Inching towards last year’s total
Losing the week’s opening game to Jerusalem and not getting the sweep was of course a dissapointment, but that was made up for straight away in the series in Baghdad. In a surprise result the Red Crescents managed a series win, topped off with a win in the rubber game by Peter Dickerson, only his third of the season. We finished the week losing two straight to Manama, hardly a surprise as we now have lost 21 times to them this season. Still, we’re kinda on course to win maybe a couple of games more than in 2047, not great, but better than getting worse and we’ve managed to win more games in August than in July (not fantastic as it’s still only seven games). Our average crowd is still up in the 19,000’s too which will be enough to set the highest ever total attendance in a single season in Riyadh.
On the field we are starting to look forward to 2049, we figure our biggest challenges at the moment are shortstop, third base and left field. Jose Montano has proved injury prone and wants $7 million, not a great combination. Jamie Ramirez is doing well, but will be 37-yrs-old and is not keen to resign, we’d probably be able to resign him in free agency, but I’m sure we could pick up better. Meanwhile in left field, Myeong-hwan Kim doesn’t want to come back and as his injury history is wrecked that’s probably just as well. Juan Martinez could probably carry on again, but we have the room for a decent upgrade. This week we started on that process.
We picked up two late-twenty year old minor league free agents with quite large signing bonuses, both could be 2049 starters. 29-yr-old LF Doeke Soethout has 730-odd BBA appearances with three franchises including 62 this year in New Orleans and probably could start straight away in Riyadh, but as we got him on a minor league deal we might as well give him a trial at Triple-A until roster expansion. 28-yr-old 3B Anastasio Guillen has had 733 BBA outings, all for Des Moines, but none this year. He’ll have a battle in Triple-A with Sancho Castillo, he’s a couple of years older but has four solid years UMEBA experience with Mumbai. Both of them could well be our 2049 hot corner starter, it’s up to them to prove their worth. Shortstop could be our problem position, decent ones don’t grow on trees, maybe we could find one in free agency in the off season but more likely we might have to settle for one of our decent defensive SS guys whose batting average is way below the Mendoza. It’s a start on our 2049 line-up though, and with a lot of salary cap expected to be available, it allows us to direct our off season efforts towards the rotation.
2048 Riyadh Results against the UMEBA (up to August 24th)
Vs BURT
Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Baghdad | 4 | 8 | 6 | 9 | 91 | 135 | 10-17 |
Beirut | 3 | 9 | 2 | 12 | 73 | 156 | 5-21 |
Jerusalem | 7 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 134 | 115 | 14-12 |
Manama | 5 | 13 | 3 | 8 | 107 | 164 | 8-21 |
Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Athens | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 26 | 27 | 2-4 |
Bucharest | 0 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 18 | 34 | 1-5 |
Cairo | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 27 | 0-3 |
Mumbai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0-0 |
Tripoli | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 29 | 19 | 4-2 |