Series #19 vs Fort Wayne

The Lugnuts played a solid series against the Fort Wayne TinCaps (San Diego Padres affiliate) going 3-3 bringing our season record to 48-59. Fort Wayne is fighting for the best record in the second half of our division so these are important games for them. As for us, we are a decent amount of games behind the lead so playoffs seem unlikely at this point but never say never. I got to pitch on Wednesday and Sunday this week.

On Wednesday, I entered the game in the 8th inning after warming up a couple of the innings prior. We were losing but I threw two perfect innings, four ground outs, a pop up, and one strikeout. The one strikeout came against the #5 prospect in all of the Minor Leagues, Ethan Salas. This kid was born on June 1, 2006 (!!) and is 17 (this is not a typo) years old. He signed for north of $5 million in January and has exceeded all expectations prior to being promoted to High-A this past week as the youngest player to ever play for the TinCaps. He is 8 years younger than I am in the same league so it’s safe to say that he is special. However, Lugnuts pitchers brought their best stuff to him all week which gave him a tough time at the plate. Here are the two pitches I got him on.

On Thursday, the Lugnuts hosted a very special guest. Some might say the greatest athlete of all time and by some I mean me. Joey Chestnut came to our game to break the olive burger record. An olive burger is a 3/4 pound burger covered in mayo with chopped olives on it, among other things, and is famous in Lansing - where the record has been held by the guy eating next to him. The previous record was 9.5 burgers in 10 minutes and Mr. Chestnut ended up eating 13 in 5 minutes. Watching him eat was kind of gross but it's an art and he's the best ever. The pace at which he took his bites and the size of his bites were remarkable. Undefeated. He also happens to be a very friendly guy and a baseball fan. I got to shake his hand and speak with him before batting practice which was awesome.

My dad and grandma made the trip out to Lansing from Thursday to Sunday, which was really nice. The last time my grandma saw me pitch was at Yale in 2016 and there were probably 50 people in the stands so she was thrilled to be at a game with a real crowd. We had over 8,000 fans a couple of the nights. I pitched on Sunday and got through an inning and a third quickly, but ran into trouble going back out for the 8th before getting pulled with one and two runners on. I’m glad I got to pitch in front of her and my dad even if I didn’t pitch as well as I would have liked. My grandma, who I call Ajji, was happy to have seen where I've lived the past two seasons and to finally understand what my lifestyle has been in pro ball, which she never fully understood from just reading the blog. It was a great weekend with the two of them.

The Lugnuts are home again this week against the Great Lakes Loons (Los Angeles Dodgers affilate). We have only four weeks remaining, pretty crazy how fast the season has gone!

Thanks for reading! Go Nuts