting only 18 homers in three seasons of Class-A ball, Hundley hit 20 for the Missions in the regular season and added two more round-trippers to his resume on Friday.

The Padres made him a second-round pick in the 2005 MLB First-Year Player Draft. and he has matured into one of the organization's top 10 prospects, according to Baseball America.

Hundley homered in the fifth off of P.J. Walters and again off Walters in the seventh.

Walters pitched good enough to win on most nights. Like LeBlanc, he relied heavily on off-speed pitches while going seven innings and allowing three runs.

Walters hasn’t won in the playoffs, despite posting a 2.57 ERA.

The Cardinals’ Mark Hamilton has become a post-season hitting machine, particularly on a Friday. A week after becoming the first Springfield player to blast three homers in a game in the Cardinals’ sweep of Tulsa, the left-handed swinging Hamilton ripped a towering third-inning solo shot onto the roof of the team’s indoor practice facility.

He also had a hat trick for Class-A Palm Beach, going yard three times in a game in June.

Defensively, Anderson helped keep the Cardinals close. He threw out Brett Dowdy trying to steal second base on the pitch preceding Hundley’s first homer.

Rasmus supplied the Cardin-als’ only other run by hitting an RBI-double in the seventh.