Clearly an unlikely Lamb start in AA home debut

Springdale, AR - John Lamb had an unlikely performance, in comparison to early starts this year, during his Northwest Arkansas Naturals home field debut at Arvest Ballpark Sunday night. It has never been easy to digest a broadcast, or game, that exposes the human side of sports. Defensive errors and balls put into play, as hits, can be a bad formula if a pitcher is not missing bats. Lamb has not experienced many of these types of games during his career, let alone back-to-back performances since his promotion to the Texas League, Class AA level. I can’t remember the last time Lamb pitched without a single strike-out.

Photo credit - Keith Lovett

Lamb finished his five innings of work with a 5-3 deficit and allowing 10 hits, 5 runs (2 earned runs), 1 walk, 0 strike-outs, 0 home-runs and lowers his Texas League ERA to 4.50. Ben Swaggerty and Henry Barrera followed Lamb with two scoreless innings each and Brandon Sisk took the loss during his two innings of relief to conclude the extra inning contest with the Arkansas Travelers.



Although the Naturals banged out a total of 11 hits during the extra inning game and pretty much negated my theory of concern following last night’s slug fest, the Royals Class AA level team struggled playing catch with the start of the game. Both runs that were allowed by Lamb in the first inning were unearned based on two errors. Not sure who committed the errors based on the fact that the box and article on the Northwest Arkansas Naturals site have conflicting accounts of the miscues.



Johnny Giavotella, Manuel Pina and Chris McConnell were the only multiple hit Naturals for the night. Giavotella provide some ninth inning heroics with a two run big fly that tied the game and sent the game into extra innings. Arkansas went on to win the game in the eleventh with a couple of extra base hits which plated one run. The Naturals were not up to the challenge of any more runs during the bottom half of the inning.



I realize that the game of baseball is not fair, at times. I also understand that pitchers are not going to dominant every time they touch the mound. Anyone that thinks otherwise has not watched enough baseball. However, I can say with complete confidence this will not be his last unlikely performance of his professional baseball career. The only time to start worrying is if, and when, a player can’t make the adjustments necessary to eliminate multiple and consecutive below average outings. It is clearly not time to start freaking out over the last couple of starts, at least not for this baseball prospect’s dad.