[pauwoo]

We reactivated Stephen Estevez from his suspension yesterday… Ignazio was the unlucky one here as he’ll head back to Compton (or elsewhere as he was DFA’D & placed on waivers).

Las Vegas Outlaws (35-26, .574, 4th NL West) @ Los Angeles Leopards (37-24, .607, 2nd NL West)
Currently a victim of plying their trade in such a strong division, the Las Vegas Outlaws are as good as any of the top clubs and better than most… their offense is ranked 1st overall in the National League, 2nd in Average, OBP, OPS, and wOBA with 302 runs so far while their staff ranks somewhere in the middle of the National League. In that respect, they really just need their Ace, Jack Sanchez-Flores, and Long-Reliever Donald Barraza to dial it in a bit for the staff to make an appearance in the top 3 of the league. They arrive in La La Land on something of a tear… 9-1 over their last 10, winners of 6 straight, and the proud owners of a rock-solid +34 RDiff so far… and will look to take advantage of the up & down form we’ve put on display recently. For our part, our mission is clear – we need to hold these guys at arm’s length, keep them from breaching our castle walls, and send them off with their tails tucked firmly between their legs once the dust has settled on this 3-game set.

62 of 162: Jack Sanchez-Flores (5-3, 5.84) @ Stephen Estevez (5-0, 1.92)
Loss, 5-4. More of the same here as we’d get clipped at home by a squad with everything to gain and nothing to lose… The Outlaws would be led offensively by Jaden Utley who went 2 for 4 with a double, a TANK, 3 RBI, and 2 runs, while Sanchez-Flores, in a 6.2 inning, 9 hit, 4 earned outing, would do just enough to leave his club in a position to win this one when he left in the middle of the bottom of the 7th. Estevez looked good in his return from a self-imposed exile with 5.2 innings of 4-hit, 2 earned ball while PEPPER did his level best to get us a win with a 2-run double in the bottom of the 6th that had put us up 4-2 at that point. We just couldn’t get it done, again, as our bullpen gave up the ghost late (Rishon was the culprit once again as he records his 3rd loss of the season and sees his ERA balloon to 7.36) to underscore the point that, here lately, no lead is safe for the La La’s.

63 of 162: Cam Murphy (5-3, 3.19) @ Peter Garcia (3-2, 4.18)
Win, 4-3 (10). We’d require extras to get this one sorted as OH HONG would bring the hometown fans to their feet during the bottom of the 10th as he hit a game-winning, walk off solo truck with two outs already on the board against elite closer Johnny Dial to send Las Vegas off to the showers an emotional, down-trodden, disheveled version of themselves. We’d chip away at them throughout the contest to finally knot things up during the bottom of the 8th off a Satoru Ono solo-shot that would, finally, bring us even with the 3 runs they put up during the top of the very first frame. Garcia was uneven early, obviously, but was eventually able to get things dialed in and go a full 5 frames for us before handing it off to the pen where Major Hansen, Turnbull, and Rishon Shaw would combine for 5 shutout innings to set the table for what would eventually become OH HONG’s game-winning DING DONG. Good stuff… let’s hope the pen can start doing this sort of thing with more regularity.

Elsewhere: An early, National League All-Star voting update… Pittsburgh’s Tom Franzone leads all vote-getters with 1.7mm votes while our own Dom Cooke (leading all Catchers), Hamza (3rd in SS’s), Andy Shepard (3rd in LFers), Otto (leading all CFers), Ethan Mullens (3rd for RFers), Estevez (4th for Starters), Merl (5th for Starters), and Grumpy Losito (5th for Relievers) are all in the mix so far…

64 of 162: Jake Talley (7-1, 3.17) @ Merl Crawford (4-2, 2.51)
Win, 1-0. We’d take the rubber match by the skin of our teeth as Merl twirled a solid, 6.2-inning shutout performance and Kumar Bovie trucked the game-winning solo-shot during the bottom of what was otherwise an uneventful 5th inning. Not much to say here, really… we’d earn the win despite being outhit by the Outlaws 8-3, seeing Hanan commit his 4th fielding flub of the ’78 campaign, and Las Vegas managing to put 9 men in scoring position over the course of the game… story here was another tip-top performance from the pen – Grumpy fanned a guy to close out the 7th, Major Hansen made mincemeat of the Las Vegas lineup with a 3 up, 3 down top of the 8th, and Turnbull, earning his 17th save here, finishing the Outlaws off with a 25-pitch top of the 9th.

Real quick… as I advanced to Monday, I was alerted to the fact that our top dog, Trev Anderson’s recouperation from that pesky little finger blister is taking longer than expected and that our training staff isn’t entirely sure how long it’ll take for him to get back to full strength. So, that’s cool… The weekly awards came out, as is customary, but nothing too exciting there as Toronto’s Dick McTaggart and Pittsburgh’s Mack Ramirez claimed the hardware. ALSO, PR’s came out as well – the experts over at BNN slotted us in at #2 behind the surprisingly effective San Jose Seals… I’ll be spending some time in my condo tonight looking out over the city of Angels with two fingers of whiskey in my cup, Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain on the HiFi, and my phone off the hook…

Record: 39-25, .690, 2nd NL West (now 1 ½ games off SJ’s pace)
Up Next: A quick hop to Phoenix in the morning to meet the team at the Coyotes Den for a quick, 2-game series.