I guess when you are as good a signal caller as Carlos Ruiz, and you make life look easy for the pitchers on your staff, you begin to think, “How hard can it be?”
Our beloved Chooch is playing out his remaining big league years in the great Northwest with the Seattle Mariners, and he’s largely been out of sight, save for his trip to Philadelphia earlier this year. But other than that, Ruiz’ stature as the back-up catcher for a team on the other side of the country hasn’t really thrust him onto our front pages.
That all changed on Tuesday night.
CARLOS RUIZ IS PITCHING!!!! pic.twitter.com/MsRHbFXv8O
— John Stolnis (@FelskeFiles) June 14, 2017
This is only a snippet of Chooch’s glory on the mound. His entire performance can be seen here, but all in all, it wasn’t a terrible performance by Ruiz.
He entered in the 8th inning with the Mariners trailing the Twins 19-6 and promptly allowed the third homer of the game to Minnesota outfielder Eddie Rosario, making the score 20-6.
He then gave up a walk and nearly allowed another dinger to put runners on 2nd and 3rd with no out, but from there, he knuckled down. Ruiz got a pop up, gave up a walk, recorded a strikeout and got a grounder to the pitcher to get out of the frame without further damage.
In all, he threw 30 pitches, just 14 for strikes, and got his fastball up as high as 84.4 mph.
Sounds like a typical Phillies middle reliever. In fact, the dearly departed Joely Rodriguez would have killed for that stat line.
One wouldn’t think there was another chapter left to write in the legend of Chooch. But as it turns out, ‘ol Chooch had one last itch he had to scratch.
Take that, Roy Halladay.
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