[Westheim]

The Raccoons took another hit to start the Sioux Falls series. We did win the first game 4-2, but lost Greg Swift (who twisted his ankle dashing into first base) and Johan Dolder (who had his hand fractured by Ramon Vasquez with a pitch). Dolder was put on the DL, with at least six weeks of recovery ahead of him. Luis Hernandez was called up from AAA. Swift’s injury would bench him for just a coule of days to a week, so he stayed on the roster. In turn, Sullivan was back in the lineup and was moved to #4, with Johnston (.210) up to #2. I had a hard time generating a lineup with at least six batters over .220 – the Raccoons were batting that bad. They lost the middle game 3-2, then relied heavily on Pedro Sánz, who batted in all runs in a 3-2 win in the rubber game, which Hatfield hardly was able to close.

More misery with the first game against Washington, a 7-2 loss with only four hits for the Raccoons. Tim Anderson got the team ahead with a 3-run shot the next day. In the bottom 5th, Wyatt Johnston hit into a triple play with Ray and Flores on second and first. 2B Sergio Martiel caught a lined ball over his head with a mighty jump and they caught the runners far advanced and both were put out quickly. The Raccoons still won, 4-2, but again only had five hits. Freddy Lopez contributed a home run as well. The last game got Greg Swift back, who slid into the shortstop position again. Swift went 2-4, which was already half the team’s hits in the 4-1 loss.

Offense was a *serious* concern by now. We had 111 runs over 33 games and only 253 hits – both by far worst in the league. How we still were at a 18-15 record, was a mystery. The rotation was mostly solid to good, that much was true, and the bullpen had come around well compared to last year, so the defense was carrying us with only the Crusaders and Falcons allowing less runs in the CL. We seriously needed more hitting.

After a pathetic 4-0 loss in the first game against the now division leading Indians, the Raccoons came back thanks to a terrible throwing error in the second game of the series. Up 4-1, I then made a mistake and sent in Hatfield to save it – in the eighth inning. I can’t count. Hatfield still went through the Indians, but yielded a run in the ninth as the Raccoons won 4-2. Two runs were unearned. The series’ rubber game was almost unbeatable in patheticness. The Indians committed three errors early, but the Raccoons still couldn’t score more than two runs. The Indians tied in the eighth and the game went to extra innings, where no team mounted any meaningful offense until the bottom 13th, when the Indians walked three, including issuing a 2-out walk to Ben Simon that brought in the winning run for the Raccoons, 3-2.

Still terrible offensively, we had gotten the Indians back on equal footing with us. Both our teams were now half a game behind the Crusaders. Next up were the 18-19 Loggers for the first four games against them this year.

In more bad news, Tim Anderson was injured in the first inning of the series. He hurt his shoulder badly on a play as he fired a ball back in and tore the labrum in his shoulder. His season was effectively over with about four months of recovery projected. That made two crippled centerfielders, and I only had those two. Gah! The Raccoons won 5-2 in this game, with two homers by Simon (his first two in ’78!) and the save by lefty Bruce Wright, as we faced the left-handed heavy artillery of the Loggers in the ninth and Hatfield was a righty and slightly tired as well.

Now where to turn to replace Anderson? Johan Dolder’s return was still a month away. I would have turned to last year’s top draft pick, Daniel Hall, who was beating up AA pitchers, but he was also out with a quad strain. There were also no promising players in the minors, they were all either hitting terribly or were fielding terribly, or were injured. For the time being, I slotted Flores over to CF, Sullivan out to LF, and Freddy Lopez would play 3B. That was a very bad move fieldingwise, but I had no other option, but to put Jeffries in LF. We’d try the first one first, then the other over the next week or so. Either way, Flores in center was a waste. He was great in left, and I would want him there, but he was the only guy fitting into center remotely.

Ah, I hate it. Three more against the Loggers. The Raccoons had gone 12-6 against them last year, had won the first now, and the last three games pretty well described the team in 1978. The middle games were 3-2 and 2-1 wins for us. In the first of these, the winning run scored on a wild pitch. Freddy Lopez homered the winning run in the other as I was already pulling my hair out. In both those games, the Raccoons also had considerable help from the Loggers and were walked a total of 11 times in those two games. Then came Greg O’Brien and did not walk anybody in the last game and crushed the Raccoons 7-0.

Four games, won three, and still scored less runs (10-12) than the Loggers!? Why does it have to be this way!? The Condors were our next opponent. Alex Miranda had just pitched a shutout for them (see below), but we’d miss him on this series. Overall the Condors were 15-26 to our (somewhat stunning, I admit) 23-17 record. But we already revived the Canadiens earlier in the month by letting them sweep us, why shouldn’t this happen again?

The series started with a 14-inning grind after the Raccoons had scored three early against Alfonso Meija. Former Condor Jorge Romero was once more ineffective and got behind. The game was 6-6 into extra innings, where the Raccoons only once touched second base in five innings before surrendering the winning run in the top 14th, when Jose Flores just so barely caught a ball bound to go out, but crashed into the wall and dropped it. The Raccoons struck out SIXTEEN times in the game, and Hatfield blew a 2-run lead in the top 9th. Sometimes I hate these guys. The middle game was a painful 6-1 loss, before we went to game 3. The Raccoons bashed Condors starter Pascal Robin for six runs in the first inning, including a 3-run homer by Kieran Lawson, the backup catcher, who normally could even kick the ball past the infield. Good news: not even the Raccoons could blow that lead and they won 8-2. Bad news: Joseph Meyer was moron enough to think that Jose Flores’ foot was in the strike zone. He smaked it pretty well and Flores was now out for a couple of weeks with a fracture in his foot.

That was my emergency centerfielder out. And what now!?

In other news:
May 13 – Richmond’s Riley Simon has a 20-game hitting streak going.
May 14 – Simon has his streak clipped by the Pittsburgh Miners.
May 15 – The Cyclones’ Jorge Velazquez will be out for up to six weeks with a strained medial collateral ligament. He had 124 RBIs in 1977, but had started slower into the current season.
May 15 – The Indians explode offensively to trump the Titans 17-0, as Jorge Vallejo throws a 3-hit shutout.
May 18 – Former Raccoon Alex Miranda tosses a 2-hit shutout as the Condors beat the Thunder 2-0. Miranda was 6-2 with a 3.51 ERA (bit worse than with the Raccoons there), he was still the King of Walk, but his new team scored a wealth of runs and he didn’t bother, apparently.
May 20 – Both Ray Kirk and Keith Carter go 5-5 for the Buffaloes in a 16-3 rout of the Pacifics. Kirk falls a triple short of the cycle, but homers twice, including a grand slam.

It’s May 22, and we will go on a 2-week road trip for San Francisco, Charlotte, and Atlanta from the CL South, then Boston in our CL North. I will also have a look at the draft pool that was published while we were aching through the Loggers.