Category: Uncategorized

By Jeremy Kahn

Not only did Jake Arrieta pitch a dazzling game for the Chicago Cubs, he came up big at the plate.

Arrieta hit a triple and scored a run in the bottom of the second inning, as the Cubs defeated the San Francisco Giants 2-0 at Wrigley Field.

The right-hander pitched into the eighth inning, as he allowed four hits to the struggling Giants, who have lost four in a row.

It was the first time that the Cubs have swept the Giants in a four-game sweep since 1977.

Kris Bryant and Addison Russell drove in the only runs on the afternoon.

Arrieta pitched 7.2 innings, as he improved to 13-6 on the season.

Jake Peavy pitched five innings, allowing two runs on four hits.

There was a scary moment in the top of the third inning, as Nori Aoki took a 92 mile per hour fastball to the head and left the game following the at-bat.

The Giants loaded the bases with nobody out in the top of the ninth inning, but closer Hector Rondon rebounded to strike out the side to end the game.

By Jeremy Harness

Karolina Pliskova made sure that the United States would not be represented on the court at Stanford come Sunday afternoon.

Pliskova, the fourth-seeded player in the Bank of the West Classic, took down American Varvara Lepchenko in straight sets, 6-2 and 7-5, in Saturday afternoon’s semifinal match.

Lepchenko was not sharp at all throughout the match, and although she was gallant in her effort in the second set, it was not enough as Pliskova punched her ticket into the championship match.

Lepchenko did not do herself any favors in the first set by committing three double faults, and Pliskova took full advantage by breaking her serve twice en route to an easy win in the opening stanza. The Czech also won 73 percent (11 of 15) of her first-serve points and did not commit a single double fault herself, further paving the way.

In the second set, Pliskova pounded four serves by Lepchenko for aces, and she further supplanted herself in the driver’s seat by winning 18 of her 21 first-serve points while also breaking lepchenko’s serve twice more.

Standing in Pliskova’s way of the championship is a Sunday showdown with German Angelique Kerber, who did not show any ill effects of her thrilling quarterfinal win in Friday’s nightcap, downed Ukrainian Elina Svitolina in straight sets, 6-3 and 6-1.

Kerber won 63 percent of her first-serve points throughout the match and used her strong ground game, which was on full display on Friday as well, to quickly gain the advantage.

As for Sunday’s matchup, Kerber and Pliskova have faced each other five times before, with Kerber holding a 3-2 advantage. Pliskova has won two of the past three head-to-head matches, but Kerber won the last one in June, to win the AEGON Birmingham Classic title.

By Jeremy Kahn

The resurgence of the Chicago Cubs this season is because of the emergence of four rookies on the club.

Rookie sensation Kris Bryant hit a home run, Addison Russell picked up his second career three-hit game, Friday’s hero Kyle Schwarber picked up two hits and finally Jorge Soler extended his hitting streak to eight games as the Cubs defeated the San Francisco Giants 8-6 at Wrigley Field. This was the third straight win for the Cubs, and also they have nine out of their last 10.

Bryant also drove in three runs, and Russell picked up a huge run-scoring single in a three-run eighth inning, as the Cubs are now on the verge of a huge four-game series sweep of the defending World Champions.

It was the first home run for the sensational third baseman since July 27 against the Colorado Rockies.

Brandon Belt hit a two-run home run for the Giants, while Hunter Pence added two hits and score two runs for the struggling Giants, who have three in a row and five out of their last seven and are 3-6 on the 10-game road trip that ends on Sunday.

Both Nori Aoki and Angel Pagan picked up run-scoring singles in the top of the ninth inning, but Justin Grimm was able to get Matt Duffy to ground out to end the game.

By Jeremy Kahn

Kyle Schwarber continues to hit the ball well, so Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon keeps sending him out there.

Schwarber picked up two hits and drove in two runs, as the Cubs defeated the San Francisco Giants 7-3 at Wrigley Field for their eighth win in their last nine games.

With the victory, the Cubs lengthen their lead in that second wild card spot to 1.5 games over the defending World Champion Giants. The Cubs are now 12 games over the .500 mark with a 60-48 record, the first time that they have been 12 games over .500 since they won the Central Division in 2008.

Dexter Fowler picked up three hits including a home run for the Cubs.

Jorge Soler added two hits with a single and a double, while Chris Coghlan also picked up two hits.

Jon Lester went seven innings, allowing two runs on six hits, while walking two and striking out three.

Ryan Vogelsong, starting in place of the injured Mike Leake lasted just four innings, allowing three runs on six hits.

Leake, who was acquired from the Cincinnati Reds at the trading deadline was placed on the 15-day disabled list with a tight hamstring.

Nori Aoki hit a home run for the Giants, but it was not enough and the Giants fall to 3-5 on their 10-game road trip.

By Jeremy Harness

STANFORD – And then there was one.

Varvara Lepchenko, fresh off of her upset of top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki the previous evening, kept rolling along Friday night in a 6-7, 6-2 and 6-3 runaway win over Mona Barthel in their quarterfinal match to stand as the only American remaining in this Bank of the West Classic.

This marks the second straight semifinal appearance in this tournament for Lepchenko, who was born in Croatia but moved to the U.S. when she was 15 and got her American citizenship 10 years later.

“I’ve done very well here before, so I felt confident coming in here,” Lepchenko said. “I love playing in California.

“I definitely feel the appreciation from the fans playing in tournaments in the United States.”

While Barthel was very inconsistent with her serve – the German had six aces but counteracted that with six double faults – Lepchenko focused on keeping the ball in play and relying on her ground game to get ahead in the match and stay there.

Lepchenko went to the net more often and put the pressure on Barthel, who showed her wear by committing 31 unforced errors on Friday to Lepchenko’s 19.

“My focus was not there (in the first set),” she said. “I tried to loosen up in the second set, and I think it worked out for me.”

She battled with pneumonia earlier in the year and said that she starting feeling like she was in better playing shape during the AEGON Eastbourne International, the week before Wimbledon, which was held in late June. She said that after Wimbledon, she began working primarily on improving her fitness, and she attributed that to her continued success this week.

” I worked very hard to get ready for the hard-court season, and it’s starting to pay off now,” she said. “It gives you confidence that you can find your way throughout the match. I realized that, hey, I’ve got that base now, so I should be able to do this.”

She will face Karolina Pliskova, who downed Ajla Tomljanovic in straight sets, 6-2 and 6-4, earlier in the afternoon, Saturday at 12pm PST.

Pliskova was dominant in every phase of the game, particularly in the first-serve category. She won 82 percent of her first-serve points – while Tomljanovic won only 58 percent – while also saving all six of her break points.

Besides Lepchenko, the other American in the quarterfinal round was Alison Riske, but she would join Lepchenko into the semis. She took the first set of her quarterfinal match against Ukrainian Elina Svitolina but dropped a hard-fought second set, 7-5, to extend the match.

From there, Svitolina shut the lights out on Riske by a 6-1 count, using three aces in the set as well as an edge in first-serve points to her advantage.

Svitolina now has a Saturday date (4pm PST, to be exact) with Angelique Kerber, who won an absolute thriller in Friday’s nightcap over Poland’s Agnieszka Radwanska, 4-6, 6-4 and 6-4, in a match that lasted almost two-and-a-half hours.

Kerber dropped the first set and was down in both the second and third sets before rallying to win both of them, getting huge points when she needed them and responding to Radwanska’s clever ground game with some crafty shots of her own.

In the final set, Kerber trailed 4-3 but held serve to tie things up, and with the game tied at 30-30, Radwanska double-faulted to give Kerber the advantage. Kerber won the ensuing point to get a crucial serve break and take the 5-4 lead before holding serve to close out Radwanska and move on.

Kerber came away victorious despite the fact that she was beaten in two crucial statistical categories: Radwanska won 11 more points at the net while committing 32 unforced errors to Radwanska’s 28.

By: Joe Lami

OAKLAND, Calif.–Thursday night’s series opener against AL West leading Houston Astros was a roller coaster of a game, as the A’s are taking a page out of the Giants’ torture type of baseball. Going into the eighth inning, they were leading 2-1, but by the end of it the Astros were able to take the 4-2 lead. However, a ninth inning rally and a blown save later Oakland found themselves in extra innings, but it was all for not as Houston earned their 61st victory of the season with 5-4 win.

It looked promising, as the A’s put Aaron Brooks on the mound in just his second career start.  Brooks pitched phenomenally with a final line of seven innings pitched.  He surrendered one run that came in the first inning on four hits, while he struck out seven. A’s manager, Bob Melvin, commented on Brooks’ outstanding performance “He pitched great, that’s all you can ask from him. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t get the win for him tonight”. Brooks added the key tonights performance was getting ahead with first pitch strikes.

The lone run Brooks gave up was scored by Carlos Gomez, who reached first on a gorgeous bunt down the third base line. Jed Lowrie eventually brought him in and earned the RBI on a sacrifice fly.

Stephen Vogt tied the game in the bottom of the 2nd inning, when he hit the first of two A’s home runs out to left center field, just to the right of the 388 marker.  The dinger marked his 15th blast of the year.

The A’s took the lead in the fifth inning, as they took Scott Feldman deep to left center again.  Brett Lawrie earned his tenth of the season on the blast that hit off of the glass of a luxury box in what had to have been one of the longest homers of the year. Melvin added “he crushed it, you know how athletic and strong he is when he’s in the cage, and tonight he showed it off”.

Brooks came out of the game at the beginning of the eighth, and things went downhill fast for the Athletics. Fernando Rodriguez, Fermando Abad, and Evan Scriber shared duties.  Rodriguez gave up a single to Jose Altuve to set up a Carlos Correa home run.  It marks Correa’s 14th shot of the season in just 51 games played, as he is a strong contender for the AL Rookie of the Year.  The two-run homer made it 3-2.  Houston was able to add another after Colby Rasmus singled to left, where a miscommunication between Billy Burns and Coco Crisp led to an error to make it 4-2.

The Athletics looked done, until they were able to string together a ninth inning rally, thanks to a Lowrie error that took away a double play putting runners on first and third with no outs.  Stephen Vogt, the man on third scored easily with an Ike Davis base hit.   

With the A’s down just one with one out and men on first and third, Billy Burns grounded into what looked like another double play to end the game, but was able to beat out the throw at first by a hair.  The play went to video review, where it was conclusive that Burns beat the throw at first, allowing Lawrie to score and tie things at four.

The roller coaster continued in the tenth as Altuve led the inning off with a base hit.  After a steal and a sacrifice, Altuve was on third with one out.  Former Athletic, Lowrie, earned his second RBI of the game in what ended up being the game-winning hit on a double to left. Oakland was unable to make the comeback in the bottom half of the tenth, handing them their 62nd loss of the season.

By Jeremy Harness

Wednesday was not considered a great day for the Americans in the Bank of the West Classic draw. Thursday, on the other hand, turned out just a bit better.

American Varvara Lepchenko fired the loudest shot of the entire tournament thus far in the second round of this tournament, being held at Stanford, as she pulled off the upset over top-seeded Caroline Wozniacki in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-2, on Thursday.

Lepchenko seized the advantage early and held onto it throughout the match by maintaining the edge in first serves, as she converted 26 of 33 (78 percent) overall. She also blasted three of her serves past Wozniacki for aces.

She added to the advantage by breaking Wozniacki’s serve four times and then took advantage of the WTA’s fifth-ranked player’s three double faults in the second set.

This was Lepchenko’s first-ever win over Wozniacki, who had won the previous four head-to-head matches, including last year in Miami that saw Wozniacki prevailing in a 6-0 and 6-1 blowout.

Lepchenko will face Mona Barthel, who herself pulled off an upset in the second round Wednesday night, shocking fellow German Andrea Petkovic in three sets, 5-7, 6-2 and 7-6.

After dropping the first set, Barthel quickly claimed the edge in the second set against the 17th-ranked WTA singles player by winning 75 percent of her first serves and was not broken a single time. Meanwhile, Barthel broke both of Petkovic’s serves in that set.

In the other matches Thursday, Angelique Kerber, the WTA’s 14th-ranked singles player, was a straight-sets winner over Ana Konjuh. The German was dominant in every category, including efficiency (Kerber had only one double fault while Konjuh committed four of them).

Kerber will face Agnieszka Radwanska, who rallied to beat Japan’s Misaki Doi, 1-6, 6-2 and 6-0, on Thursday, while Karolina Pliskova was a winner in straight sets, 7-5 and 6-2, over Kimiko Date-Krumm.

By Jeremy Harness

After the first set, it looked like a carbon copy of Madison Keys’ blowout win Monday night.

However, the match made a 180-degree turn very quickly, and Keys found herself on the wrong end of a beatdown the rest of the way, as Ajla Tomljanovic pulled off the upset of the 20-year-old American, who is ranked 17th by the WTA at press time, by a score of 1-6, 6-4 and 6-1 to move on to the semifinal round of the Bank of the West Classic held at Stanford Wednesday.

In the third and deciding set, the Croatian won 10 of her 13 first serves, and she also broke Keys’ serve three times while not being broken once herself.

The real advantage that Keys had was her serve, as she recorded nine aces to only one for Tomljanovic, but Tomljanovic kept the pressure on Keys in the final two sets and played very solid tennis to gain the upper hand.

Another American did not fare any better. Stanford product Nicole Gibbs saw her run through this tournament come to an end against Elina Svitolina, who took Gibbs down in straight sets, 6-3 and 7-6, to punch her ticket to the semifinals.

Svitolina held the advantage in first serves won, as she won 57 percent of them to Gibbs’ 40 percent. Both players were able to break the other’s serve with a good amount of regularity, but Svitolina held a slight edge in that category as well, as she was able to save half of her break points while Gibbs only saved 36 percent.

However, all was not lost on the American side, and Alison Riske made sure of that. She pulled off the upset of the tournament thus far, as she downed Spaniard Carla Suarez Navarro in straight sets, 6-4 and 6-4.

There were only two aces in the match, and both belonged to Riske, who also held the advantage in first services won, including a 70-percent clip in the second set, and that that proved to be the difference in the match, offsetting the seven double faults she committed.