San Marcos Supremos (14-10, .583, 3rd) @ Decatur Donnybrooks (18-6, .750, 1st)
San Marcos is a fun town – great recreational opportunities, a paddleboarders paradise, and plenty of live music. They also have a fun, if historically underachieving, ballclub in the Supremos. This year’s edition looks a lot like the club we beat in the play-in game last season – they’re good, better than most, just not quite good enough. They have plenty of power (#2 in HR’s) and they absolutely wreck the base path’s (1st BR @ +6.7) but are pretty pedestrian in every other offensive category. Again – they’re good, just not good enough… And they don’t really excel in pitching either where they find themselves ranked 6th in the TBL. They have their outliers – and oftentimes, in sport as in life, it’s the outliers that can make all the difference. Their Ace, Paul Reay, is an absolute stud – 2-3, 1.85 ERA, and 9 K/BB in 34 innings pitched. He’s nasty too – he likes to put his fastball down & inside when he’s not dropping his curve off the table. We’ll see him in the 2nd game of this 3-game set – so, something to look forward to, I guess… They also have the best 2B-3B combo in the game – with each being, arguably, the best at their position in the league. 2B Billy Moore – a slick-fielding, power-wielding nightmare of an opponent – leads the league in HR’s, OBP, and Slugging %, and 3B Josh Mathes – a 25-year-old dynamo in the field who hits for average (currently 2nd in the TBL for AVG) and steals bags – are as tough a duo the TBL has to offer. Could be a long three days in San Marcos folks…
25 of 54: Steve Merryman (2-0, 3.86) @ Dave Anderson (1-0, 6.66)
Loss, 5-3. Merryman looked good over 6 innings, allowing only 3 hits and 2 earned runs, but a couple of errors in the 4th that led to a run for San Marcos was the culprit here. Anderson was good enough for the Supremos over 5 innings allowing only 2 earned runs of his own and late-sub Nick Wireman hit a solo home run in his only plate appearance in the 8th to seal the deal. Kymani Jones got an RBI, Kuiper quietly went 0 for 5, and Mendoza went 2 for 4 with a run scored and an RBI – just not enough of that to go around in this one… tough way to start a road series.
26 of 54: Andy Thatcher (1-1, 1.71) @ Paul Reay (2-3, 1.85)
Loss, 5-4… Ruh-roh, a 2-game skid – our first of the year. Reay was brilliant – 8 pitched, 4 hits, and 1 earned from the Ace, and Emilio Pardo finished 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run for San Marcos. Thatcher was good, just not good enough – 5 innings, 4 hits, 2 earned, and 5 K’s… and our offense sputters a bit with small contributions here and there that don’t add up to enough to secure the W in this one – Kuiper gets a hit and a run, Kymani does the same, and Jim McGill goes 2 for 3 with a run of his own. We hung in there though and in the end hung ourselves when Kymani commits his 2nd error of the game in the bottom of the 11th allowing the winning run to plate. What kind of walk-off is that? The worst kind.
27 of 54: Carlos Guijarro (1-2, 6.75) @ Carlos Vega (3-0, 4.03)
Loss, 5-4… On the wrong side of a sweep, on the road, with a long ride between us and home to run it back in our heads over and over. Who can I trade? Everyone? Who should I fire? Our Skipper? The first base coach? Myself? Listen, Guijarro was good – 9 K’s & 1 earned over 6 innings of work – and Hernandez & McGill get us a couple of RBIs each… just wasn’t enough. San Marcos plates 5 – with each run charged to a different players account – they were just incrementally better in every facet of the game throughout this 3-game set… SMH. I thought we were a pretty solid team too. Baseball, man, you just never know how this thing is going to shake out – one minute you’re on top of the world and the next you find yourself waking up in some mysterious alley wearing nothing but a way too tight pair of lacey drawers and a pair of tube socks you’ve never seen before & wondering just what the heck you’ve done with your life. It’s a sad state of affairs, man.
