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Finally a Winning Week and a Winning Streak
It took awhile, but finally the Dynamo's had a winning week going 4-3. We also had and are still riding our now season high 2 game winning streak as we won the last 2 games of the week. With the wins our record now stands at 9-24 on the season and we are just 2.5 games out of 7th place as the Philadelphia Keystones are struggling almost as much as we are.
So what turned it around for us this week? SP Chuck Murphy (who was a 1st round draft pick in 1930 going 12th to the Montreal Saints. He was then traded to Brooklyn by the Saints in the ill-fated trade that sent SP Milt Fritz to the Saints for a package of players 3B John Langille, CF Bill May, SP Murphy and a 1st round pick. Brooklyn did well in that trade with May and Langille, but gave up on Murphy and shipped him to the Chicago Chiefs for a 4th round pick before we picked him up on waivers a couple of weeks ago) went 2-0 with a 1.50 ERA. Murphy (27) has never found the success that his high draft pick slot and overall prospect rating promised (he was once the #19 prospect overall). His career record before coming to Detroit was just 5-13 with a 5.20 ERA. Will he be finally able to live up to the hype? There are many doubters but one never knows. If he can find his form, he isn't too old to break out.
Besides Murphy our pitching overall returned to the better than expected levels (and then some) after a brief hiatus last week. The pitching staff had a 3.06 ERA in our 7 games and if we could find a consistent offense, who knows how many we could have won with that effort. SP Chuck Calvert is still looking for his first win of the season, but it is not entirely his fault. In his start this past week Calvert threw 10 solid innings giving up just 3 runs and yet we lost the game in 13 innings 5-4 (vs Boston). On the season he is 0-4 with an ERA that grew substantially last week and is at 4.31, but if you throw out a bad start he is under 4.00 for the season.
The offense continues to be the enigma for us. While we scored 31 runs (4.4 rpg) which is up, we are still only a FABL worst 3.6 on the season. Now that is greatly up from the horrendous opening two weeks where we barely scored over 2 RPG, but it is still not enough to be competitive in today's game.
We saw a true test of our pitching endurance this week with our home games against Pittsburgh on Thursday and Boston on Friday. A combined 30 innings between those 2 games which we split.
This week's Leaders
SP Chuck Murphy 2-0 1.50 ERA 2GS 18IP 8H 3ER
SP Chuck Calvert 0-0 2.70 ERA 1GS 10IP 11H 3ER
RF Howard Moss 385/514/1168 OPS+199 HR, 5 RBI 7R
3B Chief Raymond 370/433/989 OPS+153 HR 7 RBI 3R
SS Slim Bloom 333/355/855 OPS+ 118 HR RBI 6R
Week Results
Monday May 11th @ New York 8-2 Win
Tuesday May 12th vs Pittsburgh 15-1 Loss
Wednesday May 13th vs Pittsburgh 9-4 Loss
Thursday May 14th vs Pittsburgh 7-6 Win (17)
Friday May 15th vs Boston 5-4 Loss (13)
Saturday May 16th vs Boston 3-2 Win
Sunday May 17th vs Philadelphia 9-3 Win
Roster Moves
We made a lot of moves in the organization this week including another trade. We sent a 6th round pick to New York for OF Pete Thomas we I drafted several years ago in Cleveland. He was traded to New York in the deal that brought 1B Max Morris back home to Cleveland. With the Gotham's loaded outfield mix he hasn't been able to break through, but he will get a chance to play here.
In order to make room for Thomas we decided to return Rule 5 OF Joel Goodwin to the Montreal Saints. Goodwin didn't get a lot of opportunities and if we hadn't made some many deals he would have had a shot at sticking for the year. But he was only 1-14 in the limited action that he saw and despite his "Demon of Demopolis" nickname, he had fallen way down the prospect rankings.
Also making his first (and probably brief) stay in Detroit is P John Briel. He will get a shot at starting this week in a game but expectations aren't high even though the fans seem to like him. He was a waiver claim from Pittsburgh so we need to get a look at him. Making room for him with the arrival of OF Thomas, we decided to send OF John Cannon back to Newark.
Minor League News
In minor league moves we released P Al Allen (from Biloxi) and C Jim Harrison (from Newark). The biggest news of the week for the minor league organization was the promotion of 1935 draft choice SP Ike O'Donnell from Biloxi (C) to Chattanooga (B). In Biloxi he had been 3-0 with 0.35 ERA in 4GS and 26 IP's. The only real knock on him in Biloxi was really just a lack of stamina which we hope to build up in him.
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