At 49-23, sitting at the top of the pops in our division, and with a 12-game lead over the Austin Grackles, it’s hard not to feel like we’ve got this thing all sewn up. Add in the fact that we’ve opened up a 6-game lead over the Charlotte Imperials to lay claim to the ‘best team in baseball’ tag, and I think it is safe to say that we are off to yet another dominant regular season in what feels like
a life filled with them… honestly, it’s almost unfair.
Otto leads the league in
TANKS at 31 so far, which, if you’re counting, puts his trend at a record destroying 70 in 2083,
T-Rex Stiles, our underequipped and uninspired
Don Haag replacement in the CL spot is flexing a 3.82 ERA with 23 saves, and, as a squad, we rank 1st in Pitching and 2nd in Batting. We are, as they say, a battering ram bashing our way through the competition and looking to enjoy the spoils on the other side… of note, we’re currently without
Dan Blasko for ~3 weeks (he suffered a strained groin on the 2nd) and
C Mason Click for 4 weeks (fractured wrist).
Los Angeles Leopards (49-23, .680, 1st NL West) @ Montreal Alouettes (32-40, .444, 6th NL East)
When I identified this series as my next check-in, the expectation was that we’d be doing battle with a team in the hunt, battling it out with their division foes, in the thick of it… instead, we arrive in town to face a team that’s morose and silent, whose disappointment with the lot in life they’ve carved out for themselves so far runs so deep that several of their team members may try to defect to our club, sneaking in the visitors’ locker room, hoping that no one will notice. They were pegged as a likely top two club in their division with a legit shot at earning a ticket to the dance come playoff time… instead their offense is in shambles, ranked dead last in the National League, and their pitching, ranked a ho-hum 6th overall, isn’t much better. If they can’t turn this thing around, starting with this set against us, and head into the mid-July all-star break on something of a streak, suffice it to say that they’ll have played themselves out of it before our season has really started to get interesting.
73 of 162: Ryan McGuire (5-6, 4.44) @ Gray Switzer (3-2, 4.87)
Win, 2-0. Instead of an all-action slobber knocker, we’d settle in for a pitchers’ duel with
McGuire giving us 6.2-innings of filthiness followed by some phenomenal work out of the pen with
Adrian Parker turning in 1.1 hitless innings and
T-Rex Stiles buttoning up his 24th save this year on 11 total pitches during the bottom of the 9th.
Oliver Koloski reached on an error during the top of the 9th when Montreal
3B Ron Henry dropped a flyball, prompting
Ethan Mullens to show off his wheels by coming around to score on the play.
74 of 162: Nacho Valadez (8-0, 2.28) @ Dwight Beasley (1-7, 6.27)
Win, 6-4. C Rex Englestad knotted things up during the bottom of the 8th with a solo shot off
RP Ewing Rivera, but it’d not be enough to hold back the likes of us as
Chance Bell went buck during the top of the 9th, bashing a 2-run
TANK to put us up 6-4 which is where we’d leave it after
T-Rex Stiles, settling in to his closer role quite nicely, closed the book on this one on 7 total pitches.
Nacho, off to a phenomenal start this season, didn’t get the win here after going just 4.1-innings where he’d allow 5 hits and a run while fanning 3 hitters,
OH HONG went 3-for-5 with a solo homer, his 12th,
Otto put one out, his 32nd, and
Humberto brought two in on a 2-run, 6th inning
DING DONG of his own. It’s all systems go for the La La’s…
A couple of things… SP Nacho Valadez is off to a crazy start at 36yo – he’s still an unbeaten 8-0 with a 2.26 ERA, 166 ERA+. Honestly, I signed what I thought was a bad contract on this guy simply because he seemed to have a little left and I wanted him on my team for the lulz, yet here we are… what he’s delivering on a $14.6mm contract with a team option next season has given me something to think on, that’s for sure. And,
OH HONG, the Sultan of Swag, has (
gasp) shaved his iconic mustache in favor of a goatee.
For shame.
75 of 162: Larimel Alvarez (6-5, 3.87) @ Vincent Urquhart (3-4, 2.89)
Loss, 3-6. After sweeping our last two opponents, and handling the Alouettes with relative ease over our first two games, we’d have to settle for a series win here as Montreal, in a bid to salvage some pride, gave us the business here, hanging three on
Larimel and 3 more on
Major Hansen to amass enough runs to hold us off. Not much of note to really point out for the Leopards,
Ethan hit an inconsequential double, as did
Hutchinson,
D-Rod got caught with his hand in the honeypot, and
Otto went 0-for-4… so, now, all that’s left for us to do is slink off into the night, board our chartered plane to Portland, and get back after it tomorrow.
Attached: A look at the standings and league leaders.
Record: 51-24, .680, 1st NL West
Up Next: We’ll catch up with the team, in Los Angeles, as the American League Detroit Motors meet us on our turf for some interleague silliness on July 23rd.