[Westheim]

Raccoons (14-10) vs. Indians (12-13)

The series started with Christopher Powell (2-3, 5.70 ERA) facing the so far unknown (to us at least) lefty Todd McKenzie (1-1, 2.35 ERA), whom my scouts described as a marginal back end of rotation starter at best. The Raccoons took an early 2-0 lead in the first two innings, which Powell held on to, until the sixth. An error by Bowling helped the Indians to plate three and Powell suddenly was on the hook. His team missed all their chances to score a sufficient amount of runs. Powell surrendered a homer to Esteban Hernandez and Fletcher Kelley added another home run and the Raccoons lost 5-3. White 2-3, 2 BB; Workman 2-5, RBI; Dawson 2-5, 2B; Powell 6.2 IP, 8 H, 4 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 7 K;

Logan Evans walked the bases full before he ever got an out to start game 2. One run scored to get the Indians 1-0 ahead. I was already foaming. Evans then added seven zeros to the scoreboard. The only problem was that the Raccoons were zeroed through seven entirely. Bottom 8th: Jayson Bowling doubled for only the third hit of the team in the game. Green would have been next, but was yanked for Borjón, who pinch hit an RBI double to right center and tied the game, but Dicks (PH for Evans) and Alex White could not score Borjón. The game went to extra innings. Wally Gaston was on the verge of losing it in the 10th, but battled through, then walked two in the 11th and was taken out for Grant West. He walked the bases full, then struck out the next two batters to keep the Indians off the board. West pitched two more innings (with only Moran ready and rested) and finally picked up the win, when Enrique Sanchez homered to center in the bottom 13th, 2-1 Raccoons. Only nine hits for the Raccoons in the entire game. Borjón (PH) 2-2, BB, 2B, RBI; Evans 8.0 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 5 BB, 4 K; West 2.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 K, W;

Now that our lame offense had made Gaston and West unavailable for days, we could enter the last two games of the series happily knowing we were about to get slaughtered. Shayne Nealon (3-0, 5.56 ERA; you have to admire those numbers) was up. Green batted .135, but remained in. Borjón was back in for Short. Of course, would it matter? The opponent was ace Billy Robinson (3-2, 2.20 ERA), whose command was not quite there yet this season.

No, Robinson was not quite the Robinson from the last few years. The Raccoons put a big fat 8 on the scoreboard in the second inning on five hits and three walks. To be fair, only one run was earned. Angelo Duarte had made a critical error on a double play ball early on in the barrage. Never mind, the Raccoons led 8-0. Nealon batted in a run in the third and 1-hit the Indians through six, with the only run against him unearned after a passed ball, but then jammed in the seventh. He hit a batter to bring in a run and was gone. Taylor and Cunningham got out of the jam with another run across, but the Raccoons still led 10-3. Cunningham had an unusually shoddy outing, walking three over 1.1 innings. Moran surrendered a home run in the ninth. Raccoons won, 10-4. Workman 3-5, 2B, 2 RBI; Dawson 2-4, 2B, 2 RBI; Thompson 2-4; Bowling 2-4, RBI;

Kan faced Alex Miranda in the last game. In a 1-1 game, Borjón was thrown out at the plate to end the bottom 4th. Alex White doubled in Kan, who had reached on an error, in the bottom 5th. Up 3-1 in the ninth, I still sent out West, who was clubbed with a 2-run shot by Orlando Torres. The Raccoons would pay big for this over the next days, since it set up a marathon extra-inning struggle. Moran pitched three scoreless innings. Gaston pitched four scoreless innings. Then we were done and had to bring Yoelbi Maurinha. Maurinha and the Raccoons lost it, 4-3, in the 19th inning. Nine hits in 19 innings.

The offense was awful. They lost the division lead to the Titans and completely wrecked the pen for the next games.

We needed another arm in the pen for the next few days. Jerry Ackerman was called up for Brandon Roland. The latter had gotten a start in this fourth game and had batted in a run, but overall had gone 1-7 and I *needed* another arm.

Raccoons (16-12) @ Capitals (15-14)

We had not played the Capitals since 1979 and were a total of 2-4 against them.

Maurinha was unavailable for his scheduled start, and we went back to the top of the rotation and Christopher Powell. The Capitals had the worst rotation in the Federal League with an average ERA of 5.01, but they had a good pen and a strong offense, and that last point was especially worrying.

Powell was shelled for three runs in the first. Why? I don’t know. The Capitals hit line drive after line drive and then Seitaro Ine hit a looper right between three onrushing fielders to score the last two runs. Powell was again battered, six runs in 5.2 innings. The Raccoons lost 6-4, Ackerman pitched the last 2.1 innings in relief. White 2-3, BB;

Dawson was not hitting anything, Workman was not hitting anything, Sanchez and White were cold, the infield sucked big time, and Powell was getting raped week in, week out. How they were still over .500 was a mystery. But this was interleague play, and they had always been terrible in interleague play: 40-69 (.367) overall, even below their poor .414 overall record;

Evans went against Dave Miron in game 2, a guy with an ERA over seven, who walked six in his outing, and they still didn’t get a lead. The game was 2-2 after six. Dawson had runners on the corners with one out in the seventh. He sent a slow grounder to second, but the Capitals could not execute properly and a run scored when Dawson was safe at first. West saved the 3-2 win in an intense bottom 9th, where Jeffery Brown led off with a bunt base hit. Brown got all the way to third on groundouts. Ron Morgan launched a shot to deep center, which Borjón JUST got his glove on. White 2-4, BB, 2B; Sanchez 2-5, RBI;

Winston Thompson injured his hand on a play and was day to day for at least a few days. This removed a .304 bat from the lineup, just what I needed.

Game 3, another guy with an ERA over seven, Albert Villa (1-3, 7.76 ERA). Neither Villa, nor Nealon got past the fourth inning, with the Raccoons holding a tiny 5-4 lead. Fletcher Kelley surrendered a homer to Jesse Whiteaway in the sixth and the lead was no more. The top 9th got the Raccoons a big chance. They loaded the bags with nobody out. Bowling dipped a single into shallow left. Green struck out (trouble…), but Gonzalez walked, 7-5, and they scored four more in the destruction of the Capitals pen (which had been supposed to be great). 11-5 Raccoons. Jason White got the win in relief. White 2-4, 2 BB; Workman 2-4, 2 BB, 2 RBI; Sanchez 3-5, BB, 2 2B, 2 RBI; Bowling 2-5, RBI; Dicks (PH) 1-1, RBI;

Raccoons (18-13) vs. Stars (21-10)

The Stars were awesome. They had four players hitting .319 or more. They were top 5 in the Federal League in all offensive categories. The average pitching could not keep them under .500, they had the best record in baseball going into this series – this was a major test for the true strength of those Raccoons.

We made another roster move. Carlos Moran (0-1, 7.94 ERA) was sent to AAA and we called up INF Bob Davis. Davis was best at first, but could play all infield positions well. We had claimed him off waivers by the Knights three years ago, but he had never made it to the major league roster.

Talk about average pitching. Kiyohira Sasaki took a no-hitter for the Stars into the seventh, until Mark Dawson singled to center. The team was down 1-0 by then. They lost 2-0 in a complete game outing by Kan, and got the winning run to the plate in the ninth, but ultimately were left to three hits. Dawson 2-4;

Steve Walker came off the DL and replaced not-hitting outfielder Fernando Perez on the roster. Since Bowling was suited better to play second, Walker entered the lineup playing shortstop.

The second game was scoreless through four (and with only one hit, too). The Raccoons got two on with one out, and the Stars failed to get an out on Yoelbi Maurinha’s bunt. Next, Alex White worked a walk and the Raccoons were ahead, but scored only that one run. Maurinha’s bid on a no-hitter went down the drain in the sixth with a double to left center. The next hit off Maurinha was a 2-run shot by Bobby Brewster. The Raccoons were done. They had the bags full with one out in the bottom 8th and as always didn’t score, and then Gaston and White were mauled for five runs in the ninth. Hits: 9-7 Raccoons; Runs: 7-1 Stars. Bowling 3-4;

Powell was in for game 3, and that didn’t mean any good things this year. Sanchez homered in the first to get the team 1-0 ahead, but Powell also surrendered a home run to tie in the second. The game remained tied and the Raccoons botched big chances to score in the sixth and seventh innings (corners, one out, or worse). Errors by Bowling and Green in the ninth almost cost the game there. The Raccoons walked off in the 11th on a moon shot by Mark Dawson, 3-1 Raccoons. White 2-5, 2B; Workman 2-5; Walker 3-4, 2B;

This was our fourth interleague series against the Stars. The Raccoons have lost all of them. Maybe a .324 team was more theirs to beat?

Raccoons (19-15) vs. Crusaders (11-23)

Even a .324 team was too much for them. Evans took the loss in the first game, 3-1 Crusaders. Walker had three hits, the rest of the team also had three, they didn’t get anything together.

Our $2.575M man Shayne Nealon was destroyed for five runs in the first inning of game 2. That was already more than enough damage to lose that game as well. 6-3 Crusaders, although the Raccoons even had more hits than them. Still, they didn’t get their runners in. Nobody was hitting clutch, and the pitching was mediocre at best.

Mark Dawson provided some offense with two home runs in the last game of the season that got the Raccoons up 5-3 with Kinji Kan on the mound. With the way the pen had been abused the last week or so, Grant West came out to pitch two innings for a save – but didn’t get it. A Jayson Bowling error wrecked everything, two runs scored in the ninth. Steve Walker walked the Raccoons off in the ninth, 6-5, but still … still … White 2-5, 2B, RBI; Workman 2-4, BB, RBI; Walker 3-5, RBI; Dawson 3-4, 2 HR, 3 RBI; Short (PH) 1-1, 2B;

That was already Grant West’s third blown save this year. He was not as automatic as last year, although this crap here had not been of his making.

In other news

May 2 – The Knights are 3-hit in a 7-0 loss to Oklahoma City and their starter Ken O’Hoey (2-0, 1.06 ERA).
May 2 – The Stars chop through the Scorpions, 13-8, greatly aided by their CF Gabriel Cruz. The 25-yr old logged six hits in the game, including four doubles for 7 RBI.
May 2 – Cyclones infielder Jeremiah Carrell just can’t stay healthy: the 31-yr old is out with shoulder tendinitis. A perennial .330+ hitter, he had a slow start at .280, 0 HR, 11 RBI.
May 8 – Last season’s CL MVP, ATL OF Engjell Vulaj, 28, is out for a month after suffering a wrist injury in an on base collision. Vulaj is batting only .240 with 2 HR and 17 RBI this year.
May 10 – The Aces blank the Capitals 5-0. Their starter Matt Carter (4-1, 3.94 ERA) tosses a 3-hitter.
May 14 – NAS SP Robert Sawyer (3-1, 3.28 ERA) hurls a 2-hitter in a 4-0 win over the Buffaloes.

Complaints and stuff

These were two awful weeks… the 6-7 record didn’t tell the truth. They have an incredibly hard time to score runs. They scored 3.8 R/G the last two weeks. But this included two routs of the Indians and Capitals, a collapsing pen once, and the other was a defensive disaster aided by three walks in an 8-bash inning.

The rotation is terrible. Maurinha is inconsistent, but Powell and Nealon get outright raped on the mound. And it just does not get better.

Loggers, Thunder, Condors, Aces are next, all except Oklahoma City on the road. The Loggers are just resurging after a slump. The Raccoons are slumping.

Next: draft pool;