Edinburgh News - 2028-04-23 - 'Week Three"

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Edinburgh News - 2028-04-23 - 'Week Three"

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By Hamish Campbell
Evening News Staff Writer
2028-04-23

The Big Picture
Week three wasn’t pretty – but it could’ve been worse.

It was a losing week (2-4), granted, and Scotland did slip below .500 for the first time this season, at 9-10.

The silver lining? Three of those losses came at the hands of the demonstrably superior Havana Leones – the same team that won the Trans Atlantic division by 34 games last season and is off to a 14-5 record this year.

Getting swept 3-0 is never ideal, of course. But in this case, at least, it was understandable.

The Claymores did bounce back and take the next series, a three game home stand against the Florida Featherheads, 2-1.

On the season, Scotland has won three series (two against West Virginia, one against Florida); split one four-game series against San Juan; and lost series to New Orleans and Havana.

This suggests the Claymores can be competitive against much of the league, while at the mercy of the upper tier.

And, considering the team’s woeful history in Scotland, that’s at least progress.

Player of the Week
It can only be one guy, of course: José Guillén.

How could he top his Imperial League Premier Player of the Week performance, where he slashed .533/.553/.867? Well, he couldn’t. That’s right, Guillén slipped all the way to .500/.545/1.000 for week three.

On the season, he’s hitting .523/.551/.908, leading the Planetary Extreme Baseball Alliance in all three categories.

Bench the bum!

Game of the Week
Not a whole lot to pick from last week, but we’ll go with the Claymores’ 10-5 thrashing of Florida in their series opener on April 21.

It featured a two-homer, four-RBI day by designated hitter Yosuke Imai, that resulted in player-of-the-game honors for him; two hits (one of them a two-run dinger) by José Guillén; one hit batsman (Florida’s Danny Burton in the first inning), and then a retaliatory HBP (Claymore José Escobido) that drew hard looks from the umpires and considerable jawing from the respective benches in the bottom of the seventh.

The only downside to the action was Burton (nicknamed, appropriately enough, "Hitman") had to leave the game with a severe shoulder bruise after his beaning, and was listed as day-to-day afterwards. He did play the final two games of the series, however.

So, all in all, a pretty entertaining evening at the ol’ ballpark.

Stat of the Week
So far this season, the Scottish have scored 93 runs, which ranks them second in the Imperial League. Do the math and you see they’re averaging nearly 5 runs per game (4.89, if you want to be precise).

Sounds great, right? But there are two caveats.

Caveat 1) The Scottish have also allowed 97 runs, or 5.1 runs per game. This, of course, explains the 9-10 record.

Caveat 2) Nearly half (46) of Scotland's 93 runs were scored in four games, blowouts where the Claymores scored 14, 11, 11 and 10 runs, respectively. In the 15 games where they didn’t rack up double-digit scoring, the Claymores averaged just over 3 runs per game.

Flip it around, and you see that Scotland have lost two blowout games that account for 28 of the runs scored against them (one of those was a truly horrific 18-5 drubbing at the hands of San Juan). Again, if you do the math, you see that in the non-blowout losses, the Claymores allowed an average of just over 4 runs. (Losing record, remember?)

Bottom line: it would be nice to see the Scottish spread the scoring a little more evenly across the schedule.

Blowouts are nice, but so are one- or two-run wins.
Vic Caleca
Scottish Claymores
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