[luckymann]

We start the month off in positive fashion by winning 4 of 5, with the highlight being a 13-3 romp over Lanai City in which Moulton goes yard twice to take his season total to 24 and Paul Arcila chimes in with 3 hits and 3 RBI. I get a call from Travis Avila, GM of the Beaverton Bishops in Oregon offering up quality outfielder Jose Self for Joe Douglass. While there’s little doubt the player they are offering would be more useful to us this season, Joe is rated the #1 prospect in our league for a reason. I politely decline his offer. Another solicitation from Aurora a couple of days later in which they are looking to trade Jason Edwards and Nolan Fadely for an expensive, if quality, centrefielder gets shorter shrift.

In the middle of this run, Ethan Williams wins Player of the Week honors for his .483 / 1 HR / 6 RBI performance.

Hilo, meanwhile, have fallen into a bit of a rut, and by the time we host them for a three-game series we are two in front of them. A sweep could really put the cat among the pigeons.
We take a convincing 8-2 win in the first game behind an excellent Tyler Canty outing and 4 ribbies by the red-hot Roland Taylor. But we drop the next one 9-5 and are one-hit in the decider, which they take 4-0 to cut the gap to a single game. This one looks to be going to the wire.

I’m still unconvinced our pen is strong enough to get us through a tight pennant race, so I trade JD Bell away to Jackson for Jason Spurgeon, a hard-throwing righty I’ve had my eye on for some time. He comes in at Brian Phillips’ expense and makes his presence felt almost immediately when he sends 10 hitters down in order against Kapaa in a 3+ inning save.

By mid-month the league has sorted itself out into two distinct divisions, and it looks almost certain that ourselves, Hilo (2 GB) and Kahului (4 GB) will be fighting it out for the title.
One aspect working in our favour is that Malone seems to finally be putting things together. His BA is back above .250 now and he knocks out his 18th dinger of the campaign in a tight win over the Bay Hawks.

We travel to Kahului for a key series with the Sugar Cane and take the opener comfortably 9-1 with Jason Edwards spinning a gem. But the win costs us large as Strickland tweaks his back and will miss a couple of weeks just at the time we can least afford to lose him. He goes on the IL, Jonathan Parsons comes onto the AR. This will test our gumption. We respond fantastically the very next game, scoring 4 in the top 9th to pinch it 7-5, with Luecke bringing in 3 of them on a clutch two-out double. On such hits are championships won and lost. A crushing 11-0 win the next day shows we mean business, with Moulton going yard twice and driving in 3, and Arcila getting 4 hits and two ribbies. The win puts us 8 ahead of them, but only 2 ½ in front of the Volcanoes, who seem unwilling to give an inch.

We get lucky a couple of times over the ensuing week, squeezing out a pair of extra-inning wins after trailing going into the 9th. Luecke is proving a revelation at first base, hitting .485 in 33 AB, which makes the news that Strickland will be out longer than expected a little easier to bear. But only a little.
When we head to Hilo for another crucial series to kick off the final week of the month, our lead is 3½ games. We knock them off 5-1 in the opener behind a fantastic outing by Jason Edwards (he hits a solo HR as well), but then lose a 16-inning epic the following day. An 8-1 win in the decider comes at a massive cost, as Jonno Moulton is hit on the hand by a pitch and it doesn’t look good. It’ll take a few days for the diagnosis to come through but we need to cover him in the meantime. Paulsen (.115 / 3 RBI in 26 AB) hadn’t been working out anyway, so I call up Corey Hanes for his first look-see this season.

When the news comes back it’s about as bad as it could be, but not quite. His thumb is fractured, but not broken. The doc thinks it’ll keep him on the sideline for 6 weeks or so, which means his season is over. But he shouldn’t have any long-term issues, so we’ll have him good as new for 1952.
However, we’re trying to win 1951. Suddenly the 4 ½ games we’ve put on Hilo seems way too few. I don’t want to let this thing slip from our grasp. So I go to Scouting Director NAME and tell him to find me the best replacement he can without us having to sell the farm. And to do it quickly.

Within 24 hours he has a candidate. And boy, what a candidate. Fidel Vasquez from Kenosha. A beast. Won the Wisconsin League MVP last season and is putting together another beauty this time around, with a slash of 372 / 445 / 582, 13 HR and 55 RBI. The demands are more than reasonable: infielder Greg Collette, pitcher Andy English and outfielder Joe Boone. The cherry on top is that he’s only on league min and still has some team control years left. I plunge into that sundae with gusto. He’ll be with us in 48 hours.

When Fidel arrives I decide to put him in at 3 and shift Malone to 4. Brian has been hitting OK of late but perhaps this will spark him into finally recapturing his 1950 form. We all get a lift when Marcus Strickland finally returns, and he and Malone both homer as we sign off the month with a 5-4 walkoff win, with Chris Blair bombing one out in the bottom 9th to give us the dramatic victory and keep us 4 ½ clear of Hilo with 22 games left.

HAL Batter of the Month: Aaron Mecham (Kahului) .393 / 13 HR / 29 RBI / 29 R

HAL Pitcher of the Month: Tyler Canty (Honolulu) 5-0 / 2.01 / 34 K / 40.1 IP