Frustration at week’s end
The week started well with a 9-4 win completing a 3-1 series win over BURT leaders Jerusalem on their own patch and Riyadh followed it up with a series win over second placed Manama. While the standings don’t show the recent improvement, such was the Riyadh poor previous position, four series wins against the top two in the division in the last month show that the Red Crescents are at least heading in the right direction as their inaugural season closes in on the final month. With seven games left in August Riyadh’s record for the month stands at 11-11 and two more wins would give Riyadh their highest month’s win tally and possibly the closest the team has come to a .500 month. The frustration is that while we seem to have improved against the top sides, we are still lacking against the lower sides. This week’s fine performances against the Hebrew Hammers and the Pearls were overshadowed by heading to Greece and losing both games to Athens at the end of the week. The Fighting Centaurs really seem to have the evil eye on us though as we have lost all five meetings with them. It does appear as well that their record of 85 wins as the best by an UMEBA expansion side will stand for this expansion too as with only 33 games left of 2046 we have to win 32 out of those 33 to beat their record, a feat that is pretty much impossible.
Despite our many losses though we are pleased that our attendance has held up. Opening Day saw our biggest attendance so far of the inaugural season (27,746), immediately followed by our lowest the next day (14,474), but our average is still just over the 20,000 mark (20,326). This has been pleasing as it has funded the many minor league signing bonuses I’ve paid out to ensure that we’ve signed players that might well improve us in the long term. We’ll also end up with a very slight profit and enough revenue to enable us to have a budget in 2047 that utilises the entire $55K salary cap.
Port Elizabeth has also benefited from the influx of younger minor league free agents and are currently on an 8-1 roll, putting them six games over .500. With the Chinese Baseball League finished and South Guam & Santiago being virtually out of their league’s contention, there will be a lot of promotions between the levels trying to assess where some of our better players will sit next season. We now have, more or less, the benchmark for the franchise’s minor league system and now we set to work to improve on it for the 2047 season, ensuring that we will not suffer any sophomore slumps.
2046 Riyadh Results (up to Aug 25)
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 5 | 7 | 5 | 9 | 91 | 131 | 10-16 |
| Beirut | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 108 | 127 | 14-12 |
| Jerusalem | 7 | 5 | 5 | 10 | 87 | 139 | 12-15 |
| Manama | 6 | 10 | 5 | 7 | 131 | 144 | 11-17 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 14 | 41 | 0-5 |
| 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 |