Phoenix Coyotes (84-66, .560, 2nd NL West) @ Los Angeles Leopards (94-55, .630, 1st NL West)
The Coyotes are riding into town on a 5-game winning streak, and are, no doubt, still buzzing at the fact that the last four of those came at the expense of the Las Vegas Outlaws, who, after dropping those four (3 of which required extra-innings to solve) find themselves a nearly insurmountable 4 ½ games behind Phoenix now. That, however, is where we come in… should we be able to improve on our 6-7 head-to-head record against these guys, in our park, and, knock on wood, maybe even get the sweep we may just see the race for second place tighten up once again. That’s what we like to call motivation… and, given our 8-8 performance so far in September, we can use all of that we can get.
Down on the Farm: Inglewood is now down, 2 games to none, against the Tijuana Goats – they’ll need to reverse sweep the Mexico based ballclub should they want to advance to the second round of the AA playoffs. Watts swept the Duluth Zeniths and will meet either Berkely or Everett in the second round – those two clubs will contest a game 5, winner-takes-all match tonight or maybe tomorrow – I can’t be bothered to look it up right now. And, lastly the Brentwood Bishops dispatched Punxsutawney 3 games to 1 and will meet the Hamilton Stingers (a Toronto affiliate) in the second round of the Short Season A playoffs.
150 of 162: Landon Sampson (15-4, 2.10) @ Merl Crawford (15-8, 3.15)
Loss, 2-5. In our first three meetings against
Landon Sampson, our club couldn’t find a way to get a win in any of them, were fanned an average of 9 times per contest, and contributed to 3 of his 13 “official” wins this season as he’d claim the decision in each. And today would be no different as the 5-time Victor Pacheco award winner would earn his 4th win at our expense this season to improve to 16-4 on the year after keeping us on the business end of his Cutter-Curve-Changeup arsenal for 7-innings of 5-hit, 2-run ball.
Merl, by contrast, could only manage to go 3.2 innings after giving up 5 total runs during the outing. It's a sad state of affairs, man… here’s hoping we don’t run into this guy during the playoffs.
Elsewhere: Inglewood stays alive! They’d take that first crucial step towards redemption with an 11-8 win at home and now trail the Tijuana Goats 2-1 in the series. And, in A-Ball it will be the Everett Storm who will lock horns with Watts as they managed to squeeze by a resilient Berkeley squad, at home, by a score of 6-5.
151 of 162: Prior Balazs (4-5, 3.18) @ Jan Hernandez (11-5, 2.13)
Win, 6-4. Preston Wallace went 2-for-3 with an RBI and 2 runs to power the Coyote offense, but it’d not be enough here as our guys, led by
Dom’s 2-run, two-bagger and
Hutchinson’s 2-run single, were awake long enough to earn some small measure of revenge for last nights loss.
Hanan hit a couple of doubles and scored twice,
Ono managed to find his way home a couple of times, and our bullpen,
Duarte and
Haag specifically, would find a way to close the door after
Jan had given up 4-runs during his 6-innings of work.
Elsewhere: Inglewood has forced a game 5, folks. The kids, as they say, are alright…
152 of 162: Matthew Krebs (13-6, 3.71) @ Stephen Estevez (16-6, 1.91)
Win, 13-4. We’d pull even with Phoenix for the season at 8-8 with our most dominate performance against them this year, winning by a score of 13-4 as
OH HONG and
Otto led the way for us once again, each posting a sturdy 3 RBI with
Hong adding a couple of runs to his line to sweeten things up. Four doubles for the club, including #27 for
Pepper and #30 for
Dom, a homer for
Hill, his 2nd as a Leopard, and
Mullens felt really cute out on the basepaths with 2 steals on the day. We needed this – Phoenix has performed better against us than most and given that seeing them in the playoffs is a very real possibility, we needed our boys to know that we can dust these guys when we kick things into gear.
Record: 96-56, .631, 1st NL West
Up Next: A 3-game home set over the weekend against the Austin Grackles.