Quick Hitters
Celtics’ Thomas out for rest of playoffs
BOSTON — Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas will miss the rest of the playoffs because of a hip injury, further damaging — if not outright dooming — the team’s chances in the Eastern Conference finals against Cleveland.
The Celtics made the announcement Saturday, a day after Thomas left Game 2 at halftime. The Cavaliers already led by an NBA-record 41 points at that point, and they went on to a 130-86 victory that gave them a 2-0 lead over the top-seeded Celtics in the best-of-seven series.
The Celtics said Thomas injured the hip in March and aggravated it in Game 6 of the East semifinals against Washington. The swelling increased during the first two games against Cleveland, team doctor Brian McKeon said, and Thomas was limping on the court just before halftime on Friday night.
“Isaiah has worked tirelessly to manage this injury since it first occurred,” McKeon said. “In order to avoid more significant long-term damage to his hip, we could no longer allow him to continue.”
Thomas did not travel with the team to Cleveland for Game 3 on Sunday. The Cavaliers could finish off the sweep with victories in Cleveland.
“He was pretty despondent not to be able to play,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said Friday night. “He’s a tough guy, and for him to have to sit is really hard.”
A 5-foot-8 guard who was the last selection in the 2011 NBA draft, Thomas emerged as a star this season, averaging nearly 29 points and leading the league in fourth-quarter scoring.
Last week, he earned All-NBA second team honors, the first Celtics player to be selected to the All-NBA first or second team since Paul Pierce in 2009.
He was scoring 23.3 points per game in the playoffs — including a 53-point game vs. Washington that was one shy of John Havlicek’s franchise postseason record.
Diamondbacks beat Padres
SAN DIEGO — Robbie Ray took a shutout into the eighth inning, David Peralta had four hits, and the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the San Diego Padres 9-1 Saturday night for their fifth straight win.
Ray (3-3) limited the Padres to just two hits and three walks while striking out six in 7 2/3 innings. Tom Wilhelmsen struck out Wil Myers with the bases loaded in the eighth, and J.J. Hoover allowed the Padres’ lone run on an infield single by Allen Cordoba in the ninth.
Paul Goldschmidt had a tworun single in the Diamondbacks’ five-run first inning as the first four batters got hits against Luis Perdomo (0-1). Jake Lamb had an RBI double and Chris Herrmann added a two-run homer in the inning.
Lamb and Chris Owings each had two hits in the game, and only Rey Fuentes went hitless from San Diego’s starting lineup.
Yasmany Tomas had a two-run single in the second and Lamb’s run-scoring single in the fourth made it 8-0. Lamb also scored on a wild pitch in the ninth.
Arizona got off to a fast start for the second straight game, a day after scoring eight runs in the first in the series opener Friday night. The Diamondbacks have outscored the Padres 19-2 in the first two games of the weekend series.
Coaches often shy away from the notion of ranking players within a historical context and using hyperbole and superlatives to do so.
But Cesar Castillo is willing to make a distinction. With eight state-playoff appearances and a .669 overall winning percentage during his 11 years as San Luis High School’s baseball coach, the best player Castillo has ever had on his roster is Ramon Miranda.
“Unmatched,” Castillo said. “He’s definitely the top player that we’ve ever had here. He set the bar high.”
It would be a challenge to make a case against this claim. Miranda, the Yuma Sun/ Yuma Rotary Club Baseball Player of the Year for the second consecutive year, has built up an e x - pert resume in the past four seasons, all of which were spent on varsity.
Miranda — a senior shortstop and pitcher — finished his 107game career on the Sidewinders with a .434 batting average, 125 hits, 85 runs scored, 71 runs batted in, a 1.063 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage), 45 walks and only 14 strikeouts.
Nearly every statistic trended upward each year, culminating in a 2017 campaign in which he had a school-record 51 hits and .531 batting average. He also had a .586 on-base percentage, 1.253 OPS and 31 runs. All of those numbers are among the top 10 in the 6A Conference, the state’s highest level. The hits and average are both atop the leaderboard — with commits to Oregon State, TCU, Arizona State and Oregon right behind him in those categories.
Miranda hit .200 as a freshman, revealing the exceptionalism he showed the next three seasons. He has grown into his body since 2014, upping his weight from 120 pounds to 160, but it was his growing intelligence as a ballplayer that transformed him from an ineffective free-swinger into a difficult at-bat for opposing pitchers.
“I learned more about the game,” Miranda said. “I learned how to control the counts as a hitter. I learned how to pick a pitch and how to read pitches more. … In my four years, I’ve become a smarter player.
“It’s probably practice every