April wasn’t particularly kind to this young club, the Popcornmen went 9-16 after facing a heavy dose of Heartland Division pitchers and batters. Yellow Springs, Louisville and Chicago were particularly cruel to these youngsters, so they deserve a pat on the back for not letting this drag them down too much heading into May. Luckily for them, May started with opponents from the Pacific, a clearly inferior division.
Going 6-2 against Portland and Valencia provided the morale boost to face Heartland opponents again. When Madison came to town, the Kernels starting pitchers Larry Fain and Greg Palmer, had quality starts in games two and three of the series which allowed them to take the series after Karnes stumbled in game one.
Twin Cities came to town next for quick weekend series which saw the River Monsters and Kernels split the rare weekend evening games. This time around, Des Moines’s starting pitching faltered seeing Juan Garcia(the starter Juan) and Rafael'Nutball' Rodriguez give up five earned runs each. The bullpen was solid in both games which allowed the bats to take at least one game from the Monsters.
After a day of rest, the Kernels hopped on a plane to Tennessee where they have split the first two games of a four game series with the Bluebirds. Timmy Karnes bounced back to pitch a quality 5 innings and giving up no runs. Lucky for the Kernels here, because Starter become Reliever Bobby Lynch came into the game and promptly gave up three runs. Lynch is rumoured to be pretty unhappy about his role, but given his ineptitude starting last season (and his $11.5 million contract), he should probably take two pills of “Shut the Hell Up”.
After a rough April, some encouraging trends are appearing in the Des Moines stats line. They currently have the third best Team OPS in the Heartland and the fourth best Team WOBA. They were dismal in these categories last year, so those promising young bats may actually be starting to wake up. Pitching continues to be a problem, but like with batting, the Kernels are young. Timmy Karnes is showing real promise and Closer Bill Keil has yet to give up a run this season. Fielding is still a problem too, but it is improving, particularly at SS where the Kernels have been beyond abysmal the last few seasons. Man-keung Sui has single-handedly fixed CF too, but Nori Knuckles is struggling in RF and Anastasio Guillen has regressed at 3B. All in all, its trending in the right direction.
