May the shoots of improvement continue
In my short time in Riyadh, we have managed to go 7-12, not a great percentage of wins, but probably the level you might expect from an expansion team. We might be slightly unlucky though, out of those 12 losses seven have been in extra innings or by one run. Perhaps that suggests that it won’t take much improvement to bring that W-L margin closer to .500?
The award winning Mr Mike Martin
It must be something about the end of the month that inspires the Red Crescent hitters. At the end of April Masaki Sato scooped the BURT League Batter of the Week Award and now Rule 5 pick Mike Martin has repeated that feat at the end of May to become the second Riyadh player to win an award. May there be many more. One that might follow them is our new DH Guillaume Martin, in his 12 games so far, he has 14 hits, half of them EBH and three of those over the fences. A big blow we suffered this week was right fielder Donnie Peacock fracturing his foot and he will in all probability miss most, if not all, of June. Jose Cardona, newly promoted from Port Elizabeth as Peacock’s backup, will take his spot in the lineup. He’s been a bit weak with his bat in his first six UMEBA games, but he has his first UMEBA home run already and hopefully this spell of a month as the regular starter will help him to get used to the pitching and improve his average. Wes Savage will now backup all outfield positions while we consider options for the vacant roster slot. Both our catchers, Mike Schofield and Pablo Espinoza, are currently hitting and catching well, leaving us a hard choice between them. They have been going every other day up to now but going forward Schofield will get some extra starts against lefties while Espinoza will get the same against righties.
Bert Hackworth hasn’t managed a win in his first two starts since being promoted, but on the other hand he hasn’t a loss either. In 11.2 innings he has an 11/2 K/BB and a 3.86 ERA. This week’s rotation change is that Juan Nicto (2-5 in 11 starts) has been sent to Port Elizabeth while Tadamichi Yoshida comes the other way. Yoshida was in the bullpen in Triple-A for most of the year only starting two out of 14 outings. He posted a 0-3 record, but he only had a run support of 1.0 runs per game. With an ERA+ of 159 and a FIP of 2.33 as well as a K% of 38.7% we think he can improve in Riyadh. The bullpen too is still a streaming service between Riyadh & Port Elizabeth, Ch’ang-chieh Xin has arrived up to platoon the stopper duties with Sean Gardner. Momcilo Djuretic and Alfonso Cuevas who came up last week have both got a save already.