Posted By: Joe Pasquini

On the top of the Wine Country Baseball website its says "Old Fashion Baseball League".   They can use Wednesday Night's Windsor-Santa Rosa game as exhibit A.  In a world where 100 pitches mean your out of the game in the majors,  Windsor pitcher Stuart Alexander pitched a complete game, throwing 188 pitches, and was stronger at the end then he was in the beginning.  The performance was enough to hand Santa Rosa its first loss in a 4-2 Windsor win.  

Alexander floated in and out of trouble all night.   He had one three up-three down inning and in every other inning but one the Gnats had a runner as far as second.  Alexander gave up six hits, five of them in the first four innings, struck out fifteen and walked eight.    One of the two runs he gave up was unearned.  All his walks were in the first seven innings and that last four outs were strikeouts.

With all that until the bottom of the seventh inning it looked like all his battling was going to go for naught.  Windsor was having its own problems on offense.   On the night three Santa Rosa pitchers combined to strike out twenty.  Santa Rosa starting pitcher Kasey Olenberger made his Wine Country Baseball debut who has spent the summer until last week pitching for a Triple A team for the Florida Marlins.   He showed why he people are looking at him pitching the first four innings, giving up an earned run on one hit while striking out eight.   The next two pitchers, Clayton Smith and Greg Pease were just as good, striking out twelve the rest of the way.

Still it wasn't good enough thanks to a three run Windsor seventh on just one hit which was a bunt single with the idea of a sacrifice, three walks and two errors.  The error started the inning off on a ground ball Kevin Cramer that was thrown away with Cramer going to second.  Kyle Thomas then had the bunt that was trying to get Cramer to third was so good he beat it out for what was Windsor's second of three hits on the night.  One out later (a strike out of course), the next two batters were walked and a fly ball to right was dropped and just like that Windsor had a 4-2 lead.

In the end Santa Rosa can look back to the first two innings when they scored a run in each that cost them.   They could of had more.  In the first after an run scoring single by Dustin Emswyler they still had runners at second and third with one out.  But Alexander got out of that by striking out his first two of the night.  Then in the second after scoring run number two they had runners at second and third, this time with no outs.   The first two batters hit comebackers to Alexander who then ended that inning with strikeout number three.   That started a frustrating evening for Santa Rosa who left 13 men on base for the game, twelve in the first seven innings, leaving at least two on in four of them.

Santa Rosa won on Saturday to move to 8-1.  Windsor is 6-1 as they battle for the top of the North Division of the Wine Country Baseball League