All Star break does us no favours
Firstly, I must congratulate Mike Martin and Sean Gardner for being the first ever players to represent Riyadh in the UMEBA All Star game. For Martin it was his first ever ASG in his eight-year pro career and surprisingly enough for Gardner too, in a 15-year pro career, it was also his first ASG at any level.
Because of the ASG festivities we only had three games on the state, thankfully as it turned out. Baghdad shut us out 0-3 and Beirut grabbed an important two one-run wins off us, meaning we slipped even further behind at the bottom of the BURT division. We are now seven & eight games behind the “two B’s” and the chances of getting off the foot of the BURT are looking more remote.
Sean Gardner leads the Red Crescents in wins with a 6-7 record while reliever Javier Gonzalez is close behind him with a 5-1 record. Riyadh are certainly sharing the saves around with six current members of the roster having at least one save. A good start though for new second baseman Orlando Aguilar, in his first three games he is hitting .500/.583/.600. Masaki Sato leads the team with 22 homers and 55 RBI, catcher Mike Schofield has 13 homers and DH Guillaume Martin reached double figures for homers with two in 6-7 loss at Beirut. His first there actually gave us a 1-0 lead in the top of the second innings which was wrecked by the Cedars scoring all seven of their runs in the bottom half of the innings.
It was a rough week for us on the injury front too, although we managed to avoid any in Riyadh, we suffered four long-term injuries down in the farm system. Augusto Lerma suffered a sprained ankle and will miss 4-5 weeks, Rual Gasco suffered a torn rotator cuff and will miss the rest of the season, Jeremy Copeland tore his ACL and will in all likelihood not even be available for the start of 2047 while down in rookie ball young shortstop Ekabhakta Subbarao suffered a shoulder bursitis and will miss a month and a half. Another rookie suffering injury woes, though thankfully not serious, is the much vaunted Alba Gallino. His outing on July 3rd only lasted 3.2 mediocre innings before he was taken out complaining of a finger blister while his next start, he only went 0.2 innings before a sore elbow ended his night. He is expected to make his next start, but any further problems might lead to the promising Vatican City youngster being shut down for the rest of the season in his first ever pro year.
2046 Riyadh Results (up to Jul. 14)
Vs BURT
Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bagdad | 3 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 69 | 96 | 8-11 |
Beirut | 3 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 71 | 84 | 9-9 |
Jerusalem | 5 | 4 | 2 | 9 | 67 | 126 | 7-13 |
Manama | 4 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 90 | 105 | 7-12 |
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 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 0-2 |
Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 8 | 2-1 |