The Lumberjacks entered the 2058 season thinking they had a good shot at winning the Gillstrom Award for the league's top rookie. With several of the league's top prospects on Portland's active roster, the club felt they had a good shot. But many thought Allan Uecker might be the guy. But instead, it's the unknown guy who made the huge leap who is leading the charge. And his moment in Sim 7 might be why.
There are several ways to go this sim considering Portland went 4-2 for their first winning sim of the season. We had a 3 game winning streak, took two games against the Heartland, and had a pair of go-ahead homeruns. Jim Ashford had one early in the week against Bikini but it's the latter one that gets our Kate's Kookies Moment of the Sim nod.
Rookie Alvin Conley entered the Sunday night game against Madison in the top 5 in many offensive categories in the Frick League. No, not just among rookies but the entire league. A .365 batting average, 15 homeruns, and 2.0 WAR through the first 2 months will do that for you. The 15th of those homeruns is our moment for the sim.
Portland trailed Madison 1-0 early in Sunday's game before tying it with a run in the 5th and taking a 2-1 lead after the 6th. But the woeful Portland pen coughed up the lead and a 3-spot in the top of the 7th suddenly saw Portland down 4-2 with 9 outs remaining. That lead held until the 8th inning when Portland rallied. Hideaki Ohayashi led the inning off with a walk. Daniel Frampton singled on the next pitch and Portland had the tying run aboard with no outs. A pair of flyouts to right field suddenly turned things sour but up to the plate strolled Conley. Some might say he was due considering he entered the at-bat 0-3. He wasted little time sending the home faithful in to a frenzy.
On a 1-0 pitch, Conley turned on a Dani Colomo offering and hit the ball to deep right. Jose Romero, he recorded the previous two outs, raced back to the wall at "The Trail" and leapt to rob the Conley offering. The ball just missed Romero's outstretched glove and landed in the 3rd row of seats in RF for a 3-run homer. The homerun put Portland on-top by the score of 5-4 and was our Kate's Kookies Moment of the Sim!
ON a side note, Greg Squires followed the homerun up with his 2nd triple of the game and would score an insurance run on a wild pitch 2 pitches later.
As for Conley, he is currently dominating all major stats for Rookies in the Frick League. His 2.0 WAR is 0.9 ahead of the next guy in the Frick, which coincidentally is the aforementioned Allen Uecker.