Baby Steps
Despite all our week by week changes we still are not gaining ground on Bagdad or Beirut, but it’s probably good that we’re not losing ground to them either. Newly acquired outfielder Torvald van Donkelaar has been hitting the ball good in his first two weeks, slashing .444/.474/.944 and has shown a bit of competence at centre field so our next tinker will be to start him at centre and slide .325 hitter Mike Martin over to right. He hasn’t had many innings in his career there, but he can’t do much worse in the field than he’s been doing in centre (-4.7 ZR already). A bit harsh on young Jose Cardona who’s been quite good in right, but we have to find a place in the line-up for Martin’s bat. It’s getting very congested in the outfield with Donnie Peacock having just been activated from the IL, forcing us to send Wes Savage to Port Elizabeth to make roster space for Peacock.
Freddy McCord has settled in at third base, his 12 games for Riyadh have brought him three homers, a .294 batting average and a 1.025 def. eff. at third. new shortstop Zach Swanson is still trying to settle in, only hitting .174 and not too clever in the field either. That’s not uncommon though, while we haven’t got anybody bar Martin that’s really bad in the field, most of our fielders are slightly below average with the glove despite all our efforts to improve that. The exception is of course our catcher combo, both are throwing just over 40% of base stealers out.
The pitching situation isn’t improving much either. Tadamichi Yoshida’s stay was brief, after losing two out of three with an ERA north of eight he is heading for waivers to be replaced by new signing 27-yr-old Ricardo Quadrado . Ricardo was released by New Orleans having gone 1-4 for them in seven BBA starts this year; he has an 8-13 record in 31 BBA starts for the Crawdads. With five decent pitches, pretty good stuff and control we hope he can have a decent showing at UMEBA level, the only thing that might let him down is the lack of movement on his pitches. Bert Hackworth is doing well as the nominal staff ace, posting a 2-0 record with an ERA of 3.12. The pitching crew remains firmly bottom in the BURT in all pitching metrics except home runs and walks allowed, both of which they’re at the top of the BURT. The bullpen is trying it’s best to help keep games close, we’re 5-6 in extra innings games and 12-9 in one-run games.
2046 Riyadh Results
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bagdad | 2 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 47 | 71 | 4-8 |
| Beirut | 3 | 4 | 6 | 3 | 62 | 73 | 9-7 |
| Jerusalem | 5 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 55 | 96 | 6-10 |
| Manama | 4 | 5 | 2 | 6 | 78 | 91 | 6-11 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 10 | 27 | 0-3 |
| Bucharest | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 14 | 9 | 2-1 |
| Cairo | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 22 | 1-2 |
| Mumbai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0-0 |
| Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 8 | 2-1 |