@ Toronto Maple Leafs (6-9, .400, 5th AL East)
With an offense that has sputtered off the line and a group of starters with serious control issues and no movement to speak of, the fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs has won 6 games seems like a low-key miracle. They have the look of a club destined to lose 100+ games, an also ran on autopilot without sufficient internet connectivity to get the updates necessary to keep this thing from crashing into oncoming traffic. They just don’t have enough of what it takes to be a serviceable baseball club – helmed by a nonexistent front office, devoid of any imagination, and owned by a penny-pinching madman who’s more interested in his other companies than this plaything that his father loved so much.
Here are the projected pitching matchups, our pitchers listed first:
RHP W. Macomber (0-2, 4.08) vs LHP A. Rodríguez (0-1, 4.11)
RHP D. Hornbrook (1-1, 7.24) vs RHP T. Belew (0-3, 7.53)
RHP M. Holman (1-0, 1.59) vs RHP J. Santana (0-2, 6.63)
#16: Win, 4-0… William Macomber picks up his first win of the 2086 campaign after giving us 5-innings of crafty, 3-hit, shutout work and the unheralded, yet surprisingly effective,
Bruce Sarmiento was at it again with a 2-for-3 effort and solo homer to get things started (and finished as it were) during the top of the 4th inning.
Frodo and
Mickey were responsible for our other runs,
Blanco Whitt went hitless but did secure a rare
SAC BUNT,
Micky burgled his 4th bag of the season, and our defense fielded a crispy,
Bridges-Dickey-Frodo double play. Good stuff all around – off on the good foot, winners of 6 in a row now...
Elsewhere: In what was a big day for Power Pitching Miscreants everywhere, Montreal’s
SP Stephen Estevez had his top shelf stuff in a tilt against the San Diego Skipjacks, twirling a complete-game, 3-hit shutout with 12 K’s to lead his club to a deafening 2-0 win at home in
Oh, Canada. Not to be outdone, even though he (technically) was, Mexico City’s
SP Patrick Torres, recorded 10 K’s during a 2-1 win for the Jaguars over the Miami Herons, in Florida.
#17: Loss, 4-5… close but no cigar – we’d fight for it here, trying to secure that ever elusive 7th straight win, scoring once during the top of the 7th and again during the top of the 8th to pull within one run, but the backend of Toronto’s staff, namely
CL Jerome Dial, was good for it as he picked up his 3rd save of the year after turning in 1.2-innings of hitless work.
Shane Fukumoto hit his 5th DING DONG of the year,
Blanco hit two, two-baggers, and we even got a timely SAC FLY from
DH Rowan Calvin – but, it was those 10 runners we left stranded over the course of the game that did us in here as we were unable to convert the two more we’d need to get a win in this one.
#18: Loss, 5-9… If we could flip this score around, we’d be back on it, and likely humming that
Dolly Parton classic but, instead, will be forced to live with it this way, forced to endure some pale,
Kellie Pickler impression, auto-tuned to the gills and filled with the types of deep south colloquialisms that don’t even make sense to the locals.
Shane Fukumoto finished 2-for-4 with a 2-run TANK and
Leo blasted a 3-run shot here – but they’d not be enough as the Toronto Leafs wailed on us something fierce, leaving us with a couple of bad ones on our way out the door.
Record: 11-7, .611, 2nd AL West
Up Next: A quick hop to Detroit for a 3-game set against the Motors.
Sidenote: After not doing much to the file, I decided to combine the Bush League and Western Bush League and then rebranded the lion’s share of the teams. The league now looks like the following..
I’m going to do a 96-game schedule for each SL, with no interleague silliness, followed by a playoff tournament structured just like the one I do for the SVMLB. I set up a new General Manager in the save and will likely set up a dynasty report for whatever team I assign him to when the league starts up on May 1st, 2086… or, more likely, I won’t. We’ll see.