[jksander]

June 27, 2025: Sean Burke (4-6, 3.93 ERA, 73.1 IP, 74 K’s, 1.31 WHIP) pitched against the Giants’ Kyle Harrison (2-6, 5.13 ERA, 80.2 IP, 100 K’s, 1.41 WHIP) in game one of the series, and in the top of the fourth San Francisco struck first, with an RBI double by Willy Adames putting them ahead 1-0. We tied it in the bottom of the fifth off a Tauchman RBI single, and Lopez followed him with an RBI single that scored Meidroth from second to put us in the lead 2-1! Bazardo came out in the top of the ninth with the lead unchanged, and he pitched like he’s been with us for years ... LaMonte Wade Jr. reached first on an E4 error, but Bazardo caught him stealing, struck out Matt Chapman swinging, and then got Adames to hit a pop fly out to center for the final out as we held on to win 2-1! Burke improved to 5-6 with a 3.76 ERA, pitching 5.2 innings with a hit, two walks, five strikeouts and a single earned run. Perez (#7), Murfee (#4) and Eisert (#1) picked up holds, and Bazardo earned his first save of the year on 14 pitches without a hit. We outhit them 6-1, damned near coming out of this with a shared no-no, and Chase Meidroth led the offense with two hits, two walks and a run scored.

June 28, 2025: Yu Darvish (8-4, 3.33 ERA, 92.0 IP, 87 K’s, 1.15 WHIP) has had a pair of rough starts, but hoped to bounce back today, playing against Keaton Winn (7-6, 3.70 ERA, 90.0 IP, 84 K’s, 1.27 WHIP) in game two against the Giants. The Giants got on the board with a solo homer by Matt Chapman in the top of the fourth, however, and in the fifth Darvish got rung up big-time ... Jerar Encarnacion hit a solo homer, LaMonte Wade Jr. hit an RBI single, and then Chapman hit his second homer of the night, a three-run slam that forced us to bring Jonathan Cannon out of the bullpen, trailing 6-0. Joey Gallo grounded out in the bottom of the inning to get us on the board when Michael A. Taylor scored from third, but we were clearly not in it. The Giants held us off easily as we lost this one 7-2. Darvish lost his fifth game of the year, allowing four hits two walks and six runs (two earned) in his 4.2 innings ... he’s 4-4 with a 3.22 ERA since joining our team, and we’ve just got to hope he can maneuver through this rough patch. They only outhit us 6-3, but five of those runs came off the long ball, which has killed us all season. Gallo, as our designated hitter today, hit once, walked once and drove in two runs to lead the offense.

June 29, 2025: In our last game of the month and final game of this home stretch, Mike Clevinger (5-3, 2.30 ERA, 58.2 IP, 54 K’s, 1.11 WHIP) pitched against Jordan Hicks (3-1, 2.68 ERA, 40.1 IP, 36 K’s, 1.34 WHIP). In the bottom of the first, Miguel Vargas hit an RBI single to put us on the board, Michael A. Taylor hit a sac-fly to score Chase Meidroth, and then Tauchman scored when Starling Marte hit into a fielder’s choice, giving us a 3-0 lead after one inning. Heliot Ramos hit a solo homer for the Giants to get them on the board in the top of the third, but Marte hit an RBI single in the bottom of the inning and Austin Slater followed it with a two-run double to extend our lead to 6-1! We added on six runs in the bottom of the fifth, and Clevinger got two outs in the sixth before getting pulled for Kimbrel -- which is huge for a guy with his stamina! Another pair scored for us in the seventh, and even with San Francisco getting those two back in garbage time, we still routed them 14-3, grinding out another series win! Clevinger took the win, improving to 6-3 with a 2.24 ERA, lasting 5.2 innings with two hits, two walks, six strikeouts and one earned run, and we managed to put up 14 runs while only outhitting them 10-5 ... Lopez went 3-3 with three runs and four RBIs, and Marte added two hits, two runs and three RBIs. Otto Lopez, hitting .336 with 16 doubles two triples two homers and 25 runs batted in, has quietly asserted himself as a dark-horse All Star prospect, after being waived by the Marlins just six weeks ago!

Noah Schultz has quietly been working to improve his velocity, and now is throwing in the 96-98 mile per hour range! Our scout, Mike Shirley, has reported that beyond that his control has greatly improved (which explains how he’s come up to the bigs with such a consistently low WHIP) and he believes his potential stuff is still as close to unlimited as a young player can be. He considers him to be a “medium” risk to fully reach his potentials, but even as he stands, he’s the best pitching prospect in the majors by far.

Hagen Smith, meanwhile, has shown no major development progression so far this season, but we have him at AA Birmingham, and he remains a top ten prospect. We’re not going to rush him ... initially expectations had been that he could be ready to come up next spring, but it’s more likely he’ll remain at AA for the season and move up to AAA if ready in the spring.

After our 7-19 start in April and a solid 14-14 month in May, we’ve continued to show improvements as we were 14-12 in the month of June. With less than two weeks til the draft and the All Star weekend upcoming, we have a real chance to surprise people in the season’s second half. Our 36-48 record has us still in dead last in the AL Central, but incredibly we’re just 8.5 games out of first ... and we’re third in the AL in OBP (.328), first in walks (348) and sixth in overall baserunning (+2.5). Our starters’ ERA is 3.97 (3rd), and our overall BAPIP for all pitchers right now is .271, which is second in the AL. The key has been our defensive efficiency -- in that metric our team ranks third in the AL (.708) and our zone rating as a team is +12.6 (4th). Considering we’re a rag-tag bunch of youth and veterans strung together with bailing wire and twine, I’m pleased with those results.

We’ll hit the road this week for three against the Dodgers (58-27, 1st NL West) and three in Colorado (30-54, 5th NL West), and will then play out the remainder of our pre-All Star stretch at home, facing Toronto (43-42, 2nd AL East) for three and then finishing with a four-game set against our division rivals in Cleveland (43-40, 3rd AL Central).