(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
 Rob Cordemans writes history with 200th win
Nederlands
 AMSTERDAM (Neth.) -
Rob Cordemans wrote history on Friday-evening (September 4).
The 45-year old veteran righthander added another chapter to his already impressive career, as he won his 200th regular season-game.
...Rob Cordemans...
...200 wins, 2.000 StrikeOuts, 2.000 Innings Pitched...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
On Friday-evening, L&D Amsterdam Pirates hosted Silicon Storks in the opener of their 3-game series, which rained out on Thursday.
Cordemans was announced as starting pitcher for Pirates for Thursday's game.
While the game was delayed one day, Cordemans now took the mound on Friday.
In Friday's game, Amsterdam Pirates scored twice in the second inning and added four runs in the third at bat.
That not only gave Pirates an early and comfortable 6-0 lead, it also gave Cordemans room to work with.
His team rallied for five more runs in the fourth inning.
Storks got one baserunner in each of the first three innings off of Cordemans, but all stranded on first base.
He retired the side in the fourth inning.
With Amsterdam Pirates leading 11-0, the righthander returned to the mound in the top of the fifth inning to complete the required five innings a starter needs to throw to become the winning pitcher.
In the fifth, Storks got its first runner in scoring position after an error and an one-out single.
With runners on first and second base, Cordemans struckout his fourth batter.
A force play then ended the inning.
With that, at 9:09 PM, the fifth inning Cordemans needed to become the pitcher-of-record ended.
He now had to wait for the final out in the game.
Nick Veltkamp and Matz Schutte threw the sixth and seventh inning in the 11-0 victory.
And at 9:38 PM, the 200th win for Cordemans was in the books.
Tonight was the final chance for Cordemans to reach the milestone this season, as this was his final start of the regular season for Pirates.
In case Cordemans would not be the winning pitcher tonight, he would have to wait until next season to reach the mark.
Of course, Cordemans will make more appearances for Pirates in the upcoming weeks, but these won't count in his career-totals, as they will be done in the post-season.
In his previous start last Thursday, Cordemans threw three innings to reach the 2.000 innings pitched mark (he now has 2.006).
The record of innings pitched is 2.282 and is held by Bart Volkerijk.
A week earlier, Cordemans broke another old Volkerijk-record when he appeared in his 334th game as a pitcher.
The old record was 333.
Cordemans had a chance to record the 200th win in his first start of the season.
On July 23, which was Opening Night, the righthander threw 4 2/3 inning against Curaçao Neptunus with Amsterdam leading 3-1.
He needed only 1/3 inning to become the pitcher-of-record.
However, he was then hit on hit arm by a hard comeback-grounder and left the game.
He returned to the mound almost one month later.
With his 200th win, Cordemans not only becomes the first picher in Dutch baseball-history to reach this milestone.
He also became the first pitcher with 200 wins, 2.000 strikeouts and 2.000 innings pitched.
He reached the 2.000 strikeout milestone last season.
(September 4)
|
