What happens in Vegas stays in Sacramento

By joshjacksonmilb

By Josh Jackson / MiLB.com

Mets prospect Wilmer Flores homered twice at Sacramento on Sunday. The balls landed not in California’s capital city but in the next state over.

Power isn’t even his best tool.

Alright, so we’re not talking about a pair of 500-mile jacks.

Playing at Sacramento on May 6, in the top of the first inning, the Las Vegas 51s put two guys aboard against Sonny Gray, Oakland’s top-ranked pitching prospect. The game was then halted when a downpour began.

It resumed on July 28, but at Vegas’ Cashman Field, where Flores and the 51s would be the away team (at home) in the first game of a doubleheader and the home team (still at home) in the nightcap.

In that first game, Flores smacked the two aforementioned roundtrippers and also doubled, plating three runs and scoring three. But his hot hitting as an away player in his home park was only one of the notable aspects of that game.

The 51s’ starting pitcher, Carlos Torres, was no longer on the roster. He had been with the Mets in the big leagues since June 16.

Gray had gone up to the A’s and come back. He got a raw deal in the end; the two walks he gave up almost three months ago each came around to score, and he ended up the loser in the 13–4 51s’ blowout. (Incidentally, one of the guys he’d walked, Collin Cowgill, had been traded to the Angels in the interim.)

So, what happened in the nightcap, you ask?

Nothing. It was postponed. Game 1 was called after the top half of the seventh, on account of winds. Strange, strange winds, one bets.

The River Cats and the 51s played two on Monday evening, though, with Las Vegas hosting both officially and in reality. Flores drove in two more runs in Game 1 and yet two more in Game 2.

As for Sonny Gray, he started Monday’s second game, which was the makeup of Sunday’s postponement. He lost that, too.

This means that Gray lost one game that was actually played on Monday but was scheduled for Sunday, and he lost another game that was actually played on Sunday but on paper took place on May 6. In some bizarre contortion of reality, he took two losses on the same day without so much as throwing a pitch. With that kind of luck, Gray should be glad the River Cats won’t return to Vegas this season.