[pauwoo]

Toronto Maple Leafs (33-39, .458, 3rd AL East) @ Portland Pioneers (38-34, .527, 4th AL West)
Toronto boast a staff to be envious of… sure, they’re not the best staff in the majors but are quite adept at locking clubs up – 2nd in pWAR, Strikeouts, 3rd in FIP – and their defense is, mostly, stout (middle of the road for efficiency & 2nd in errors). Their problem is the offense – it’s anemic and underfed, wholly incapable of doing anything worth worrying about… 12th in OPS, bWAR, wOBA, HRs, 11th in AVG, 10 in runs scored. Theirs is a real halfway house, a pantry with peanut butter paired with a refrigerator devoid of jam, all the ingredients for a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies save brown sugar & cream of tartar. Julia Childs would be disgusted, Larry Walker would refuse to acknowledge their Canadian-ness… here we have a club whose hometown pretends they don’t exist, likely happy to be on the road, against anyone but especially us given that we’ve been holding our thing together with duct tape and crazy glue of late… what we have here, then, is a battle of also rans where we’ll sort out who among us is actual riff raff and who still has a chance to be somebody.

Here are the projected pitching matchups, our pitchers listed first:
RHP K. Voll (4-4, 4.15 ERA) vs RHP T. Wightman (0-2, 3.83 ERA)
LHP M. Shepard (2-2, 2.95 ERA) vs RHP C. Guzman (2-6, 6.95 ERA)
RHP W. Macomber (8-4, 3.77 ERA) vs RHP L. Brittingham (6-3, 2.64 ERA)

#73: Loss, 1-6 (10)… We’d fall appart at the end, allowing 5 runs during the top of the 10th, including a C Liam Johnson GRAND SLAM, as our closer, Payton Inzen fell to 2-2 after coming unglued. A double from Leo and our 2 double plays were really the only thing worth mentioning as our pen squandered a tip top, 5.1-inning, 5 hit, 6 K effort from our starter, Kade Voll, who handed it off to the pen clean only for RP Robinson Bridges to soil it almost immediately after getting the ball. It’s rough getting handled, at home, and in extras… what we’re looking for, this ain’t it…

#74: Loss, 0-2… Our offense fell flat once again, this time opting for silence rather than making any sound at all… Macomber takes the loss, his 5th, despite going 6.1 innings and allowing just 2 earned as the offense sputtered out, fanning 7 times while leaving 9 runners stranded – our lone highlight, if you can call it that, was Frodo’s 3-for-5 day at the plate, though he’d have nothing to show for it as no one else on the club could muster even a single hit – we walked 7 times in this one and if not for Toronto’s control issue, would have been skunked even worse. A poor showing, indeed.

Trade Alert: We picked up 27yo SP Peter Yamaguchi from the Salt Lake Alpines, he’s currently ripping it up in Triple-A with the Fargo Rallybirds and recently threw an 18-K game down on SLC's farm club, for 22yo CF Curtis Alford, a fielding dynamo who was picked 14th overall back in 2083 by the previous regime. His bat isn’t good enough, and I need some better arms… I’ll likely slot Yamaguchi in at 5th in the rotation for use as a follower… gettin’ clever with it. Also, as a sidenote… I’m bummed to announce that Tom Franzone’s consecutive game hit streak has ended at 27 against the Seattle Metros. Bummer biscuits… bummer biscuits, for real.

#75: Win, 2-0… We’d give the fans something to feel good about as we ushered the Toronto Maple Leafs out the door, on a loss, as Bernal Sanchez held the Canadian club in relative check over 8-innings of filthiness where he’d allow 8 hits and nothing earned while fanning 7 batsmen, and CL Payton Inzen fanned two on 15 total pitches during the top of the 9th to close the book on this one while notching his 15th save in the process… run-scoring double from Leo and an RBI single from Micky would round out the offense with a Shane Fukumoto swiped bag thrown in for good measure – look, we wanted to and needed to win this series, but I’ll live with the fact that, at the very least, we found a way to NOT get swept at home. It’s the little things…

Record: 39-36, .520, 4th AL West
Up Next: The Las Vegas Outlaws are headed our way for three games of interleague silliness.