Three more wins, but the other teams are starting to pull away
Since the disaster of losing all six games at the end of May as we ticked over to June, we have lifted ourselves and have won eight of our 19 games after the first of June. It’s still not really enough though as the rest of the BURT are beginning to pull away from us, the closest team to us is Baghdad who are nine games ahead of us, although they have played two games more. Next week we’ll be reaching the virtual halfway mark in the 2047 season, so our fate is seemingly sealed. We will need a big turnround to close the gap on the rest of the division.
The Riyadh career of Andresa Pires is over already. Brought in during the off-season on a cheap two-year deal we really hoped he would add depth to out rotation. Instead in 11 starts he managed just a 1-6 record and an ERA of 5.19, following a prolonged bout of whinging about not wanting to play for a loser (which he was contributing too !) he headed for the waiver wire. Manama has now taken a punt on him and submitted a claim, good luck to him and hopefully with a better team around him he will improve his figures.
Bert Hackworth & Juan Rodriguez have both won three games now, best in our poor excuse for a rotation, not as good though as reliever Ch’ang-chieh Xin who has won four games and actually has a winning record (4-2). Ricardo Quadrado has been a workhorse in the ‘pen eating the middle innings; he has a 2-0 record with one save and has been credited with 15 holds.
Off-season acquisition Jose Montano has just hit his first Riyadh home run, but we didn’t bring him in for that. Defensively he has been sound at short and he has 19 doubles to his name, his .262 batting average is one of the best for the Red Crescents. Masaki Sato is way off his 2046 pace but his 15 homers and 37 RBI is easily the best on the team, no-one has even half as many long balls as him. Jamie Ramirez’s two-year deal was heavily back-loaded behind a vesting option as we feared that at 35-yrs-old he might not cut it. We needn’t have worried, his defense at the hot corner has been outstanding, he has a team leading 24 walks, is second with 17 doubles and leads with three triples. Jamie has also just been awarded a Player of the Week award, the first silverware we have collected this season; we will be picking up his $2.2 million vesting option for sure.
2047 Riyadh Results against the UMEBA (Up to June 22nd)
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 3 | 3 | 1 | 5 | 47 | 61 | 4-8 |
| Beirut | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 65 | 79 | 7-9 |
| Jerusalem | 3 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 61 | 93 | 4-12 |
| Manama | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 76 | 79 | 8-9 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 21 | 2-1 |
| Bucharest | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 21 | 1-2 |
| Cairo | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 10 | 11 | 1-2 |
| Mumbai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0-0 |
| Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 23 | 0-3 |