Pittsburgh Pipers (65-81, .445, 5th NL East) @ Los Angeles Leopards (83-63, .568, 2nd NL West)
Listen, I’m not one to shy away from beating a dead horse, flogging it mercilessly, and allowing redundancy to rule the day… but, here, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it 1000 times – Pittsburgh is, by not pushing their chips into the center of the table and surrounding
Tom Franzone with top tier talent, committing a crime so grievous, so heinous in its construction, so evil in its indifferent execution that their owner and his mind trust should be forcibly removed from the club, banned from baseball for life, and never be seen or heard from again.
Franzone, the 2080 Boyce Rigg award recipient, has taken a step back from the 8 WAR he produced last season (by virtue of having no protection in the lineup) but with the right mix of talent around him and a front office that prioritizes winning above all else, he’d be back to legendary level production, doing what the best player in baseball should. As it stands, Pittsburgh, its club, and everyone associated with it has perpetuated a fraud and returned to the scene of the crime to bask in the fact that they seem to have gotten away with it.
147 of 162: Jaxon Mottola (4-8, 3.95) @ Jan Hernandez (7-6, 4.18)
Loss, 2-3. Supporting our habit of playing down to the level of our competition, we’d drop the first of three to Pittsburgh by the thinnest margin possible as
Tom Franzone stroked the game-winning, run-scoring double that put the Pipers up by one in the 7th. And, they’d not look back from there…
Jan could only muster 4 innings of work, allowing two runners to plate in that time before
Leonardo Duarte gave up the ghost late, picking up his 7th loss and dropping to 8-7 on the year. On the bright side,
Otto only fanned once today… so, we got that going for us.
Elsewhere: Our 2079, 10th round pick, 272nd overall,
CF Snoopy Kent, went 3-for-4 with a double, 2 DING DONGS, 4 RBI, and 2 runs to lead our Brentwood Bishops to a solid, 9-4 win over the Brownsville Bandits in Short Season A Ball… Clock’s ticking on
Snoopy who spent 14 games plying his trade in Watts with our A-Ball club, but struggled to make an impact posting -0.3 WAR in the short time he donned the Warriors kit. Hopefully, this is something the young man can build on…
148 of 162: Edwin Blaxley (11-12, 3.43) @ Dontrell McNeil (11-7, 3.43)
Win, 6-3. With things taking on the look of yesterday’s game through the first 6 innings,
Chance Bell put us on top with a run-scoring double and then came around to score on an error a few batters later during the bottom of the 7th.
Otto managed to hit a single without a single K today. We fielded a clean
Paulino-Hutchinson-Tignor double play, and
Ramiro Marte picked up his 5th win in relief after pitching the 6th & 7th innings… hold #13 for
T-Rex, #9 for
Major Hansen, and save #45 for
Mr. Haag. All in a days work, my friends… all in a days work.
149 of 162: Casey Tucker (10-11, 5.06) @ Stephen Estevez (12-6, 3.39)
Win, 6-2. Estevez gave the club 5-innings of 4-hit, 1-run work, fanning 7 before handing it off to
Nakagawa who earned the win in this one after turning in 3-innings of work in relief. Save #46 for
Don Haag, homers for
Oh Hong, Walt Tignor, and
Darby Helton, a double and 2-out RBI for
Chance Bell, and a tasty little
Koloski-Paulino-Hong double play would round out the highlight for us here as we managed to get the series win, at home, against
Tom Franzone and his merry band of brigands.
Oh Hong’s homer was his 36th of the year… he now needs 10 more to match last seasons total. A tall order to be sure.
Record: 85-64, .570, 2nd NL West
Up Next: We’ll embark on our final road trip of the regular season starting off in Montreal before making stops in Mexico City and Austin.