[pauwoo]

Miami United (55-41, .573, 2nd NL East) @ St. Louis Rams (47-53, .470, 6th NL East)
With their glory days seemingly in the mail, with blue-chip prospects like C Mo Brokaw, SP Grant Slattery, and SP Aiden O’Brien all primed to become stars, St. Louis has been content to ride out the 2080 season as their crops ready themselves to bare fruit. For now, this means that, outside of leadoff man Mike Duncan, the Rams don’t have a lot of marquee guys on the big club – just a collection of stiffs delivering a middle-of-the-pack offensive performance (rated 6th in the NL) and a dreadful, 11th ranked pitching performance. They have been okay since the all-star break posting a 6-4 record since the midsummer classic and, with only 4 ½ games separating them and the 3rd place Philadelphia 76ers may be looking to make their move towards semi-respectability. It’ll be a tall order for them with the Pink Tops in town – we’re 8-2 over our last 10 contests, have a solid 23-19 road record, and are 12-3 in the month of July. Simply put, we’re a pretty damn good ball club right now.

97 of 162: Julian Horne (11-2, 2.41) @ John Aivazian (3-8, 6.27)
Loss,4-2. Aivazian was solid – he dealt for 8 innings, only allowed two runs, and fanned 9 Pink Tops while C Mo Brokaw went 2 for 3 with a double, 3 RBIs and a walk… Horne was fine – he gave up 4 over 7.1 innings of work – but our offense, outside of Anaconda who drove in two on a double, was nonexistent. SS Steve Green went 0 for 3 with 3 Ks – that’s just embarrassing. There really wasn’t a lot to point to in this one – we were flat, gave them some really bad At-bats, and got the result we earned.

Elsewhere: Former King, SP Paul Yeager, pitched a complete game, 1-hit shutout for Seattle in a 6-0 win over the Dallas Cowboys. Yeager, who registered 5 Ks during the game, got 3 of them courtesy of LF Jo Jo Jackson who busied himself by hacking away at anything thrown in his general direction. RF Aitor Cubas (SEA) barley missed hitting for the cycle during the game as he went 4 for 4 with a two-bagger, a triple, and TWO DINGERS.

98 of 162: Kordell Littles (12-4, 2.63) @ Dimitri Pimentel (7-9, 4.73)
Win, 6-3. Kordell came through for us here – 7 solid innings, with 2 earned and 7 K’s, Magmo was responsible for 3 of our 6 runs on a 2 for 3 performance with a two-bagger and a run, and Jerome Dial picked up his 23rd save of the season. We’ll take it – a nice bounce back from our loss yesterday and hopefully the start of another streak.

Elsewhere: RF Tom Franzone (PIT) hit his 29th long fly ball of the season in a 3-1, home win over the Brooklyn Citizens. The dinger moves Franzone into 1st on the HR table… with the Kings’ Dontrell Gay sitting at 28 and nipping on his heels. 2B Nuno Fuentes, of the Shreveport Sashimi Samurai, went 4 for 4 with a triple, 2 homers, 5 RBIs, and 3 runs in a 12-0 win over the Roanoke Raccoons… the 28-year old Montana native who went 0 for 1 in his only MLB at-bat is currently hitting .242 with 6 HRs and 18 RBIs in 56 games with Shreveport.

99 of 162: Harvey Allen (8-5, 2.56) @ Aiden O’Brien (4-9, 5.81)
Win, 2-0. OH HONG’s 3 for 3 performance included a double and a timely run to complement Harvey’s incredible complete game, 4-hit shutout that included 9 K’s… we secured 3 doubles as a club (OH HONG, Crawford, and Magmo did the honors) but left 10 runners stranded for the game – Harvey, it would seem, was largely on his own in this one but acquitted himself quite nicely and now has 6 wins and 2 no decisions in his last 8 starts.

100 of 162: Rad Taylor (10-5, 2.59) @ Julen Morales (10-5, 2.71)
Win, 6-1. We’d secure the series win on a complete game, 7 hit performance from Rad where he’d allow one runner to plate while fanning 6… Ethan Loy scored twice, OH HONG drove in two runs (one on a SAC FLY), Anaconda went 3 for 5 with a 2-run double, and we fielded 3 double plays as a unit. Rad improves to 11-5 on the season with and now has a 2.51 ERA as we managed to get this road trip kicked off beautifully.

Quick note: We’re now only 1 game behind the Pittsburgh Steelers and looking to re-establish ourselves as the team to beat in the NL East… up next on the docket is some interleague silliness against our in-state rival Jacksonville Jaguars who are currently in 3rd on the AL East table with a 46-56 record – we’re looking for the sweep.