Feed Your Sweet Tooth: Rainiers Open Series At Sugar Land

Jun 11, 2023

The Tacoma Rainiers find themselves somewhere new today, as they open a six-game series at the Sugar Land Space Cowboys this evening at 5:05 (Pacific). Tacoma has not played Sugar Land at all yet this season.

Sugar Land is the Houston Astros affiliate, and the town is located in the Houston metroplex. In fact, the Space Cowboys ballpark is just 19 miles from Minute Maid Park where the Astros play.

It’s a long way from Tacoma: Sugar Land is 1,877 miles away, as the crow flies, and is the furthest PCL team from home.

It took most of Monday’s off-day for the team to fly here, with the team meeting at Cheney Stadium at 7:45 AM, and arriving at the hotel in Sugar Land just in time for dinner.

Much of the travel was spent in the air, without internet or cell service. On most occasions that’s no big deal – everyone can use some time off the grid – but with the trade deadline going down, we landed at Houston’s huge airport to some news.

The Mariners had traded closer Paul Sewald to the Arizona Diamondbacks for three players, two of whom the Rainiers have seen a ton of while they were playing for Reno: utility man Josh Rojas and corner outfielder Dominic Canzone. The third player, infielder Ryan Bliss, just reached Triple-A Reno two weeks ago after wrecking Double-A pitching for three-and-a-half months.

All three of the newly-acquired Reno Aces have options and could be assigned to Tacoma – what the Mariners plan to do with them will probably be impacted by whatever additional moves are made today.

To clear space on the 40-man roster, the Mariners shipped outfielder A.J. Pollock and Tacoma utilityman Mark Mathias to the San Francisco Giants for a player to be named later.

Mathias was on the Rainiers flight to Houston. When we landed, he discovered he had been traded, said goodbye to everyone at the baggage carousel, and found some new flight arrangements as he is going to join Sacramento. Mathias was only with the Rainiers for 25 days after being claimed off waivers from Pittsburgh; he certainly helped the club during that time.

With the long travel day for the Triple-A team converging with the trade deadline, the Mariners took a few precautions. Juan Then was held back in Tacoma and did not fly with the team, in case a trade was made involving a reliever… and it happened, with the Sewald deal. Then Then was called up by Seattle for last night’s game against Boston*.

My understanding is that one additional Rainiers position player, and possibly another reliever, was held off the team flight by Seattle as well. The Mariners want to have players at-the-ready in case more trades are made today – it can often take two or three days for a traded player to report to his new team, and the Mariners are in the midst of an important series against the playoff-contending Red Sox.

We’re not out of the woods yet. The trade deadline is 3:00 (Pacific) this afternoon, which is two hours before the start of Tacoma’s game tonight at Sugar Land. More moves can and probably will be made.

The upshot of all this is that the red-hot Rainiers – winners of five in a row for the first time this season – could be playing tonight’s game quite short-handed.

* Typing that sentence was very pleasing.

RAINIERS DAILY

YESTERDAY: The Rainiers were off yesterday. On Sunday Tacoma won its fifth in a row, 4-3 over Salt Lake. Kyle Hart started and tossed six shutout innings before going on paternity leave. Tacoma hit a pair of solo home runs – Sam Haggerty and Mark Mathias went deep – but trailed 3-2 going in the bottom of the eighth when Brian O’Keefe launched a go-ahead two-run homer for the lead. Stephen Kolek was given the save opportunity, and he closed it out with a pair of strikeouts.

TODAY: Tacoma Rainiers (52-50, 15-12) at Sugar Land Space Cowboys (43-59, 10-17), 5:05 Pacific.

OPPONENT AFFILIATION: Houston Astros.

OPPOSING MANAGER: Mickey Storey.

SEASON SERIES: 0-0.

PITCHERS: LHP Tommy Milone (4-1, 4.40) at RHP Spenser Watkins (1-2, 6.86)

ROSTER MOVES: Narrowing this down strictly to the Rainiers roster as it applies to today’s game: Mark Mathias has been traded to the San Francisco Giants and is reporting to Sacramento, and reliever Juan Then was called up by the Mariners.

HOT HITTERS: Jake Scheiner leads the PCL with 25 home runs, and he has hit 15 of them at Cheney Stadium… Scheiner is the league leader with 85 RBI… Adam Engel has reached base safely in 20 straight games… Sam Haggerty has reached base in his last 11 games while collecting 17 hits during that time, and he has homered in three straight and four of his last five games, winning PCL Player of the Week… Zach DeLoach has hit safely in eight of his last nine games… Brian O’Keefe has a four-game hitting streak with three home runs.

OPPONENT NEWS: Sugar Land just split a six-game series at Las Vegas that ended Sunday night. The Space Cowboys are 7-4 over the last 11 games, but they lost 18 of 23 going into the all-star break… Sugar Land’s hitting stats aren’t as impressive as other PCL teams because they play in an extremely pitcher-friendly ballpark… first baseman Jon Singleton has been hot at the plate; he’s returned to the Astros organization after being released from the big leagues by the Brewers… J.J. Matijevic might be their most dangerous hitter, and he has two homers and six RBI during a four-game hitting streak… the Space Cowboys have no former Rainiers or local players on the team.

BROADCAST: All games will be broadcast free on a live audio stream which is available right here.

Unfortunately, there is no traditional terrestrial radio station carrying the games at this time.

PCL SCOREBOARD: Follow all league games in real-time with links to broadcasts and Gameday screens right here.

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