How we got here,
July 24th, 1973
After coming out of the gate to start the season at 7-3, the Expos hit the hard reality of a team that just might not have enough offense to win themselves many ball games. In the 12 losses to start the season to May 4th, the Expos scored 2 or less runs in all of them. In 4 the Expos were shut out and in 6 they only scored 1 run. The Expos were sucking so bad at the plate, someone had to pay an it was Hitting Coach
Jeremiah Pigram that got fired on May 5th.
The Expos hired a new hitting coach on May 7th,
Brendan Ward. The 47 year old had a good reputation as a hitting coach. The Expos club house needed some fine tuning as well. With the Expos on the skids the rats showed their faces. The Expos made a few moves to clean up the room. First to go was CL
Ian Daniel and SP
Jason Umoh. Both known to be less then stellar team mates got moved to the Orioles in exchange for prospects RF
David Haynes (75th ranked in MLB) and 2B
Chris Nichols (63rd ranked in MLB in 1970) were the prominent pieces coming back. A few days later it was C
Max Burton's turn to go, Burton had a reputation of being a me-first kind of guy. The Expos got a back up for 1B
Carlson in 34 year old
Juan Chapa. Chapa had 48 career HRs since 1969 in the MLB and will be used mostly as a pinch hitter and give Carlson some days off. Last but not least they got rid of SS
DJ Martinez, who some times looked a little lazy for the Expos. They got back a solid MR in
Juan Barrios. Although the Expos made some moves to improve the hitting and clubhouse by May 29th they were in last place in the NL East.
The Expos hitting slightly improved over the next month or so and by the beginning of July .500 ball was in sight, aided by a 9 game winning streak. The Expos went out and extended 1B
Cory Carlson to a 3 year deal worth $16.5 M but it became very apparent that the Expos were not going to be resigning the prized possession, SP
Aaron Cregg. Cregg is looking for about $25 M per season over 8 years and that is too rich for the Expos coffers. The count down of Cregg's last days was on......
The day the Expos faithful were hoping that could be avoided finally came. On July 5th, the Expos consumated a deal with the Padres that would send SP
Aaron Cregg in exchange for SP
Jamari Taft, and 3 young minor league prospects. Cregg was on his way to perhaps his best season of his career. He was 9-4 with a 1.66 ERA in 16 starts. The piece that the Expos got back is a potential 1st or 2nd man in the rotation, 25 year old
Taft. Our scout thinks he is a potential superstar, he has 4 quality pitches and can tap the radar gun at around 97 mph. In April he was named the 7th overall prospect in the MLB. On July 12th the Expos extended 2B
Fernando Martinez to a 3 year, $18.0 M deal. The Expos bats began to warm up and they had a 19 and 20 hit game in July so far. The Expos spend most of the season in last place in runs scored, HR's and batting average but find themselves in 10th for runs scored, 7th for batting average and 7th for HRs. The Expos did take 2 out of 3 head to head with the Cardinals and won the first 2 by scores of 7-2 and 14-1 last week.
So the Expos are 2 games back with 10 games to go......but have no head to head games left with any of the teams ahead of them. Here we go...........