Portland Pioneers (43-41, .511, 4th AL West) @ Seattle Metros (41-43, .488, 5th AL West)
The Seattle Metros look a lot like us, just with less luck. Their offense is a tick or two below ours and their starters might not be as good, but their bullpen is solid and they’ve started to put things together more consistently as the season has progressed. After a calamitous 9-16 start to the season, Seattle has put up back-to-back winning months and posted the 2nd-best record in our division in June at 15-11, which was just one win off the pace set by the Vancouver Mounties. Add to all this the fact that they’ve gone 9-1 over their last 10 and find themselves in the thick of an 8-game winning streak while we’ve done our level best to tread water over that same stretch and what you have here is an opportunity –
for them. An opportunity to overtake a Cascadian rival, improve their standing in the AL West and make a little noise in the American League.
Here are the projected pitching matchups, our pitchers listed first:
RHP B. Sánchez (8-5, 2.77 ERA) vs RHP P. Street (5-7, 3.88 ERA)
RHP W. Long (3-2, 5.56 ERA) vs RHP M. Fauske (2-4, 2.37 ERA)
RHP W. Macomber (9-6, 3.64 ERA) vs RHP A. Bundy (4-3, 3.38 ERA)
#85: Win, 12-3… Oh how the mighty have fallen – well, mighty may be a bit of a stretch, but still… the boys went off in this one, ending Seattle’s winning streak in the most emphatic way possible.
Leo Bullock finished 2-for-4 with a 2-run TANK,
C Elijah Arvinda hit a 3-run dinger, his 6th long ball of the year, and both
CF Sam Gore &
LF Adam Collins hit 2-run doubles while the bases were loaded. Great outing for
Bernal Sanchez – he went 7 strong, allowing 7 hits with just a single earned run to pick up his 9th win on the year. A great all-around effort from the club – nice to see our offense go off. 4 consequential extra base hits for the boys in Seattle!
Elsewhere: LF Wyatt Chrysler, currently plying his trade with the Minot Minotaurs out of the Western Bush League, went 4-for-5 with a double, 2 TANKS, 4 RBI, and 2 runs as his club stuck it to the Santa Barbara Pelicans by a score of 8-1.
Wyatt spent two years in Los Angeles’ development system with seasons played in both Compton and Inglewood before becoming a Bush League mainstay – first with the Dearborn Dillys then spending time in Gainesville, Beaumont, and Hagerstown before finding a fit in Minot where he’s played for the last two seasons… a 32-year old baseball lifer,
Wyatt is a case study in never giving up on your dreams no matter how long the odds.
#86: Loss, 2-7… Seattle, not content to let sleeping dogs lie, charged right into the thick of it here and were rewarded for their bravery with a smashing win… and, while they didn’t dismantle our squad as thoroughly as we did theirs just one short day ago, they still pummeled our club into oblivion and set up a rubber match that, once the dust has settled on the 2085 campaign, could be a game that both clubs look back on as a pivotal contest. For our part, we could muster just one extra base hit – a double for
1B Angel Marino – Seattle hit just one dinger, a solo shot for
Rajkumar Kosciusko, and brought the rest of their runs around in the most painful way possible –
on singles, each and every one.
Elsewhere: LF Coyote Sams, whose name should all but guarantee him Strangeverse immortality (even if his skill set will likely doom him to a Bush League career), went 3-for-6 with 3 TANKS, 7 total RBI, and 3 runs to lead his club, the Frisco Toros (an Austin Grackles affiliate) to a resounding 13-7 victory over the Maine Canoes in Short Season A-Ball. Coyote went undrafted this year but impressed the Austin brass enough that they took a flier out on the kid, signing him to a 1-year minor league contract after the draft had concluded.
#87: Loss, 7-9… Seattle would come through in this pivotal game, scoring 9 runs prior to the stretch and gutting this one out despite their Starter,
Adam Gunter, only lasting 2.2-innings after giving up a
Tate Ramsey GRAND SLAM and 5 total runs during his short appearance. Our guy,
Macomber, wasn’t much better – giving up 7 runs over 4 innings of work – and the offense, with the exception of
Tate, was pretty pedestrian here. We really needed this win, this set…
an unfortunate result.
Record: 44-43, 4th AL West
Up Next: We’ll head home for a date against the Salt Lake Alpines to see if this thread we’ve been hanging on by will finally snap.