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By BILL SAVAGE; Times Leader Sports Writer
Monday, May 02, 1994     Page: 6C QUICK WORDS: ROUGH WEEKEND OVER FOR
BARONS

MOOSIC — If nothing else, the Red Barons spent this weekend receiving a
crash course on exactly the type of baseball team they would like to be at
some point in the 1994 season.
   
“We’ve seen Charlotte, we’ve seen Columbus and we’ve seen these guys,” said
Scranton/Wilkes-Barre manager Mike Quade after Pawtucket completed a
three-game sweep of his team with a 5-1 victory at Lackawanna County Stadium
Sunday.
    “This is the most complete club I’ve seen,” he added. “If this club stays
intact, they’re going to be tough all year.
   
“And if we want to measure where we’ve got to be, well, we’ve got to stack
up against this club.”
   
On Sunday, before a season-high Bat Day crowd of 8,045, the Red Barons were
completely overwhelmed by 21-year old Frank Rodriguez, a native of Brooklyn,
N.Y., who held them scoreless until the ninth inning.
   
Rodriguez, in fact, became the third pitcher on the Red Barons’ 10-game
homestand to strike out 10 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre batters in a game.
   
Meanwhile, Pawtucket’s hitters pounded out four runs against Bobby Munoz in
the fourth inning and added another in the seventh, completing a 31-6
three-game domination of the Red Barons.
   
Pawtucket won its sixth straight and improved to 19-5.
   
“We got a great mix of everything,” said Pawtucket manager Buddy Bailey,
whose team now has a nine-game lead over the Red Barons in the International
League East. “We can’t sit here and lie. We have to be among the league
leaders in runs scored, we’ve had good pitching and the one thing that doesn’t
show up in the boxscore is we’ve had good defense.”
   
On the other hand, the Red Barons fell to 8-12 and completed their 10-game
homestand with a 4-6 record. They are now 4-11 at home and today begin a
critical 12-game road trip to three cities against teams with a combined
record of 39-27.
   
“When you’re going good … it seems like the foul lines stretch out four
or five feet and I’m sure Mike thinks that the foul lines were narrowed a bit
the past couple of days,” Bailey said.
   
Quade could be excused for thinking the walls were closing in on him on
Sunday.
   
As he packed up for the road trip that begins at Charlotte tonight, he had
to figure out what to do to replace injured second baseman Kevin Jordan, as
well as to deal with the possibility that Sunday’s injury to Philadelphia
center fielder Len Dykstra could affect his club.
   
“I went through a lot of this last year but, strangely enough, most of the
changes last year were pitching changes in Ottawa,” said Quade, comparing his
Ottawa team’s slow start last year to this year’s troubles by the Red Barons.
   
“That seemed to be a lot easier to deal with than losing regulars.”
   
Munoz, 1-2 since joining the Red Barons from Philadelphia, battled
Rodriguez through three scoreless innings before Pawtucket nailed him in the
fourth.
   
After a leadoff single, Greg Blosser reached on a catcher’s interference
against Mike Lieberthal, just back from two weeks of inactivity due to a wrist
injury.
   
The next two batters drove in runs with hits, another scored on a wild
pitch, and then a sacrifice fly added a fourth run.
   
After George Pedre led off the seventh with a double, Munoz was replaced by
Toby Borland and Pedre came around to score Pawtucket’s final run.
   
Rodriguez took a no-hitter into the fourth and a one-hitter into the sixth.
He had a shutout going into the ninth, but three singles — including an RBI
shot by Liebethal — ended that.
   
However, he struck out Tom Quinlan to join Dave Mlicki and Jason Grimsley
of Charlotte in fanning 10 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre hitters on the homestand.
   
“That’s one of the best performances I’ve seen by a young pitcher in a long
time,” Quade said of Rodriguez. “If that kid can continue to throw the ball
with that level of consistency, he’s going to make a lot of money in this
game.”
   
Pawtucket swept the Red Barons in an early-season series at Lackawanna
County Stadium last year, then lost five of its next six games here.
   
However, that club was not as highly-regarded as this one, which came into
the series with the best record in Class AAA baseball and the second-best
(behind Class A Savannah) in all of the minor leagues.