[Westheim]

1993 CONTINENTAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES
Portland Raccoons (91-71) vs. Tijuana Condors (100-62)

The Raccoons play in their fifth postseason, and their third straight, and are the defending World Series champions. The Condors in turn are also in the fifth postseason, but the first since 1990, after losing out to the Bayhawks the last two years. The Condors have never won a championship.

The two best defensive teams of the league are going to face up. The Raccoons allowed 596 runs, the Condors only 11 more. But while the Condors also ranked 4th with 753 runs scored, the Raccoons managed only 704 runs, good for merely 8th in the Continental League.

While the Raccoons used to draw on their murder pitching for years, there are spots on their staff this year. Closer Grant West is not aging gracefully, despite logging his 500th save this year, and ace Kisho Saito had his worst season in memory and lost 15 games. The bullpen as a whole is still about the best in the league.

The Condors will field an 18-, a 17-, and a 16-game winner for this postseason, and a rotation with four guys safely below 4 in terms of ERA. The main weakness is their lack of effective left-handed arms, with only two southpaws on the entire staff. Closer Jose Lopez lost 11 games this season, even trumping 1-6 Grant West.

Offensively, the loss of C Andres Manuel will hurt the Condors, but they can draw on other sources for runs, like outfielders Preston O’Day (.314, 19 HR, 89 RBI) and Paul Theobald (.355, 2 HR, 73 RBI). Their infield is especially dense, with five players having logged 130 hits or more.

The Raccoons’ offense has revolved around Ben O’Morrissey (.308, 20 HR, 85 RBI) and Neil Reece (.323, 18 HR, 94 RBI) all season, with surprise walk-on Alejandro Lopez (.272, 18 HR, 56 RBI) doing a lot of damage in just four months on the team. However, O’Morrissey has been slumping all of September, and Neil Reece strained his hamstring in the penultimate week and will not be available for at least the first couple of games, and maybe only for potential games 6 and 7. Whether the Raccoons will survive for that long?

Condors have the upper hand here, and should win in five games.

---

Yeah, those guys at BNN are not kind to us for sure. But they are right. The offense was bad all year. O-Mo is in a valley, and Reece is hurt until at least game 4 or so. The rest of the team hasn’t done many uplifting things in the meantime.

We had 26 playoff roster eligible players, with INF Marvin Ingall the odd man out. Had Glenn Johnston been eligible, I would have taken him over 1B Glenn Adams, but he wasn’t. It would have merely been for defense, starting in center as long as Reece was knocked out. Reece *is* on the roster (and there are no issues this time with roster befuddlements), but will have to wait for that leg to heal up.

Heal up faster!!