Three wins against the leaders of the BURT & BANC
Jun 30 v Beirut W 2-1
Jul 1 v Manana W 5-4
Jul 2 v Manama L 3-11
Jul 3 v Manama L 1-6
Jul 4 v Manama W 4-0
Jul 5 v Mumbai W 4-0
Jul 6 v Mumbai L 0-5
A good week, seven games at The People’s Palace leading up to the All-Star break. We managed to open with a rare win over the Cedars, a team that really have our number this year before going on to split the 4-game series with BURT leaders Manama. We finished out the week splitting two games with BANC leaders Mumbai. The 1-5 week knocked us Back last week but really this week shows us how far we have come this season. 3-3 against the two division leaders last season would have been an almost guaranteed 0-6 result. Now though we have split the six games and even shutout the leaders in two games. OK, we took a few good battering’s but the four wins in the week took us to 46 wins, just nine wins less than we gained in the whole of 2048. The crowd has stuck with us too, we’ve been breaking all sorts of attendance records, our average attendance is currently 27,580, less than 500 below capacity. Our total number through the gate is just less than 300,000 off last season’s tally with over 30 home games left.
All that said we are facing down a growing injury crisis, with “All-Star Jr” and more than possibly Jose Leyva too gone for the year we have been trying to coax ace pitcher aRicardo Quadrado through his back stiffness but it hasn’t worked, so we will take advantage of the All-Star break to give him a quick stint on the IL and go with a 4-man rotation in the meantime. 37-yr-old Kevin Morales, who we signed on the eve of this season, has now become only the third ever Riyadh pitcher to reach 10 wins in a season while Terrance Kelly on his UMEBA debut picked up the win as he pitched eight innings, walked two batters and gave up just four hits as the Red Crescents won 4-0.
Masaki Sato has added to his silverware collection, winning the June BURT batter of the month award; he batted .330 for the month with nine homers. 26 RBI as well as scoring 18 times. It’s a shame he wants to test free agency, but he might be disappointed in what other UMEBA teams want to pay for a 31-yr-old DH. We would really have liked to have him spend his entire career now as a Red Crescent but if it’s not going to be it looks like 24-yr-old former Rule 5 pick Umar Mutemi is the one to replace him in 2050; he’s currently hitting .361/.430/.642 in Port Elizabeth with 20 homers and 3.5 WAR so far. 23-yr-old Ivan Gulledge has finally made his long anticipated UMEBA debut and in his first week has hit .250 with his first big league homer as well. Vinnie Coalman can’t get back into the starting lineup after losing his place to Ricardo Esparza who’s hitting .261 with three homers and 17 RBI
2049 Riyadh Results against the UMEBA (up to July 6th )
Vs BURT
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baghdad | 4 | 2 | 5 | 4 | 96 | 81 | 11-6 |
| Beirut | 4 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 70 | 101 | 5-12 |
| Jerusalem | 7 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 64 | 40 | 12-5 |
| Manama | 6 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 88 | 89 | 9-11 |
| Team | HW | HL | AW | AL | RF | RA | Series |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Athens | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 33 | 33 | 3-3 |
| Bucharest | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 20 | 0-3 |
| Cairo | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | 9 | 3-0 |
| Mumbai | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 5 | 1-1 |
| Tripoli | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 11 | 13 | 1-2 |