Three wins but still a losing week
“The song remains the same” and “Groundhog Day” are two thoughts on this week. A great three more wins but a disappointing four losses again. We must open up though with two important things that inexcusably slipped past us last week. Firstly, Masaki Sato collected his second BURT player of the weed award, making him the most decorated Red Crescent player and secondly, among the 20,101 fans that attended the 6-2 win against Jerusalem on July 27th was the 1,000,000th fan to come through the turnstiles in Riyadh’s inaugural season, our first fan landmark. It was a good start to the week, winning the first three games including the win that completed our third series win over the Hebrew Hammers in Riyadh. It’s a shame it went downhill fast from there. Two of the four losses were by a single run though and another was yet another extra-innings loss.
Chris Kelly did better runwise in his third & fourth starts in Riyadh but only added 6.2 innings to his tally so we’ve sent him down to Port Elizabeth to lead our Triple-A rotation. Hopefully he can improve there even more, in the meantime Jimmy Cook will be promoted from the Windies to become our latest “Rent a pitcher”. Long man Gustavo Munoz got spanked for four runs in our loss against Cairo, but in recent times our bullpen has been very stingy with the runs they’ve given up. Despite that though our pitching staff remain some way behind the other four BURT teams in nearly all pitching stat categories. We have however started to improve our fielding behind them, we lead the division in assists (1209), double-plays (134) and range (4.22) while we’re second in throwing runners out (43.1%).
Wes Savage’s eight triples is good enough for #25 on the All-Time single UMEBA season list while Masaki Sato is on course to pick up around 110 RBI which would put him close to the top 50 on the UMEBA All-Time list. Guillaume Martin is producing a sound year at DH, the outfield six we’re pleased with (or at least they’re not embarrassing themselves), it’s just the infielders that really could do with stepping up their game with both the bat & glove. July was the first month we fell short of double-digit wins (only 9 wins) so we’ll have to carry on the overall improvement to get near our 65-70 win target for our inaugural season.
Our 17-yr-old Vatican City prospect, Alba Gallino, has finally been tagged with his first pro loss in his eighth start. He went seven innings, only allowing three runs and a walk while striking out a season high 11 batters, but the Chinese Taipei could only provide him with a single run in support. Gallino now has 52 strikeouts in his eight starts, fellow starter Uberto Casale leads the team though in K’s with 65 in his 10 starts.
2046 Riyadh Results (up to Aug 4)
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 3 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 73 | 109 | 8-14 |
| Beirut | 5 | 6 | 7 | 5 | 98 | 113 | 12-11 |
| Jerusalem | 7 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 78 | 135 | 9-14 |
| Manama | 4 | 9 | 3 | 6 | 101 | 128 | 7-15 |
| 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 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 31 | 3-3 |
| Mumbai | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 15 | 26 | 0-5 |
| Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 8 | 2-1 |