Ballers Down Raptors in Home Opener Via Knockout

Copied from Steve's Substack, "Out of Left Field," which you can find here: https://stevenmbowles.substack.com/

RAIMONDI PARK, OAKLAND, CA — Have a night, Tremayne Cobb Jr.

As a collegian, the Troy University product wasn’t known for his hitting, but for his superlative fielding skills. As a senior last year, Cobb was second in all of NCAA with defensive runs saved and defensive WAR among shortstops, and was a finalist for the ABCA/Rawlings Gold Glove Award, finishing behind University of Missouri shortstop Gehrig Goldbeck.

Last night, in his professional debut, Cobb put on a dreamlike performance. He swatted the first pitch he saw into left field for a double, igniting what looked to be an early rally until it was unceremoniously snuffed out. He then proceeded to rap out hits in his next four at-bats, including a huge RBI single in the bottom of the ninth, a frame that saw the Ballers come from down 4-1 to tie the game and send it to the knockout round homerun derby.

The Ogden Raptors elected to send powerful catcher Christopher Sargent Jr., who last year hit .316 with 19 homeruns and 95 RBI for the team, to the plate to begin the derby, but he failed to send one over the wall. The Ballers countered with the hot-hitting Cobb. Moments later, he ruffled the net above the left field fence with a mammoth blast, punctuated by a bat flip that nearly brought rain showers. Just minutes ago, it looked as if Ogden was about to pull out a three-run victory.

Oh, how fortunes and fates can switch places.

Oakland drew first blood in the bottom of the third, when Darryl Buggs II drew a leadoff walk and scored on a single by designated hitter Lou Helmig. But the Baller bats fell silent as Ogden starter Bryson Van Sickle shook off the attack and regained his groove. Meanwhile, Ballers starter Luke Short was dealing in the early stages, striking out the side in each of the first two innings (while shrugging off a mini-uprising in the first). But after issuing a walk and a single to begin the top of the fifth, he was pulled in favor of gargantuan strike-throwing machine Connor Richardson, one of the many 2024 Oakland pitchers returning for this season. Kenneth Oyama drove in the game-tying run with a sacrifice fly, which was charged to Short. That was all that materialized from that threat.

It was in the seventh against another reliever, Carson Lambert, that Ogden momentarily broke the game open, scoring three unearned runs aided by a grounder that Oakland third baseman Cam Bufford misplayed for an error. But Dylan Porter, the former Savannah Banana making his Ballers debut, threw scoreless ball in the eighth and ninth innings, keeping the Oakland deficit at three runs.

Michael O’Hara, an East Bay kid who spent many hours at the Oakland Coliseum watching the A’s play, led off the bottom of the ninth. He had entered during the seventh as a pinch-hitter and struck out. Here, he laced a opposite-field double to begin the frame. Esai Santos, a Berkeley kid who attended Holy Names University before matriculating to Point Loma Nazarene in San Diego, batted for Buggs and rapped a single to right, sending O’Hara to third. Then came the aforementioned Cobb RBI single, which plated O’Hara to cut the deficit to 4-2; a throwing error by Ogden right fielder Damian Stone allowed Santos to advance to third.

That brought up Helmig, who back in the third inning had driven in Oakland’s initial tally. A German-born outfielder who comes from a long line of German baseball stars, Helmig had spent 2022 and 2023 toiling for the Philadelphia Phillies rookie-ball squad before returning to Germany and ultimately signing with the Ballers for 2025. Helmig clobbered a deep drive to right that Stone went back on and couldn’t reach as it thudded high against the fence. Before you could say danke, Santos was across the plate and Cobb was on his way to third base, representing the tying run. A Danny Harris sacrifice fly pushed Cobb home to knot the game at 4-4, but Helmig was tagged out to end the inning after a brief rundown between second and third.

And so it was on to the shootout round, where Tremayne Cobb Jr. would send the sellout crowd of over 4,000 fans happy.