Et vos, brutes?

 

* Do you see that batting line?  No way that’s only 0 runs.  But, in fact, it was worse — (-0.3) runs. How?  The Wolverines went 7 for 38 with a triple and 5 walks.  But here’s the catch:  Nate Lowe was 3 for 4 with the triple.  He was 100% playing for the Toledo Mudweasels.  That left the rest of the team 4 for 34, .117, .231, .117.  So as a matter of general managerial incompetence, this is a doozy. 

 

* Chris Paddack chulked, but at least it was for only 2.3 ip, 5 er.  Mike Minor didn’t quite chulk.  He went 5 innings, allowing 9 earned runs. But here’s the thing: none of them were home runs.  Having coughed up 4 runs in the fourth inning (walk, single, single, triple, ground out, single, gidp), Minor pitched a scoreless 5th, then started the 6th inning single, single, mound visit, single, double, mound visit, double.  Finally the local manager,  Mike Matheny, marched to the mound himself, removing Minor.  The reliever served up another double, and Minor had his 9 earned runs. Matheny seems to be a nice guy, but couldn’t he have rescued Minor a little earlier?  So that’s the field managerial negligence aspect of this loss. 

 

*  That triple in the 3rd inning? That was supposed Wolverine teammate Nate Lowe, who also singled in the 6th.  Lowe drove in runs #2 and #3 and scored runs #4 and #6 of the 9 runs.  One of the 5 Wolverine walks was to Adolis Garcia, who scored run #1 of the nine runs.  So it was a loss fueled in large part by teammate betrayal. 

 

* Speaking of betrayals: here is the most distressing part of this massive loss —  the ten daggers in the Wolverines’ back. Eight of you gained MORE than a single game on the Wolverines.  And the others gained 0.9  and 0.8 games.  All that high-fiving, yahooing, singing, and dancing kind of hurts a guy’s feelings. No one even sent a sympathy card signed, sealed, and delivered while grinning ear to ear. So that’s the league-wide dearth of empathy side of this loss.  

 

We have seen worse days, I think — double losses, maybe even a triple loss?  But this is about as bad as it can possibly get on a day where only 1 loss is recorded. 

 

 

But even with all that, the Drive still managed to gain 0.9 games on the Wolverines. So it’s not all that bad.  

 

 

 

 

 

On the hitting side, however, only the lack of a game being played yesterday kept the team’s .838 OPS from adding a bunch of runs scored and boosting the Dragons even closer to the league lead.  Homers by a trio of promising young Dragons (Amed  Rosario, Alex Kirilloff, and Jake Cronenworth) boosted the Dragons 1.3 games closer to the lead. 

 

 

On the pitching side, Dane Dunning completed a serviceable 5 innings (2 er) and Collin McHugh and Emmanuel Clase cleaned up for a solid single-game’s worth of pitching.  Fortunately, the Cannies have enough extra pitching to cover the extra game.  So Canberra gained a solid 1.6 games on first place.  They also moved within 1.5 games of 6th place Haviland, who are 1.6 games behind 5th place Flint Hill.  And the Kangaroos are now only 4.3 games behind the 2nd place Balk while running 4.8 games ahead of the 8th place Cheese — so the arguments are piling up for recognizing Canberra as a contending team.  At the pace they gained on the Wolverines yesterday, the K’s could catch the W’s by the 4th of July. 

 

 

That was enough for a nice win — which is good because the hitters didn’t help.  Well, other than the amazing Shohei Ohtani (a homer and a single in 4 plate appearances) and the pesky Zach McKinstry (a home run in 4 AB).  The rest of the Cheese batted .132, .200, .178.  And the Cheese bubbled 1.8 games closer to first place. 

 

 

 

 

 

Even with Rhys Hoskins’ bad day, Bellingham bulldozed 1.3 games closer to first place. 

 

 

The hitting, on the other hand is easily understood as a poor day undermines the team’s average runs scored per game and can result in lost runs.   Even so, the Rosebuds gained 0.8 games on the Wolverines.  That’s the least any EFL team gained, but when you gain that much on even a pretty bad day, it has to help.