Can you remember the last time you saw a player tie a strikeout record and take over the league lead in home runs in the same game? I sure can’t, but that’s what San Francisco Firebells captain Kelsie Whitmore did on Friday night in the Firebells’ 14-6 win over the Boston Hunters.
Whitmore hit her ninth home run of the season in the bottom of the third inning of Friday night’s game, sending a 0-1 breaking ball from Hunters captain Alli Schroder out over the fence in left-center field. In doing so, she broke a tie for the league lead in home runs with Heights catcher Denae Benites that had stood since last Saturday (which was the last time the Firebells took the field). Whitmore, who went 2-for-3 on the game with a double, that homer, two runs scored, two RBI and two walks (one intentional), has now homered in six of the Firebells’ last seven games.
Whitmore might have been even more impressive on the mound Friday night. Completing five full innings for the second time this season (she’s the only Firebells pitcher to go a full five this season) and hitting 76 miles per hour on the radar gun, Whitmore kept the Hunters off the board in four of her five frames and wrapped up her outing with a 1-2-3 fifth. On the night, she struck out six against just one walk without hitting a batter or throwing a wild pitch. Those six strikeouts tied the WPBL’s record for a pitcher in a single game, matching Jaida Lee’s total from her 3 2/3-inning relief appearance in the Heights extra-inning win over the Queens last Saturday.
Whitmore’s only stumble on the mound came in the top of the fourth inning, immediately after the half inning in which she homered. After retiring the leadoff batter in the fourth, she gave up three runs to the bottom of the Hunters order on a walk and three singles, but then locked it down and retired the final five batters she faced.
Friday night marked the second time this season that Whitmore homered in a game she started on the mound, and on both occasions the first runs she allowed in that game came in the half inning after she homered. Asked about that connection after the game, Whitmore chuckled and told The IX Sports, “that’s just part of the game, you can’t do it all perfect.” Whitmore did say that she made an concerted effort in this game to take deep breaths and slow things down. She also admitted that, after the Hunters scored in the fourth, she was “a little pissed off, actually, so I came back the next inning and I tried to put up a zero, which I did.”
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On the night, only one of the 15 outs Whitmore recorded left the infield, that being a fly out to center by Boston third baseman Denver Bryant for the second out of the fourth, and the only extra-base hit she allowed was a double by Hunters center fielder Ticara Geldenhuis with two outs in the third, after which Whitmore struck out right fielder Molly Paddison on a breaking ball away. If a pitcher can be said to have dominated in an outing in which they allowed three runs in five innings and coughed up a slim middle-innings lead, then Whitmore fit that description Friday night.
On the other side of the ball, Schroder was similarly impressive through the first three innings, showing good control, striking out three, and allowing just three baserunners (one of which came on Whitmore’s homer). But in the bottom of the fourth, her fielders let her down, and her night came to an end before she could get the second out of that inning.
It all started when second baseman Gabrielle Haas, starting in the infield for just the second time this season and the first time in nearly two weeks, dropped a pop-up from Firebells first baseman Andréanne Leblanc. Schroder then walked catcher Alexia Jorge, and right fielder Skylar Kaplan shot a single through the right side to load the bases with no outs.
After a mound visit, manager Jemile Weeks played his infield in, with the hope of getting the force at home, only for Firebells third baseman Jua Park to single over the head of Kate Blunt at shortstop, scoring Leblanc on a ball Blunt likely would have caught on the fly, holding the runners, had she been playing at normal depth. Center fielder Jordan Eyster then hit a fly ball to right field. Had Leblanc and Park’s balls been caught, that would have been the third out. Instead, it was the first and brought Jorge home with the tying run.
Kaplan moved to third on the flyout, and Park subsequently stole second to put two runners in scoring position for left fielder Ela Day-Bédard. With the double play no longer in order, Weeks brought his infielders in again, and again he got burned. Day-Bédard hit a slow bouncer toward second base that Haas would have had easily if she was playing back, but because she was in on the lip of the grass, it got past her dive and into the outfield to plate both runners and put San Francisco up by two. To make matters worse, when center fielder Geldenhuis came in to field Day-Bédard’s hit, she booted the ball, then bounce her throw past Blunt at second to allow Day-Bédard to scoot into scoring position (the official scorer somehow managed to hang that error on Haas, who was an innocent bystander).
Over the course of her six batters in that inning, Schroder had induced five balls that could have been outs with normal positioning and effort, but the defense’s failure to convert those outs ran her pitch count up to 61, and Weeks pulled her in favor of lefty Paloma Benach. Benach stranded Day-Bédard, in part by intentionally walking Whitmore (just the third intentional walk in WPBL history), but then ran into trouble of her own in the fifth.
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In the bottom of the fifth, the Firebells scored six more runs against Benach and reliever Maïka Dumais (who moved from first base to the mound) in an inning that put one runner on base via catcher’s interference, another via a two-base throwing error by the shortstop Blunt, and saw Lexi Hastings let two balls get by her in left field without being charged an error for the extra bases allowed in either case.
Hastings had another impressive game on offense, going 2-for-3 with a double, a walk, two stolen bases, and three runs scored, but she had a rough time of it in the field in the fifth inning. With one on and one out, Hastings appeared to call Geldenhuis and Blunt off a pop-up to shallow center off the bat of Kaplan only to have the ball drop well beyond her diving reach for a single.
After Kaplan came around to score via the catcher’s interference by Beth Greenwood, a Jordan Eyster single, and a sac fly from Day-Bédard (the latter two of which Hastings fielded cleanly), leadoff hitter Amanda Gianelloni singled to left and the ball bounced off the charging Hastings just far enough to let Jua Park, who had reached on the interference call, score.
After Dumais replaced Bechar, and Whitmore reached second on Blunt’s throwing error, scoring Eyster, Hastings let a bouncing ball single through the infield by San Francisco shortstop Joely Leguizamon get by her and roll to the wall, plating Whitmore with what was inexplicably ruled a double (though Leguizamon let the Hunters off the hook by attempting to go to third and getting thrown out by a relay from Hastings to Blunt to Bryant to end the inning).
The Firebells added three more runs on just one hit in the sixth when a seemingly exhausted Dumais loaded the bases on a walk, a hit batter, and a single, then walked in one run, and emergency reliever Blunt, moving in from shortstop, reloaded the bases and walked in another in the process of striking out the side.
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As if all of that wasn’t enough, the game had one of the most unusual endings I can remember seeing. Facing Firebells reliever Peyton Coria, who had come on in the sixth in relief of Whitmore, the Hunters put runners on second and third with one out via a fielding error by first baseman Leblanc and a double by Hastings. Blunt fouled out to catcher Greenwood for the second out, and Suzuka Yamamoto, who had replaced Blunt in the infield, struck out.
However, the third strike to Yamamoto skipped by Jorge far enough for Yamamoto to reach first, seemingly loading the bases until Jorge’s throw to Coria covering home went wild, allowing both Sabrina Robinson, who had reached on the error, and Hastings to score. When second baseman Amanda Gianelloni corralled Jorge’s throw and fired home to Coria to try to catch the speedy Hastings, Yamamoto took off for second, and it was there that she was thrown out for the final out of the game via what proved to be a game-ending 2-4-1-6 putout at second base . . . on a strikeout.
The Hunters now have four days off to lick their wounds before facing the Firebells again next Wednesday. San Francisco, meanwhile, will return to action on Sunday to host the Heights. Tonight, Los Angeles hosts New York in what, for the Heights, is the third straight game between the two teams (though the Queens faced Boston twice during that span). Two-way shortstops Emi Saiki and Ayuri Shimano will start for the Heights and Queens, respectively, with Saiki making her first appearance on the mound in the WPBL.
Injury Updates:
Hunters catcher Beth Greenwood returned to the lineup with a plastic mold taped to her left thumb to prevent it from being bent back and told reporters after the game that her “bionic thumb . . . held up during the game great.” She also thought that the extra tape may have helped protect her left hand when she was hit on the glove by the bat and on her left wrist by the pitch on the catcher’s interference play. Greenwood said she expects to be “ready to go” when Boston returns to action next week.
Firebells two-way star Jill Albayati is away from the team for the first week of her senior year at Cal State San Marcos, but her hamstring strain remains “a little bit of an issue,” manager Matt Williams told The IX Sports after the game. Williams added that Albayati is “getting some rehab and [will be] doing some running starting next week, so we’ll see where she is when she comes back.”
Firebells pitcher/outfielder Rosi del Castillo (knee) was on San Francisco’s active roster Friday night but did appear in the game.
