[pauwoo]

St. Louis Rams (35-31, .530, 3rd NL East) @ Miami United (36-32, .529, 4th NL East)
Cheech and I, as we often do prior to home sets, met at the Twin Palms Bar & Laundromat to go over his carefully constructed scouting report on the St. Louis Rams. 6-pages of statistics, splits, spray charts, and managerial trends parsed out by the likeliest of in-game scenarios. Cheech is nothing if not thorough. I finished off my shellfish stuffed croquette and took a pull off of my Yuengling, before offering my thought back… “so, they’re pretty much a slightly better version of us”? The answer was… kind of. St. Louis isn’t just a better version of us – they are just better than us in general but find themselves playing in our end of the pool due to a tough schedule and the underperformance of several key players. And, even with that being said, they are still rated above us in most statistical categories that matter and a few of those that the pre-game analysts like to throw out in an attempt to look smart. We’ve both settled into a nice jog to start the 2079 major league marathon, we’re out in front of the pack but well behind the leaders… the key difference, however, if that our jog isn’t that far removed from our sprint and they’re really just now starting to make up some ground after not hearing the starter pistol at the outset of the 2079 campaign. What we have going for us here, something you won’t necessarily find in Cheech’s write-up, is form – ours is good, better than we would’ve bet on, and we’ve ridden it to a 6-game winning streak while the Lou has gone 4-2 over that same stretch. We have an opportunity here to overtake the underperforming Rams – there is a faint knock at the door… but, given the report that sits in front of me, it seems likely that we could have a difficult time opening it in time to take advantage of whatever good fortune was behind the knock in the first place.

69 of 162: Gunner Amorese (3-1, 2.81) @ Radoslav Borovsky (4-5, 3.83)
Win, 2-1. The combination of our buy one, get one sashimi promo and a 6-game winning streak brought out 32,061 fans to Carnival Cruise Lines Park – that’s only 24 more fans than we get on average – and we treated them to a boring pitchers duel that was punctuated by excitement at the end when Kyle Weaver hit a walk-off single in the bottom of the 9th to secure the win and put everyone in attendance out of their misery. This game was short on highlights – Radoslav fanned 9, Magee swiped a bag, and we turned a nice DP during the top of the 4th… and, well, that’s about it. This was a good win, we stayed focused, and managed to gut it out – it won’t do our attendance any favors though and I suspect that the concession report will look pretty grim tomorrow given the cost of the salmon used in that sashimi.

Elsewhere: LF Eloy Delando, of the Decatur Donnybrooks, went 2 for 2 with 2 jacks, 5 RBIs, 3 runs, and 3 free passes in his clubs 11-2 win over the Coney Island Footlongs. Decatur currently finds themselves in last place in the Bush League’s Justice Division at 18-25 while Angry Eloy leads the league in HRs at 16. Dylan Brockmiller, of the Naperville Nibblers, is second with 13. Brockmiller led the BL in HRs in 2076 while he was a member of the Coney Island Footlongs with 46. The single-season HR record in the Bush League sits at 55 – that number was reached by Connor Whitshire in 2062 while he was a member of the Coney Island Footlongs. Wiltshire played 3 seasons in the BL after going undrafted out of Virginia.

70 of 162: Allen Barrientos (2-0, 2.57) @ Kordell Littles (4-5, 4.60)
Win, 6-3. Make it 8 straight…. Look, I’m not sure what is happening here – it defies logic, it’s a performance outlier that is threatening to be our new norm. We answered St. Louis’ 2-run top of the 2nd with 3 of our own to close out that frame and never looked back from there… Kordell gave us 8 innings of work, K’d 7, and only allowed 3 runners to plate. Magee Ives hit a 2-run, two-bagger in the bottom of the 4th for some cushion, and Harvey Allen was the rest of the story with a 9-pitch, top of the 9th save. Nearly 40-thousand fans came out for the game and those among them that went looking for sashimi paid full price. Probably not enough to put our concessions back in the black, but it’s a start.

71 of 162: Joseph Hinder (5-6, 5.94) @ Thomas Deane (5-2, 3.82)
Loss, 3-2. Thomas Deane looked better in his second attempt at pitching in a Miami Kit – 6.1 innings, 6 K’s, 3 earned – and, 3B Ethan Loy hit a two-bagger and a homer in the loss. Weaver also hit his first long ball of the season. This one was a bit frustrating if I’m honest… the effort was there, we put ourselves in a position to win, but, in the end, just didn’t have enough in the tank to run our winning streak up to 9-games. St. Louis did this one the super, old-fashioned way – they won it on a SAC FLY in the 4th from their light-hitting catcher, Jasper Herrera.

Note: Steve Green, who we sent to Barbados for some swing refinement was recalled to the big club today – which, as always, meant someone else will be headed back down… in this case, RF Aris Anaconda, whose been poor lately at the plate, will get in some reps for Havana to work on all that ails him.

72 of 162: Dimitri Pimentel (4-5, 5.29) @ Jimmy Garcia (1-1, 5.57)
Loss, 4-1. We couldn’t really figure Dimitri out in this one – the guy had us on a string with our only run coming on an Oli Woodward SAC FLY. We’ll leave this game where we started, sort of – we’re actually in 3rd now, but still behind the Rams who have moved into 2nd. Philadelphia is now, for the time being, occupying 4th on the table – don’t worry 6ers fans, I don’t expect this unexpected development to hold for long. Of course, my club, the Flim Flams, have been defying expectations all year, so – why stop now?

Note: Don’t look now, but Phoenix has captured the top spot in the always fickle, weekly power rank. Golden State is in 2nd and the Carolina Panthers round out the top 3. Of note… LA Kings are 4th, Miami is 9th, and Shawna’s North Stars are in dead last. Ouch.