Riyadh equals their longest win streak in one week
May 12 v Beirut W 6-5
May 13 v Cairo W 7-6 (F/16)
May 14 v Cairo W 4-2 (F/11)
May 15 v Cairo W 6-1
May 17 v Baghdad W 5-4
May 18 v Baghdad W 13-2
After going 2-8 in the first ten games of May, Riyadh suddenly snapped out of their funk and not only avoided the sweep by Beirut but ran over fellow expansionists Cairo before posting a couple of wins over the BURT bottom side as we won all the week's six games to equal our longest win streak. The win over Beirut was watched by 27,950 which is the Red Crescents second largest crowd ever to date; the five largest attendances in franchise history are now all in the first month and a half of 2049 and three of them are when the Cedars are the opponents.
Umar “All-Star Jr” Doger was back on form, he went six innings against Beirut, gave up eight hits (his highest tally in the big league) but only two came round to score. He, unfortunately, picked up a no-decision but got his fourth UMEBA win as he only allowed three hits and two unearned runs in his part in Riyadh’s 13-2 win over Baghdad. The bullpen picked up a few wins as we had back to back walk-offs in extra innings against Cairo, not really what they wanted though, a 16-innings game followed the day after by an 11-innings effort. Thankfully it was peaceful the next day as Romeu Tameiro picked up his third win as the Red Crescents finished off their sweep of the Pharaohs with a 6-1 win. Constantino Teixeira hasn’t been the dominant closer we wanted, but he did pick up his seventh save of the season this week, now if only he could lower huis 4.24 ERA?
Although the home run hitting isn’t as often as we were in the start of the season, we have still hit 59, tied with the Hebrew Hammers for the most in the UMEBA and our 139 extra base hits is the second highest tally in the BURT, behind Beirut’s 141 which is buoyed by their 80 doubles. Roy MacGugan seems to be taking to big league hitting, now he’s back at the top level, his batting average is currently .352 with an OBP of .444, he just needs to improve on his paltry tally of three homers. Talking of homers, Masaki Sato is back on it, launching 12 long balls so far and on a pace to eclipse the 34 he has managed in 2047 & 2048. Sato also leads the team with 27 runs scored and unfortunately GIDP’s with six! With three of our starting hitters out of contract next season and precious little wiggle room in the salary cap, we have to do some hard thinking as to who will be back in 2050.
2049 Riyadh Results against the UMEBA (up to May 18th)
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 48 | 44 | 5-4 |
| Beirut | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 30 | 49 | 2-6 |
| Jerusalem | 3 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 49 | 26 | 6-1 |
| Manama | 3 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 44 | 36 | 5-5 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 10 | 2-1 |
| Bucharest | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 20 | 0-3 |
| Cairo | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 9 | 3-0 |
| Mumbai | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0-0 |
| Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0-0 |