This Week in the Trans Atlantic: Week 20, 2028

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Vic
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This Week in the Trans Atlantic: Week 20, 2028

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By Hamish Campbell
The Edinburgh News
08-21-2028

Closer and further away.

Both concepts, oddly enough, apply to the magnificent season-long rugby scrum that has broken out over the Imperial League Wild Card slots.

The Scottish Claymores moved a bit further away from the pack on the strength of a 5-2 week, stretching its lead for the first Wild Card spot to 6 games over Hartford.

But the scramble for the second spot … what glorious mayhem! Hartford sits alone in the slot as of the morning of Aug. 21, but Arlington is just 1 game back, San Juan is 2, London is 3, and Kentucky is just 4 games back. New Orleans is still in the hunt, too, at 8 games behind.

None of these teams – including Scotland – can breathe easy, because one bad week can dump them out of the lead and back into the pack chasing post-season glory.

This, my friends, is what pennant chases are meant to be: breathless scrambles where seasons can be made or broken with a clutch hit or an errant pitch in the dirt.

Enjoy.

Havana Happenings
What does it tell you when BNN says you have 4 hot players and no cold ones? It tells you you’re looking at the Week 20 stat sheet for the Leones. OF Claudio Hernández, SP Enrique Vázquez, C Gareth van Wondel, and SS Ricardo Mateo all made the hot list – and you could hear the wind rustling the sugar cane in the empty vista that was the cold list. No surprise, then, that Havana posted a 5-2 record for the week, maintained its lead over second place Scotland in the division, and re-established itself as the winningest team in the IL. There was a bit of bad news, though: Havana lost SP Glenn Thomas for a couple of weeks with what team doctors were calling a “tired arm.” This will bear watching because, while he’s certainly not the staff ace, Thomas is a key member of the rotation … RP Carlos Ruíz also will be shelved for a bit, listed as day-to-day with “back tightness” . . . Player of the Week: There are plenty of candidates from the “hot” list alone, but we’ll go with van Wondel, who slashed .500/.520/.650 for the week. In singling him out, though, let’s just note that Havana had 3 players batting .400 or better for the week: van Wondel (.500), Claudio Hernández (.440), and 3B Vern Duncan (.400). Ricardo Mateo nearly joined the group with a .391 average … Game of the Week: The August 16 thriller against San Juan is an easy pick here: more than 54,000 fans at Campos Peloteros saw their home town heroes pull out a 2-1 win in the bottom of the 12th inning. The Leones had tied the game up in the 7th inning, setting the stage for extra inning excitement. In the 12th, Hernández drove a hanging slider from RP Jon Dalton deep into right center for a triple. 1B Ira Murdoch then tapped a weak grounder to first, which kept Hernández perched at third. But he wouldn’t stay there long. The next batter, 3B Duncan, hit a screaming line drive to center that allowed the runner to tag and race home with the winning run. Outstanding stuff!

Coqui Cables
Tough week on the road for San Juan, which dropped 3 of 4 in Havana and 2 of 3 in Louisville to drop back to .500 for the season and slip a couple more games behind both Havana and Scotland … Players of the Week: One thing’s for sure, you can’t blame last week’s woes on stopper José Gómez. Over his last 14 games, he’s notched a 0.50 ERA and picked up a save. His running mate in the back end of the Coqui bullpen, Closer Otis Pearson, has been clutch, too. Last week, he made 3 appearances, pitched 4 innings, allowed no runs, and picked up 2 saves. Not too shabby … Game of the Week: Not a whole lot of uplifting choices this week, but you can’t go too wrong with the 10-inning, 8-6 win at Havana on Aug. 15. The Coqui had been trailing 4-1 early, but posted a 5-run 6th to take a 2-run lead. Havana scratched out a run in the bottom of the frame and then another in the 7th to tie things up and set the stage for extra innings. An error, a groundball single, and a walk loaded the bases for San Juan against Leones RP Brian Anderson. CF Mike Rose, who had entered the game as a pinch hitter in the 9th, hit a 1-1 fastball hard on the ground between short and third, driving home the tying and what would prove to be the winning runs. Closer Pearson came on in the bottom of the 10th to lock down the win and avoid a series sweep by Havana.

Scottish Scoops
Stop me if this sounds familiar. Don Mercer plays well, the Scottish struggle. Don Mercer plays horribly, the Scottish kick butt. That’s been pretty much the way of it since the heralded slugger came over from Duluth just before the trade deadline. Luckily for the Claymores, Mercer (.120/.185/.120) pretty much stunk up the place last week. So, of course, they went 5-2, stretched out their lead for the first Wild Card spot, and kept pace with Havana in the division. Baseball, as they say, is a funny game … Player of the Week: This relates more to a transaction of note than to play on the field. Scotland used the smidgeon of extension money left to them after bringing Mercer’s $34 million contract aboard and extended SP Allen Guthrie for a year. Guthrie has held down the #2 spot in the rotation since Jorge Vázquez went down with a season-ending forearm injury in late May. Guthrie is 4-4 on the season with a 2.57 ERA, 3.36 FIP, and .270 BABIP. And using the Pure Quality Start metric favored by manager Hayato Sasaki, just 1 of Guthrie’s 12 starts this season could be considered even below average, and 9 of the 12 would rate as excellent or outstanding. Just as critical, though, Guthrie has emerged as a team captain and has been credited with helping create a clubhouse atmosphere that has gone from troubled to good to ecstatic to … I don’t know, drunken giddiness? … over the course of the season. No way GM Vic Caleca was going to let him escape to free agency. Game of the Week: No shortage of candidates from last week, but we’ll go with the August 19 5-3 win at Hartford. This game featured a solid start by Carlos Pérez, who went 7 innings and allowed 3 runs on 6 hits with 6 K’s and no walks, plus solid relief work by the bullpen to nail down the win. There were plenty of offensive fireworks, too, by just about everyone but – you guessed it – Don Mercer, who went 0-5 with 2 strikeouts. At the other end of that spectrum were SS Naomi Honma and OF José Guillén, who each chipped in homers, and C Jason Aaron who smacked a couple of doubles. Baseball? Funny game …

Underground Utterings
London had a strong week, going 5-2 against San Antonio and Amsterdam to go storming back into the Wild Card picture. But there’s little joy in the capital city after news broke that promising young SP [urlhttp://www.pebabaseball.com/reports/news/html/ ... _5448.html]David Tucker[/url] had torn the ulnar cruciate ligament in his elbow in the first inning of the August 18 game against the Calzones and would be lost to the team for 12 months. Tucker, who’s just 23, had been holding down the No. 4 spot in the Underground rotation and had compiled a 9-9 record with a 3.77 ERA. No word yet on who will replace him in the rotation … London also will be without the services of 2B César Torres, who hurt his back in a collision at second when San Antonio CF Raúl Ortega tried to break up a double play during London’s 6-0 win on Aug. 20. Torres (.230/.312/.315) will be out about 4 weeks … Player of the Week: SP Clark Snow threw 17 innings of shutout ball last week, going 8 innings in an August 15 victory over Amsterdam and notching a complete game shutout against San Antonio on August 20. For the season now, Snow has an Imperial League-leading 13 wins, a 3.42 ERA, 126 K’s, and an outstanding 4.2 Command Ratio (K/BB) … Game of the Week: We’ll go with London’s exciting 3-2 walkoff win over San Antonio on August 19. The Calzones took a 2-0 lead in the top of the 2nd on a pair of solo home runs, but the Underground scored in the bottom of the 3rd and 4th innings to knot things up. And that’s how things stood until the bottom of the 9th, when RF Bruce McGuire coaxed a walk out of Calzones RP Yakamochi Nakano and then 2B Jimmy Hudson – who’d replaced the injured César Torres – lined a double to right center. With runners on second and third, SS Tony Cuevas dropped a single into short right, sending McGuire home with the winning run.

Where They Stand
As of the morning of Aug. 21, the Trans Atlantic Division standings were: 1) Havana, 76-48, --; 2) Scotland, 70-54, 6 GB; 3) San Juan, 62-62, 14 GB; 4) London, 61-63, 14 GB.

As of the morning of Aug. 21, the Imperial League Wild Card standings were: Scotland, +6; Hartford, --; Arlington, 1 GB; San Juan, 2 GB; London, 3 GB; Kentucky, 4 GB; New Orleans, 8 GB.

See you next time!
Vic Caleca
Scottish Claymores
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