Brains! 2060.6: Soulless Shamblers Swept in Geoghegan

[aaronweiner]

The Jacksonville Zombies weren't a Billy McKay away from the second round. They weren't one hit or one good play away, at least not most likely. Jacksonville looked like soulless shamblers getting swept by the Charlotte Flyers, losing the series in three games and allowing 28 runs in three games.

"There are a lot of slang words for Zombies these days, post apocalypse," said cleanup hitter Steve Holcombe, one of the only Zombies to show excellence during the series. "Soulless shamblers probably describes us best."

The Zombies seemed to have all the fight taken out of them after a Game 1 loss when potential Jason Egan Award winner Luke Seddon, who has had a fantastic 2060 season, blew a three run lead in the eighth inning. The Zombies had put up nine runs in the first seven innings, but did not score for the rest of Game 1, and put up four runs the rest of the series.

"They hand the ball to me to get the job done," said Seddon, almost in tears after Game 1. "It's my job. It hurts to my bones to have blown that. After the year we've had, after the year I had, to go out there and blow a three run lead is devastating."

The team never came close to recovering, losing the last two games by uniform 6-2 scores. As expected, the starting pitching was blown to smithereens: Takehide Gertrudes, working on extra rest, blew up in Game 1, Bob Anderson was knocked around early in Game 2, and even though Dan Voelzke threw a quality start in Game 3, Ruben Din, this year's fifth starter, came in and was blown up, too. Gertrudes' terrible start was unforeseeable, and because Jacksonville was so blasted in this series, last year's playoff hero, Gav Mastinsky, didn't even get a start.

"Obviously we have to go into the offseason and seriously address our starting pitching issues," said manager Farri Agymah. "We had a lot of trouble with that this year, and, honestly, our pitching is too talented and our defense is good enough that we should not be having all of these issues."

Will Jacksonville make a move for a starting pitcher? Probably not, since the rotation is fairly set for 2061: it's very likely the team will run back Gertrudes, Anderson, Voelzke, Din, and Mastinsky yet again. In fact, next year's version of Jacksonville is very likely to look like this year's version, as Roy O'Donnell and Don Colbert firmly entrenched themselves as starters this year, and Billy McKay and Terry Cole are likely to reprise their roles at shortstop and first base, assuming McKay recovers from his knee injury intact. There are likely to be a few position battles in the outfield and in backup positions, but it's very likely we'll see the same team next year.

"So long as we're not crawlers, rotters, or stiffs, we should have a good chance to do better than we did this year," said Holcombe. "We'll be back with pride."

https://statspl.us/brewster/reports/new ... eam_3.html

[RonCo]

Maybe the Zombies will come back from the crypt next year more motivated.