Originally posted by joshuaaaaaa
Incidentally, josh is one of the more prolific writers in the MBBA. He's doing team news all the time, so you can expect to see plenty of issues of Long Bitching in this dynasty!
The Surfers didn't play great ball to open July, going only 5-4, however with Seattle going 4-5, Long Beach has moved back into a 1st place tie in the FLP. The Surfers opened the month beating Birmingham before losing 2 of 3 to both Montreal and Des Moines before bouncing back to win a pair over Las Vegas. The Surfers were outscored 44-39 over the 9 games, giving up 5 runs or more in each of the last 6 games.
Donnie Rotten,
David Hulse,
Adrian Cabrera,
Ice Cube and
Oscar Mazzarella are all hitting .300 or better in early July, with Cube (.355/.474/.613) and Mazz (.407/.448/.778) leading the way. On the flip side, there's
Billy Ashley (.148/.233/.148) and
Ted Sale (.226/.359/.355). The team is concerned about Sale, as he's not hitting much for power or average this year. His OBP (.380) is excellent, however he's not the offensive leader that he has been in the past. Thankfully, Mazz seems to be having his breakout year, with his highest ever average and OBP.
On the pitching front,
Sam Morton is really struggling and could soon find himself out of the rotation. He's 1-7 in his last 10 starts. He hasn't pitched horribly in most of them, he just pitches well enough to lose.
Charlie Lindquist is tearing it up at AAA (4-1, 1.68 ERA, 0.99 WHIP) and could find himself back on the big club soon (
we erroneously said that Lindquist was struggling at AAA last column, because we can't tell the difference between MBBA and AAA stats sometimes). The jury is still out on
Ash Sorrels and he doesn't have a hugely high ceiling, so he's unlikely to ever be more than a 4th or 5th starter.
Curt Wilson walks way to many batters (51 in 101 innings), and he's still pitching well enough to keep the team in games, as reflected by his 7-6 record. He's another symptom of the team having a very strong #1 and #2, then hoping that they get a decent game out of #3 - #5.
Last year's #1 pick,
Ramon Ayala is making great strides at AAA and could also be called up in the very near future. His biggest accomplishment was pitching a perfect game against the Mesa Tables on June 30. He also has a 2 hit shutout with 14 strikeouts to his credit this year. In addition, he's pitched 8 or more innings in 18 of his 21 starts this season, and one of the 3 where he didn't he went 7 innings. Yeah, I think he's being called up soon.
23-23 in save opportunities.
11-4, 3.05 ERA, 1.29 WHIP. Not bad for a 36 year old.
Through the middle 10 days of June, the Surfers play 1 more in Las Vegas, then come home to face Buffalo for 3. After that its a flight to New Orleans for a quick 3 game set with the Crawdads before returning home to play Atlantic City in a 3 game set.