[pauwoo]

Phoenix Suns (19-13, .594) @ Toronto Reds BC (19-13, .594)
A good defensive team with some pop, the Toronto Reds find themselves leading the AL East despite their other offensive deficiencies. They have a couple of top pitchers in CL Enzo Mercado (winner of the Kingston Cashmore award in 2072 (awarded to the best reliever)) and SP Alex Jackal (3-time Victor Pacheco award winner (most recently in 2070) and have an offense led by RF Andrew Beck (named to the all-star team in 2072 & 2073), who, at 27 years old is entering his prime years. They’ve played a gritty brand of small ball and earned two sweeps (over Jacksonville and Chicago) during the first month of the season. Like us, they’ve been better than the sum of their parts so far – something’s got to give.

33 of 162: Oswaldo Flores (1-3, 5.15 ERA) @ Loyd Aaron (2-2, 4.25 ERA)
Rumor has it that Loyd Aaron dropped the second L from his first name after going 0-10 in Rookie Ball… We’ve been unable to substantiate this claim, but, like the story, and haven’t really tried that hard to do our due diligence. For the game, we were hit by pitches 5 times. FIVE. And got caught stealing twice – in the first inning. Of the two runs we scored, one was on a walk – in short, we weren’t very good in this one. Loyd, despite hitting 4 batters with pitches, only gave up 1 run over 7.2 innings and Toronto’s offense did just enough to secure the win. Donny finished 1 for 4 and struck out looking while Derek finished 0 for 2 (he did get a Sac Fly) and struck out swinging… And Pepper? 0 for 3 with 2 K’s… Reds BC wins 3-2.

34 of 162: Ash Newman (2-2, 4.37 ERA) @ Paul Pentz (5-1, 4.23 ERA)
In the top of the 9th, with the game tied, the wheels came off for Toronto as some timely hitting for Phoenix and two costly errors led to a 3-run inning for the visiting club. JR Marsh went 3 for 4, Derek scored a couple of runs, and Pepper hit a sacrifice bunt – a good if not entirely earned a win for the Suns in this one – we’ll take it, we’re gonna need as many of these as we can get.

35 of 162: Del Miller (4-0, 4.86) @ Alex Jackal (6-1, 1.37 ERA)
SP Del Miller has been on a phenomenal good luck streak, at 4-0 so far this season he hasn’t really pitched great, it’s just that the guy on the other side has pitched worse – with Alex Jackal on the mound for Toronto today, something tells me his luck may run out. Derek gets the day off and our Skipper decided to bat Pepper in the 3-hole. Interesting, as he hasn’t hit earlier than 6th in the order all year. PEPPER responds to the vote of confidence by hitting a 434 homer in the top of the 1st – our Skipper is a misunderstood genius, a card-carrying member of Mensa, and a homespun pottery savant. We win the rubber match as PEPPER finished 2 for 4 with 3 RBIs and a home run, Del has a fine outing giving up only 2 earned over 8 innings of work while Alex Jackal has the misfortune of seeing 4 of the 6 runs scored during his time on the mound come across unearned as his defense committed 5 errors – really ugly day on the diamond for Toronto. Del Miller needs to buy some lottery tickets – this kind of good fortune doesn’t come along that often.

Note: In the Toronto write-up, I mentioned that they were a good defensive team, and before this series they were... They gave us a gift by committing 9 errors in our two wins, talk about falling apart. Yikes.