"We haven't been playing exceptionally well over the past month plus" said Polinski. "Mainly our pitching has been terrible. While it hasn't necessarily been a strength for most of the season, it has been good enough to allow us to build a nice lead within the division. However over the past month or so, it has cost us more games than it has helped us win. We'll have to get things straightened out if we want to have any chance of advancing in the post-season and get past Hackensack in the Frick League playoffs."
Things are so bad right now with the Surfers starting rotation that four of the club's five starting pitchers find their names listed on the Who's Not (hot) portion of the Teams website. When you throw in our emergency starter is also on that same list, things are looking bad in Long Beach at the moment. Steve Cook is 1-3 with a 9.53 ERA in his last 4 starts. Bradley Rieves is 0-1 with a 9.64 ERA in his last 3 starts. William Cordell is 1-4 with an 8.51 ERA in his last 7 starts. And Hank Davidson is 0-3 with a 11.88 ERA in his last 4 starts. So if you break it down over the shortest tenure of these struggles, four-fifths of the Surfers rotation has struggled through AT LEAST the last 3 times through the rotation, or over the last 15 games. So you'd expect the club to be terrible over that stretch. Perhaps 4-11, or maybe 5-10. WRONG! In our last 15 games, while 4 of our 5 starters have struggled, we are 10-5 in that stretch and have increased our lead within the division.
So, we have to be scoring a ton of runs to make up for it, right? The Surfers must be one of the top 2 or 3 scoring teams in the Frick League this season. Wrong! Our 651 runs scored currently ranks 6th in the FL. In fact, as I've pointed out before, our Pythag record suggests we should be in 3rd place within our own division at a +8 differential. We've been waiting for this to catch up to us all season. It has happened. So can the Surfers ride this wave of risky play into the post-season and be successful? We sure hope so!
