Dallas Chaparrals (17-17, .500, 3rd AL West) @ Los Angeles Leopards (21-13)
The Chaparrals find themselves in 3rd on the AL West table, tied at 17-17 with the Denver Miners, and only 3 games off Portland’s early, 20-14 pace. So far, they’re doing the dirt on offense where they rank 3rd in runs scored, AVG, and wOBA, and 4th in OBP, OPS, and Home Runs with the newly signed former Leopard,
Andy Shepard, settling in nicely with 2 HRs and 12 RBIs since joining the club on April 10th. Ultimately, as we progress through the 2079 campaign, it’s the pitching that will likely be their undoing – already ranked 10th overall in the American League, with a leaky pen that is currently posting a 3.96 ERA (good enough for 11th in the AL), that is backed up by a suspect defensive unit that boasts a poor -2.3 ZR and a shoddy .686 defensive efficiency. They could, with a little creativity, trade some of their blue chip prospects for pitching depth that might be enough to carry them into the postseason as early as this year, but will likely stay the course and bring them up internally with an eye on being a perennial threat in the years to come. For now, their fans will silently suffer through a couple more years of futility before, hopefully, having their patience rewarded with something special.
35 of 162: Teodoro Herrera (2-3, 4.79) @ Ramiro Marte (1-4, 5.51)
Loss, 3-4. The Chaparrals took the lead early in the game, on a 2-run
JACK courtesy of
3B Zach Jobes and would not relinquish it from there as each time we pulled even, they’d find a way to inch ahead until we were out of frames and the tilt was officially sorted.
Teodoro Herrera gave us the business over 8-innings of work, finding a way to move to 3-3 on the year while moving his club above the .500 mark for the season despite giving up homers to
OH HONG and
ONO.
Ramiro Marte drops to 1-5 on the year after allowing 3 earned over 5.1 innings of work due in no small part to our offensive shortcomings, though recent call up,
Chuck Holmes, continues to give a good account of himself with a double and a run to his name in this one.
Elsewhere: Seattle’s
Patrick Adams led his Metros to a resounding 12-2 victory over the beleaguered Austin Grackles with a 5-for-6 day at the plate that included a double, a 3-run TANK, and 6 total RBI. With the win, the Metros moved to 18-18 on the year and now find themselves operating a scant 2 ½ games off the Pines’ pace.
36 of 162: Sherwin Kane (2-3, 5.57) @ Stephen Estevez (4-0, 1.13)
Win, 1-0. Estevez went 6 scoreless innings, and the
Miotke-Turnbull-Haag trio came through for us again, maintaining the clean sheet over the final four frames, and tallying a combined 6 K’s in the process. Offensively, it was more of the same – we’d come up lame at the plate more often than not with
Satoru Ono finally breaking the tie with a 2-out, run-scoring single directly after the 7th inning stretch. So, once again we got over on pitching and defense with a lights out performance from the bullpen and 2 expertly executed double plays.
Elsewhere: Highlighted here as much for his name as his game performance, North Carolina’s Catcher,
Charles Bjork, went 4-for-4 with a double, 4 RBI, 4 runs, and 2 free passes to lead his Tar Heels to a dominant 23-2 win over the USC Trojans.
Sweet ‘stache too…
37 of 162: Radoslav Borovsky (4-2, 3.18) @ Merl Crawford (3-1, 4.58)
Win, 4-2.
Dom styled on
Borovsky during the 5th, flipping his bat like he just hit a game 7 winning walk off after punching his 8th longball out of the part, a 2-run shot that put us up by 3 at the time. From there we’d turn it over to the pitching and defense, hoping they’d have enough in the tank to get us over the finish line, and, while
Kudo and
Weiser each gave up a run in relief, the pen was mostly flawless and did enough for us to get over on one of the ‘best’ offenses in the American League. Though,
Donovan Turnbull was forced out after pitching to just one batter with an elbow issue. With the win, we’ve now won 9 of our 12 series played so far this year.
Hidetoshi Hasagawa was quick with his diagnosis…
Turnbull will be out for 6-7 weeks with Elbow Tendinitis making room for
Keith Baeza to return from his rehab assignment in Compton.
Record: 23-14, .621, 1st NL West
Up Next: More interleague silliness as we await the PNW’s finest arrival in town for a 3-game set against the Metros.