Lets start with some old news, hot off the press yesterday… First, top 5 NL All-Star vote getters thus far –
Tom Franzone (Pittsburgh; 3.28mm), Otto Isaac (Los Angeles; 3.07mm), Rich Hamilton (Brooklyn; 2.93mm), Harlem Peterson (Montreal; 2.93mm), and Palmer Parker (Philly; 2.85mm). Second, some weekly award winners –
Buffalo’s 1B Benjamin Herrera earned the AL nod with a 12 for 24 week that included a long ball and 9 total RBI, and
Mexico City’s LF David Pritcher held it down for the NL with a .833 AVG, 3 JACKS, and 5 RBI. Third, peep the top 5 in the weekly PR…
Los Angeles Leopards (126.1)
Brooklyn Citizens (113.0)
Las Vegas Outlaws (105.9)
Miami Herons (100.7)
Salt Lake City Alpines (99.6)
Miami Herons (42-37, .532, 4th NL East) @ Los Angeles Leopards (49-27, .644, 1st NL West)
The Herons saw their stock rise some last week, moving all the way up to 4th on the Weekly PR after navigating a phenomenal 6-1 home stand (8-1 if you include the last two days of the previous week). They have the unfortunate distinction of being a pretty good club in a division with plenty of those, have the 3rd ranked offense in the NL (ours is currently ranked 4th), and can toss it around a little bit as evidenced by their 6th ranked staff. They’re led by
Ace Cathal Magill, though he’s struggled to dial it in so far at 4-5 with a 4.15 ERA, and
2B Telma Tavares who’s operating at a superstar clip with a .312/.389/.482 slash, 8 JACKS, 7 SB’s, a 146 wRC+, and 3.3 in WAR so far. They are, no doubt, a club on a come up, one that may be coming in a bit ahead of schedule, but who is formidable and able to compete with any club, anywhere, nonetheless. We both are entering this set on 8-2 records over our last ten, the good times are rolling, and, after their visit to Los Angeles one of us will be off the good stuff and trying to figure out what happened. Let’s hope it’s not us in need of some serious introspection and self-reflection after this set.
But, first… a trade: the Dallas Chaparrals, last in the AL West and likely throwing in the towel on 2078, have traded 32-year-old, 2-time All-Star,
SP Tommy Mathieu (Ovr: 60) to the Boston Shamrocks for a couple of low-key prospects in
2B Clinton Testa (Pot: 45) and
RHP Jacob Amero (Pot: 38). Boston, even with a poor 37-38 record so far, is only one game of Charlotte’s pace in the AL East… so, this could do the trick.
77 of 162: Nacho Valadez (2-8, 5.91) @ Stephen Estevez (6-1, 1.90)
Win, 8-5. Manuel Soto, who seems to have finally secured his footing since being called up, came out gangbusters for us tonight – 1 for 2 as a late substitute, with that 1 being the game-winning, 2-run DING DONG, putting us up 6-5 at the time.
Satoru Ono and
Otto joined
Soto with homers of their own,
Ethan went 3 for 4 with an RBI and a run, and
Hamza drove one in on a double during a 2 for 3 day at the plate.
Estevez struggled against the Herons, giving up 5 earned over as many inning and seeing two TRUCKS leave the yard on his watch, but the pen came up smelling roses with
Igarashi cutting his ERA to 6.44 after 2.1 innings of scoreless work to get the win, and
Turnbull putting it down something fierce to earn his 27th save on a laborious 20 pitches… not pretty this time, just effective.
Elsewhere: Hanford, California’s finest, who is currently plying his trade with the Gainesville Gamecocks in the Bush League,
RF Shock Vaughan had himself something of a game against the Nolanville ‘Nauts as he put up a 2 for 4 line with 2 DING DONGS, 6 RBI, and 3 runs to lead his club to a RESOUNDING 13-0 victory.
78 of 162: Cathal Magill (4-5, 4.15) @ Peter Garcia (5-2, 3.89)
Win, 5-3. We’d persevere in a close one as
OH HONG drove in three during a 4-run bottom of the 7th with a bases-clearing double that was the difference maker for us…
Dom Cooke also drove two in on a single,
Major Hansen, who came in for a struggling
Peter Garcia to start the 6th, earned his first win of the year on 3 innings of no hit ball, and
Turnbull, the workhorse, turned out for us once again with another laborious 24-pitch save.
We need to give this guy a break, and soon, as he’s due to blow one of these if we keep sending him out there…
Injury Update: Trev Anderson is eligible to come of the IL… we’ll be sending him to Compton for some rehab before mixing things up on the Big Club… look, we got a good thing going right now, and, while Trev is a HUGE part of that, we are in a position where rushing things is unnecessary. Let’s hope that he understands and that he doesn’t mind taking a seat on that rickety old bus we use to get the team to most of their road games… Meanwhile – we got news that
HAMZA will be day-to-day with a sprained knee. Not great… we’ll actually let him rehab on the IL and bring up
SS Hetereki Ailani in his stead for a stretch.
79 of 162: Mike Clendenin (6-5, 3.56) @ Merl Crawford (7-2, 2.12)
Win, 10-4. Clendenin did his level best to give his Herons a chance and held us scoreless over 5 innings of work, but once we got to their pen that was all she wrote as we’d blow it up during a 7-run bottom of the 8th to put another SWEEP on the books.
Ernie Sparacino, getting the start at SS in
HAMZA’s absence, went 3 for 3 with two, two-baggers, an RBI, and a run,
Kumar Bovie hit a 2-run dinger to open the flood gates during that fateful bottom of the 8th, and both
OH HONG & SATORU ONO would put balls out to add to the cause.
RP Grumpy Losito earned the win, his 5th on the year, in only 1.1 innings of work and 13 total pitches for us after we got yet another spotty start out of our rotation with
Merl letting Miami put three bad ones on us before the end of the 3rd.
Some more roster moves… LF Andy Shepard is back from the IL, we’ll slot him back into the thick of it on the big club which means that your boy,
Manuel Soto will be heading back to Compton. I’ll likely
throw him up on the trading block as we get closer to the deadline as he doesn’t really factor into my long-term plans and has improved his stock recently with his good run of form.
Record: 52-27, .658, 1st NL West
Up Next: San Jose heads our way for a no hold barred cage match with death on the line…