California Baseball: Day 14
Lake Elsinore Storm
Another sunny June morning, another Minor League ballgame on the schedule. It’s the sort of thing that puts you in a good mood to start the day.
I drove two hours south from Lancaster to Lake Elsinore, taking the eastern route around the San Gabriel Mountains, past high-desert Joshua trees, through dusty Cajon Canyon, and between two cities I would visit for games later in the week: Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernardino.
Lake Elsinore was once a small resort town but is now a fast-growing suburban community: Since 1980, its population has risen from 6,000 to about 70,000. The body of water that gives the city its name is a natural freshwater lake, fed by the San Jacinto River running east-to-west under Interstate 15. The 3,000-acre lake is a rather plain-looking sight, almost rectangular, with flatlands at the banks. But any water in Southern California is welcome, and the lake gets plenty of use by locals for boating and fishing.
I had passed by Lake Elsinore perhaps 75 times in my life -- barreling up and down the freeway on long-distance journeys between San Diego and the Bay Area – but never had reason to stop in town. With plenty of time on my hands before the game, I decided to turn up Ortega Highway to get a proper look at Lake Elsinore from above.
Formally called State Route 74, Ortega Highway winds through the Santa Ana Mountains west of Lake Elsinore, all the way to San Juan Capistrano on the coast. The 40-mile trek on the twisting mountain road is popular with motorcyclists on weekends, but it is also deadly. Fatalities are a regular occurrence on the twisting mountain road.
Just six miles up the hill lies the Lookout Roadhouse, a little restaurant with a commanding view of the lake that is a favored stop on the motorcycle route. The Lookout has been owned and operated since 1968 by Barbara Shea-han, and it’s an institution in the area. Perched on the hillside, a half-mile from its nearest neighbor (a Buddhist temple), the restaurant features a funky wooden interior, a back patio with the aforementioned lake view, two porta potties, and a menu highlighted by great breakfasts and barbecued ribs. I opted for a tasty pulled pork sandwich.
The server, Bruce, was entertaining and attentive. He had worked there for 22 years and told me that the Lookout is one of only eight California restaurants built on a well. He also noted that there had been seven accidents on the Ortega Highway just the day before, a Sunday, and that the road averaged 27 fatalities per year.
Although The Lookout dates to 1968, there has been a restaurant on this site since 1945.
The Minor League franchise that is now the Class-A Advanced Lake Elsinore Storm began in 1979 as the Santa Clara Padres, an independent club in Short Season A-ball. They moved north across the Golden Gate Bridge the following year to Rohnert park, near Santa Rosa, joining the California League as the Redwood Pioneers, a new affiliate of the California Angels. That team won a league title in 1983 before moving to Palm Springs in 1986 and adopting the Angels name.
In 1994, the club became the Lake Elsinore Storm, moving into a new $24 million ballpark built on land donated by Pete Lehr, a resident of the town since the 1950s who had made some smart investments in area real estate. Lehr’s colorful past included working in the oil fields of Orange County and playing for the company baseball team to some acclaim.
The Lake Elsinore Diamond (also called Storm Stadium) remains an attractive ballpark more than 25 years later. It has 6,066 mostly burgundy seats but can accommodate about 8,000 fans. It has some quirky angles, with a left-center power alley at 425 feet but a short porch in right field at just 310 feet that is protected by an imposing, 36-foot-high fence. Nearby is a grassy hillside meant for overflow seating but used more often by kids running, tumbling, and rolling downhill.
In 2001, Lake Elsinore and Rancho Cucamonga (a farm club of the Padres at the time) swapped Major League teams, and the Storm have been a Padres affiliate ever since. They have won three league titles since moving to Lake Elsinore, and have some famous alumni from both of their parent clubs (Francisco Rodríguez and John Lackey for the Angels; Corey Kluber and Jake Peavy for the Padres).
As with many California Minor League teams, the Storm have an alter ego. They take the field as the Cadejos de Lake Elsinore during Copa de la Diversión games aimed at reaching more Hispanic and Latinx fans. The Cadejo is a mythical wolf-like creature with white fur and sharp blue eyes that is said to appear in the hills nearby, guiding travelers safely on their journey. There is also a black Cadejo, which stalks travelers in the night and hypnotizes them with glowing red eyes.
While we would not be seeing the Cadejos on this night, there would be plenty of canines at the Lake Elsinore Diamond. It was a Bark ‘n’ Brew Monday, where dogs can come to the ballpark for free and watch their owners enjoy $5 craft beers. There were also volunteers from Animal Friends of the Valley on the concourse looking to find good homes for rescued dogs. All in all, their were plenty of very good dogs in attendance.
I had purchased a High Top Table seat, which makes it easy and comfortable to manage your food and drinks while watching the game. The fancy seats in this section sport the glowering eyes of the Storm logo. I sat perched in the very front of this section, with a good view of both home plate and the collection of scouts in front of me tapping away on their laptops and iPads.
For the second game in a row, the home team’s opponent would be the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the first-half champion in the Southern division of the California League. The Storm were off to a promising 3-1 start in the second half and would counter with starting pitcher Elliot Ashbeck, who only started eight games out of his 33 appearances for Lake Elsinore in 2019.
As a Padres fan, I was hoping to see top prospect Mackensie Gore, who shut down the league with an incredible 1.02 ERA in 15 starts for the Storm before being moved up to the AA Amarillo Sod Poodles. (Yes, Sod Poodles. It’s an old-timey nickname for prairie dogs.)
Early second-half standings
Still, Ashbeck, a 16th round pick in 2015 out of Bradley University, was in the middle of an impressive season of his own. He would finish his year with Lake Elsinore sporting a 2.95 ERA in 103 2/3 innings.
Unfortunately, his start against the Quakes would be his ugliest outing of the year by far.
The damage first came in drips. Ashbeck gave up a run on two singles and a walk in the first inning, then another run in the second, a run in the third, and a run in the fourth. He was letting a lot of runners on base, walking a tightrope in every inning. The big trouble came in the fifth, when Ashbeck surrendered two walks, a double, and a home run by Quakes DH Niko Hulsizer. His final line: eight earned runs on 11 hits in just 4 1/3 innings.
Elliot Ashbeck, in happier times
Leo Crawford
Lake Elsinore kept pace early on, scoring a run in the first and three runs in the third off Quakes starter Leo Crawford, a left-hander with a stylishly high leg kick. Crawford would finish the year with a strong 2.81 ERA in 25 games with Rancho Cucamonga and the AA Tulsa Drillers.
Two of the five hits given up by Crawford in those early innings came from Allen Cordoba, who collected a third hit late in the game. The Panamanian infielder has had an incredible, roller-coaster journey through the Major and Minor Leagues. He began his career in 2013 at the age of 17 , playing in the Dominican Summer League for the St. Louis Cardinals organization. Cordoba advanced two years later to the Rookie Short-Season Gulf Coast League, where he hit .342 and was named league MVP. In 2017, he hit .362 and added 22 stolen bases for another Rookie Short-Season team, the Johnson City Cardinals of the Appalachian League — one of the 42 teams expected to lose MLB affiliation for the 2021 season. In those two high-average seasons, Cordoba struck out a total of 39 times, or 9 percent of his at-bats.
Allen Cordoba
Padres General Manager A.J. Preller spotted an opportunity and selected this rising young talent through the Rule 5 Draft, from a league that was two levels below any previous Rule 5 draftee. The move committed Cordoba to playing time in the Major Leagues straight out of Rookie ball. In one year, Cordoba went from busing around the distant ballparks of the Great Appalachian Valley — Bluefield, Elizabethton, Pulaski — to playing in front of 42,000 people in the biggest cities in the country.
The results on the field were predictable: Cordoba struggled in the big leagues, hitting just .208 and striking out 54 times in 100 games. His Rule 5 obligations fulfilled, he was sent down to High-A Lake Elsinore for 2018. He had ascended through six levels of baseball to the Padres, then had been sent down three levels to play in Modesto and Visalia and Stockton. It could not have been easy, and his results did not improve. Cordoba hit just .206 for the Storm. The batter known for getting great contact on the ball had 46 strikeouts against just four walks.
But in 2019, things seemed to turn around for Cordoba. Still just 23 years old, he would hit .301 in a second full season with the Storm, with 127 hits and 32 stolen bases. His wild odyssey may just be back on track.
Nick Kuzia
When reliever Nick Kuzia took over for Elliot Ashcraft in the top of the 5th inning, the Quakes were up 8-4. Kuzia got out of the inning and then threw two more scoreless innings against the hot-hitting Quakes. A 23-year-old who signed with the Padres as an undrafted free agent in 2017, Kuzia would finish 2019 in Lake Elsinore with a 2.02 ERA in 19 games, earning a promotion to AA Amarillo (no really, they really are called the Sod Poodles).
I took a stroll around the ballpark to see the game from different angles as the sun began to set.
Working the sparse crowd on this Monday night was Thunder, the Storm’s mascot. Earlier, Thunder had officiated a spin-until-dizzy-then-hippity-hop-ball race and an apple-bobbing-human-wheelbarrow race between innings. Now, up in the stands and, well, being a dog, Thunder made a connection with several of the pups in attendance.
The scoring went quiet for a few innings. In the top of the ninth, Quakes catcher Connor Wong — who had hit a grand slam the day before in Lancaster — tripled for his third hit in the game to score two runs and give Rancho Cucamonga a 10-4 lead. Lake Elsinore rallied a bit in the bottom of the ninth, thanks to four singles and two wild pitches, but ultimately fell short, losing 10-6.
Quakes reliever Connor Strain warms up before pitching a scoreless 8th inning
The Storm would get their revenge. They made the playoffs and beat the Quakes 3-1 in the best-of-five California League semifinal series, including an 11-2 stomping in the deciding Game 4. They even took the first game of the best-of-five finals against the Visalia Rawhide before Visalia prevailed in three straight close contests to claim the 2019 California League title.
It had been a busy couple of days on the baseball diamond. In two games — both involving the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes — I had seen 33 runs on 48 hits, a lot of raucous California League action. I still had four more ballgames in the next four days, beginning with a trip back up to the big leagues to see the Los Angeles Angels.
