Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#31 Post by Fishermen »

Claymores wrote:Man, everyone is battling itching injuries,
Yes, I'm itching like crazy :lol: I reckon the clubhouse cat has fleas
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#32 Post by Fishermen »

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#9. June 2nd, 2028

To our fans I more than suspect that the series at West Virginia was a real disappointment but to the team & management it was a kinda wake up call. The league poking us hard and telling us just where we stood in the grand scheme of things. The first game was a real old pitchers duel, the battle of the 38-yr-olds, Eduardo Romano vs Manuel Corona. We had progressed until the bottom of the fourth with both pitchers sitting down nearly all they had faced before Romano blinked and he had given up a triple to Dewitt Barry with Brad Davis having picked up a leadoff walk. That was all it took to lose the game. Davis was across the plate and when the next batter ground out to first Barry was home too. Three hits off reliever Kyle Tatham in the sixth saw Luis Cedeño score but the damage was irreversible. We outhit the Alleghenies 7-6 but couldn’t get that second run home.

Poor Ralph Morris tried his best in the second game but the runs kept slowly coming, like a dripping tap. Seven hits, three more walks (what did I tell him about those walks?) and the Alleghenies had four runs home. Morris left after five innings which slowed the drips, but the bats were powerless to help the team out, six singles was all they could manage and only twice the runner advanced pass first base. Only the third time we had been shutout this season.

Rookie Kojiro Hirose was doing a good job in the series’ third game. He was keeping the visitors off the board while we eked out a succession of singles and walks to be leading 3-0 after four. West Virginia got to him in the bottom of the fifth though and scored three to tie it up. We were in battling mood though as in the top of the sixth a hit-by-pitch and a throwing error got Mark Edwards to third on a throwing error. Jack Allen hit it just deep enough to get him across the plate on the Sac Fly and retake the lead. Hirose came out for the sixth, and perhaps it was an innings too far as the Alleghenies solved him and pushed two runs across. Cedeño was thrown out at the plate to end the top of the seventh desperately trying to tie it up again and when the home side added a pair of insurance runs in the bottom half of the seventh, the game was up. We had one last effort, in the bottom of the ninth two singles and an error saw us load the bases with two out but Ron Myers hit into a fielders choice at second and that was our sixth straight loss, dropping us from 27-21 right back to 27-27.

The final game of the series was our first game in June and that was a game for the ages. It started off well enough, two walks and an error by the home side enabled a Sac Fly by Gordon Fuller got leadoff man Jack Allen home before Jose Morin allowed a home run to tie it up in the second. That’s where the bats from both sides were put away. Morin went five more innings giving up just two more hits and a pair of walks. Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown & He ‘Firecracker’ Ling pitched scoreless innings to send us into extras still knotted at one. Wayne Prior pitched three and a bit scoreless innings. He departed and Otto Coleman added three more scoreless innings. No-one scored anything off Jon Yates and he was on the mound as we passed into the 20th innings. Juan 'Grinder' García was into his third innings of work when Luis Cedeño led off the top of the 24th innings with a solo homer off Jesus Antonio, the Alleghenies eighth pitcher of the game. Garcia was fire in his arm now reached into his fourth innings of work and despite hitting a batter and walking the next he was able to pick up his second win of 2028 when centre fielder Carlos Ryan threw Henry Davis out at the plate trying to get home from second on Bang-xao You’s single. The sides had combined for only two hits in the first four innings of extras and then launched into a veritable feast of offence with 14 hits over the next 10 innings but failed to score more than that one run.
Game facts
  • 158 AB’s were recorded by the two teams
    24 hits including just three doubles and two homers
    23 walks
    23 Strikeouts
    85 batters were left on base
    Bang-xao You set the IL record for extra innings AB’s with 11 (1-11)
    Masakado Kato (HH) and Pedro Flores (WV) both went 0-10
    11 batters came off the bench, and managed three hits between them
    15 pitchers entered the game
    619 pitches were thrown, 373 for strikes and 246 were balls.
    8 inherited runners were stopped from scoring
    Game started at 7.05 pm (MST) and ended a tad over eight hours later at 03.07 in the morning
    57,992 came in through the gate and about 15 were left when the umpire called Davis out at the plate.

All we can hope now is that Curt Mills can throw a complete game today at Mack Stadium against the Featherheads as I’m sure the bullpen won’t want to be stirring from those comfy chairs and pillows they were spotted dragging out there. One bonus will be that Jon Woods will be behind the plate after being activated from the DL, which means that Dae-hyun Paek has said his goodbyes and headed back to Triple-A Lincoln wondering if he'll ever be back in the PEBA again?
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#33 Post by Fishermen »

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#10. June 7th, 2028

The last week, a 0-5 effort, has seen the final nail in the hopes of Harpoon repeating another 100-win season. The slumping form has now seen us win just one game out of the last 12 we have played and our overall record drop from 27-21 to 28-32. The injuries to the rotation haven’t helped but everyone’s inconsistency has also been a major factor, we just can’t seem to get a good run together.

Our first game of the Florida series looked to have been won by two scratched out runs in the bottom of the fifth, Curt Mills trying desperately to rest the bullpen after our 24 innings effort the day/night before went the distance into the ninth but two doubles & two singles in the top of the innings scored three runs, chased Mills from the game and handed Featherheads a one-run win.Eduardo Romano gave up three early runs and we had only got it back it 3-1when Jon Yates came on in relief and immediately surrendered three more ending our interests in the game. Ralph Morris in the final game of the series didn’t give up any walks for a change but he did give up 11 hits & four runs in his six innings of work. We did get as close as 4-3 but almost immediately the visitors got the insurance run that secured their series sweep.

In Scotland for another series with the Claymores and so far this hasn’t gone any better. Rookie Kojiro Hirose and the Scottish starter both surrendered a shed load of hits but the difference was 4-2 to the home side when Hirose left. In the top of the ninth we still trailed by five runs to three, Claymores helped us get back to 4-5 with a hit batter and a wild pitch but we couldn’t close that final run gap once more. The second game saw minor league free agent pickup Jose Morin give us seven strong innings but it was tied at three when we went into extras. That didn’t last long though as Otto Coleman coughed up a walk-off homer to the lead-off batter in the bottom of the 10th.

The fact that we are still second in the IL Seaboard division really speaks volumes about the strength of the division at the moment, even London who are bottom of the Trans-Atlantic currently have a better record than us. Their five-game winning streak has taken them above us in the IL Wildcard race where we currently sit in fourth, if we don’t improve that we could be struggling to make the post season at all. We have the capability of making it better, our OBP (.317) is the third best in the IL, no doubt helped by our 181 walks, also the third best total in the IL. Our defence is only ranked 10th in the IL and that definitely has to improve, Jack Allen leads the team with seven errors so far and the outfielders defensive range has been sorely lacking. Although most of the pitching stats are ranked in the bottom third of the IL, I’m minded giving them a pass on this at the moment given the disruption to our pitching staff. Now though they have to improve as Alfredo Zambrano will pitch his first game back off the DL tonight at Scotland and Maxime Labrie will be back within a week or so. Mills, Morris and Morin have pitched their hearts out in this time of crisis, but it just hasn’t been enough, they haven’t always had the best of luck or run support. They will all be in contention for the bottom two spots in the rotation once everyone is back off the DL. Zambrano’s return has meant Hirose heading for the bullpen as the long/swing man, his 1-3 record with an ERA north of six doesn’t tell the whole story of his PEBA debut spell. He does need to work on his 38 hits allowed in 20 IP as well as reversing his 3.9 BB/9 and 3.0 K/9 though if he's to fashion a career at this level.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#34 Post by Fishermen »

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#11. June 19th, 2028

Well, things are a bit better but not much. We have at least won half of our last ten games, a definite step up from 1-11, as always though there is a hard luck story attached. Our bullpen, a source of strength when our rotation was struggling with injuries, now appears to have been strained by its over use and has taken to giving up huge clumps of runs. In the final game of the New Orleans series Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown and Wayne Prior gave up four runs and only recorded a single out between them in the eighth innings as they turned a 3-0 lead into a 4-3 defeat. The next day it was Brown and Juan 'Grinder' García who combined in the ninth to turn a 6-1 lead into a 7-6 defeat in Kentucky. For the third day running then it was a bullpen collapse when we had taken Kentucky into extras with a 3-3 tie before Otto Coleman coughed up five runs in the 10th innings.

I haven’t lost faith in the ‘pen though they’re just a bit inconsistent, they can throw lights out innings all week and then suddenly become ‘home-run derby’ softball tossers. They haven’t been helped last week by Jose Morin who in two starts lasted just one batter over two innings in the first and then one batter under two innings in the second before coming out with injury in both. With Maxime Labrie now having returned from the DL we have sent Morin off to the DL with back tightness, no timetable has been set for his return. Alfredo Zambrano is slowly coming back to form after his DL stint, he lasted just four batters on his first start back before succumbing to injury again and got tagged with his first loss of 2028 before going five then six innings in his next two starts, both no decisions. Even though Zambrano didn’t get the credit for the win yesterday against Kentucky we finally did get the ‘W’ after a Jack Allen single in the bottom of the ninth drove in two for a walk-off 5-4 win. 19 of our 33 wins have now come by a single run or in extra innings, conversely though we have lost 18 games by a run and four more in extras.

The batters too have lost focus, Luis Cedeño started off like a house on fire slashing the ball over the fences but now has gone 39 games with just two homers in that time. He does remain the top long ball hitter though with 13 but Ron Myers and Carlos Ryan are coming up behind him with nine each. Cedeño does comfortably lead the team in stolen bases too with 29 from 34 attempts and the Harpoon sit third in the IL with 82 steals overall. With the team 2nd in IL OBP (.322) as well as 2nd in hits (652) it’s not all doom & gloom although the run differential of -28 currently needs to be kept in check. The crowds are starting to get a bit worrying too as although we sold close to 20% more season tickets this year we are currently just a tad over 10% down on the actual gate each game compared to last year.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#35 Post by Fishermen »

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#12. June 26th, 2028

We’ve just got back from a six-game road trip to Scotland and Arlington with a .500 record, lost the series against the Claymores two games to one and won the one against the Bureaucrats by two games to one. I think all we can say about the Scottish series is at least we finally won a game against them while it was good to get two against Arlington as we had been pretty unlucky in the last couple of series with them.

Eduardo Romano pitched deep into the eighth innings in the series opener against Claymores to give us a rare win over them and Luis Cedeño stole two bases to pass 30 steals for the season. The hope that gave us for the series was soon dashed, Curt Mills had pitched a clean first innings in the second game but it fell apart then. He had already loaded the bases when two errors (one by him) helped Scottish to a three-run innings, two more in the third and it was all over. Min-u Yi getting a rare start at third hit his first triple of the season but there was nothing else to rave about. In the final game of the series Ralph Morris pitched well turning it into a pitcher’s duel but with no run support again a booted ball by Cedeño in the fifth let Claymores in for a 2-1 win. Morris’ record is now 2-5 but in his five losses he has only received a total of 10 runs support. The bats didn’t really support anybody in this series, just five extra base hits and not a single home run.

Home runs did spark the series opener in Arlington though, Walter Winston gave us the lead in the fourth with a one-on, two-out homer, Ron Myers hit his 10th of the season in the sixth and Cedeño snapped his drought by finishing it off with an eighth innings long ball. Maxime Labrie made a welcome return straight off the DL and pitched five strong innings giving up five hits and just one run to square his record at 2-2. Alfredo Zambrano pitched the series’ second game and gave us another six innings allowing only three runs but once more we couldn’t scratch out any runs. Our only run came off Mark Edwards first home run of the season, we’re not going to win many games with the run support we’re giving our pitchers. In 12 of our 23 June games so far we have scored three or less runs, it’s been tough for our patched up pitching staff to limit the opposition to three or less. Three doubles and Carlos Ryan’s 10th homer of the season helped us to squeeze past the Bureaucrats by a single run. Zambrano came out with only one out in the fifth innings so Kojiro Hirose came out of the ‘pen to grab the win and square his record at 3-3. Hirose was the second of six pitchers we used and Juan 'Grinder' García faced only two batters before complaining of shoulder pain. The doctors have listed him as DtD with Shoulder tendinitis but I decided not to risk further injury to the 38-yr-old by sending him to the DL. We’ll go into the upcoming homestand with West Virginia (four games) and Florida (three games) one short in the bullpen thanks to Garcia’s DL stint and Jon Yates currently being in Lincoln on a rehab stint.
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Jack Allen in his third season in the bigs is setting career marks as he finally feels at home
Jon Woods has returned in good form after his groin strain hitting .331/.365/.431 on the season so far while backup catcher Neil Avery is hitting .307, the second best average on the team. Hartford have hit 14 triples as a team this year with Edwards, Ryan and Jack Allen having three each. Allen also has 95 hits for the season, five short of a 100-hit season for the first time in his three-year PEBA career and currently 23 hits ahead of second-placed Cedeño.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#36 Post by Fishermen »

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#13. July 3rd, 2028

A seven-game homestand last week, disappointingly a 3-4 week, but perhaps a better feel-good week than several others recently. Maybe it was because the bats came alive, scoring just over an average of six runs a game (43 runs), in a real burst of offence and perhaps it wasn’t all the pitcher’s fault that we gave up 47 runs helped along by the fact that we only turned three double plays during the homestand. Several times we failed to turn what looked a nailed on innings-ending double-play and although it doesn’t show on the box score it cost us a few vital runs in a week when three out of four losses were by two runs or less.

The series against West Virginia was an explosion of offence throughout the four games. We outhit our visitors 13-10 in the first game but couldn’t make it count despite putting four doubles and a homer on the board. We lost Walter Winston in the second but his replacement Masakado ‘Stubblebeard’ Kato took advantage of a rare outing to record a double & a homer. Curt Mills was chased from the game in the sixth when he allowed three runs in the innings and we couldn’t quite pull that back. Two runs in the eighth brought us to within one but all we could get in the ninth was a solitary hit. The second game looked lost when Ralph Morris shipped two solo-homers in the top of the 1stand even more so when he coughed up a three-run shot in the fourth to make it 5-0. A two-run homer by Luis Cedeño, his 15th of the season, in the bottom of the innings but once more it faded quickly after a wild pitch & an error enabled the Alleghenies to score three more and take the score out to 8-2. Again we were able to claw two runs back but the park fell silent again as West Virginia made it 9-4 in the top of the sixth. For once the players didn’t let their heads drop and a Cedeño double with two on in the bottom of the sixth helped us get back to 9-7 at the end of the innings. It was 9-8 after seven and the sound was deafening when a two out double by Ron Myers cleared the two on base and gave us the first lead of the game. Otto Coleman successfully ended up pitching three innings giving up just a hit to pick up the win as Harpoon outhit the visitors again, 14-9. The third game though it was business as normal though, by the mid-fourth innings we were down 8-1 mainly thanks to Maxime Labrie giving up three two-run homers. We closed it to 9-5 by the bottom of the ninth and there was hope when Jack Allen tripled to score Michael Burnett before scoring next batter but the four run gap was just too much. The hero of the previous day, Coleman, was another pitcher to be helped off injured. The final game of the series was a strange one, the Alleghenies lost their starter through injury in the second innings (for eight months as it turned out) and we lost Alfredo Zambrano again for another month in the fourth. The bullpens kept it as tight as they could and it was 7-4 to the visitors going into the eighth. A rare three-run homer off Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown sent West Virginia 11-4 up but there was still time for something even rarer. In the bottom half of the innings Shojiro Kotara lined the ball into right and as the ball kept rolling and the right fielder completely misjudged it Kotara kept going and completed the scoring with the first inside-the-park home run that I have seen in my PEBA career.

We hadn’t held out much hope for the series against the IL Dixie topping Florida Featherheads but we ended up pleasantly surprised. Alfredo Zambrano just didn’t have his stuff in the first game of the series, four hits & three runs in the top of the first when Florida sent eight to the plate set the tone for the game. He hung bravely in there but when he came out in the eighth his stat line was 7.1 IP 9H 6ER 8W 4K. Another rare occurrence, the lack of control as he walked eight. 6-5 looks close, but we were never really in it. The first of July brought an immediate change, backup catcher Neil Avery hit Harpoon’s first Gland Slam of the season in the bottom of the first to give us a 4-1 lead and we settled for that for most of the game. A solo shot by Carlos Ryan in the eighth looked to have made the game safe especially when walked, stole second and advanced on a throwing error before coming home to make it 6-2. Curt Mills still had time to give up a two-run homer in the top of the ninth but clung on to finish his first PEBA Complete Game since 2024. Morris pitched his best game of his PEBA stint when he pitched seven strong innings allowing just two hits and one run. Four runs in the sixth including solo homers by Kato & Ryan sealed the 5-2 win.
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Robby Holmes can count Tommy John surgery, Elbow Bone chips, Shoulder Inflamation and now a torn elbow ligament as his major injuries

While Zambrano heads for his second long DL stint of the season already, Jose Morin is activated off the DL to slot into the #5 rotation slot. Jon Yates returns to the bullpen as well after we recalled him from his rehab stint in Lincoln; one player who won’t be making it back to the show is reclamation project Robby Holmes who on June 29th suffered a torn elbow ligament, his fourth major season-ending injury, that will almost certainly end the 33-yr-old former 2016 second-rounder’s career.
Last edited by Fishermen on Wed Mar 06, 2019 8:26 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#37 Post by Vic »

Where there’s stubble, there’s hope. So, here’s hoping Hartford can ride “Stubblebeard” all the way to the top!
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#38 Post by Fishermen »

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#14. July 5th, 2028

We had only had three games last week thanks to the PEBA All-Star game and they were the final series of the season in London against the Underground. Buoyed by our upturn in form over the last week or so I had issued an invitation to our sponsors with European business interests to join us at the final game of the series at a reception in the visiting Director’s Executive suite at Wembley. We would have our only fit Ace, Eduardo Romano, on the mound and it would be a fine day to impress & reward some of our loyal sponsors.

Game one went well, Maxime Labrie was on the mound for us and back on form. Both pitchers kept it tight early on and the teams only managed two hits combined in the first three innings. Jack Allen led off the fourth with a single and then Carlos Ryan broke the game open by cranking the ball over the fences. That proved to be all the offence, we had seven hits in the game and held London to just three. Labrie went seven innings giving up the three hits and a walk while Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown & He ‘Firecracker’ Ling finished off the shutout.

Game two was better, the players went out with the fire that a rare three-game winning streak breeds. It was to be Jose Morin against London’s Ace Clarke Snow. By the time Morin stepped on the mound we had already put two runs on the board. Two innings later Gordon Fuller had hit our second Grand Slam in four days and we were 6-0 up. Morin went six innings, allowing just five hits and London’s only run of the game while Kojiro Hirose pitched three clean innings to finish off the game. Hirose is turning out to be a solid bullpen arm, in his last 10 outings he’s pitched 16 innings and allowed just four runs with no homers.

Game three was going well at lunchtime, about two dozen of our sponsors guests were enjoying a buffet and drink in our executive suite at Wembley mingling with our players not in the lineup. Suddenly across the room I spotted Romano taking to an attractive woman from BMW, over from Germany. I couldn’t believe he was here, pushing through the crowd I pulled him aside and demanded to know what he was doing here and not throwing his warm-up tosses? Romano shrugged as said “Manager Ramón Morales, he says I no pitch today, Wayne Prior goes instead”. Well I was furious at that. We had all these guests to impress and Morales was throwing out a middle reliever making his second start of the season? I was all on for storming the clubhouse and having it out with him, but the Front Office guys managed to persuade me it might not be a good idea. I settled for sending our office gopher down to the dugout with a message demanding that Morales came up to our suite as soon as the game was over. I sat at the bar and fumed all game, we didn’t do too bad, Pryor surrendered a walk and a double in the second to give London a 1-0 lead and that turned out to be that. Our bats were silent again and only managed three singles all game. Our four-game win streak had been snapped, we had had the chance to equal our best 2028 streak of five wins and in my mind, it was down to not having our Ace on the mound. Morales showed up some 30 minutes after the final out and I really laid into him in front of everyone “I give you a rotation for a reason” I snapped at him “ You can forget about an All-Star break, I will be having you up on a misconduct charge as soon as we get back to Hartford. I will be asking Mr Davidson III to dismiss you, I consider your conduct to be outrageous given that you knew we had all these important guests here and if I was you I’d be clearing my desk as soon as you get back.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#39 Post by Borealis »

Sounds like a conspiracy... I blame the Beamer Chick...
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#40 Post by Fishermen »

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#15. July 7th, 2028

So it was that the Hierarchy of the franchise assembled on the eve of the All-Star game at Mack Stadium. I think Grey (Davidson III) agreed with me on my stance over Morales but he wouldn’t speak to me as he was chairing the Misconduct hearing. I suppose he was right as he didn’t want to prejudice the case. All of the requested participating witnesses were in the stadium in different places waiting to be called to present their evidence before the Hearing Panel. I had calmed down a bit but when I went in first to recount my evidence and why I had charged Morales I still had difficulty controlling my rising fury again. The Panel just looked down at their papers and scribbled or doodled until I was sent out for them to hear from everyone else involved.

I spent most of the rest of the day preparing for the arrival of three players we had claimed off waivers as well as sorting the travel documents and arranging all the details for the two youngsters we had signed as International Free Agents this last week. Coming in to the Harpoon off waivers would be First Baseman Haden Shawver and Outfielder Katsuhiko Araki both claimed off Amsterdam. Shawver is 30-yrs-old and his last PEBA experience was 58 games in 2022/23 with the former Charleston franchise while Araki is 27-yrs-old and had his first PEBA call-up with Amsterdam last season. We will give Shawver a shot at the starting first base job as neither Gordon Fuller or Bob Jackson have proved very adept in the role. Araki, as he can play the outfield corners well and also has some sort of experience at centre will get an opportunity to be a backup outfielder at PEBA level but his stay may be short with Walter Winston ticketed to come off the DL in a week or so and start a rehab stint in Lincoln. The third player we claimed off waivers was 21-yr-old pitcher Gabriel Nunes who came from Palm Springs. He was signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2022, spent four years in their International Complex and was promoted last year to SS-A. He was pretty wild in his only 11 innings pitched as a pro, walking 10 but also striking out 12, we’ll give him a longer look probably in Cheyanne. He does need to reduce that 2.47 WHIP though.

We also splashed the cash on two International free agents. 18-yr-old Alfredo Guzmán hails from Nicaragua and has the potential to flash the leather around all round the field as well as developing a good swing maybe. We gave him a $1.5 million bonus and packed him off to the International Complex for two years of seasoning. 17-yr-old South Korean Pyeong-min Kil could develop into a power hitter who could glide around the outfield, but that’s a bit of a reach. He trousered $280,000 and headed gleefully to the International Complex too. We still have a few enquires out but that could be all the incomings.

It was late afternoon when Grey Davidson III called me into the owner’s office. “The Panel agree with me, that you are probably right about Morales, and Eduardo Romano does seem a bit down about the whole affair. To be honest though we really can’t afford to sack him, he’s got the best part of a 5-year, nearly $5 million contract owing him. We’ve all discussed this for a long while (yeah, over a long lunch and copious drinks, I thought, eying the shirt buttons released and smelling the brandy) and this is the compromise we’ve come up with. The team will promote him upstairs to the vacant post of your Assistant where you can sit him in a small cupboard and have him file paper for the next five years while you can promote one of the minor league managers to the Harpoon manager. Then we can replace him with a cheap journeyman." It wasn’t an ideal situation, but I could see I wasn’t going to get anymore change out of Grey, so I agreed. “I’ll call Kumanosuke Oshima over in Cheyanne and offer him the job, He’s won two LRS championships and hasn’t finished lower than second in Cheyanne. He’s very easy going and will do a good job in Hartford I think, meanwhile I hope Morales is familiar with the deepest, darkest rooms of the stadium because he’ll have to look hard down there to find his new office."
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#41 Post by Borealis »

File the incompetence in the deep, dark resources!! And pray they don't fester and smolder into a monster, serial killer or a Super Anti-Hero...
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#42 Post by Vic »

Those assistant GMs are all a bit shady. Have him research the effect of hay fever season on middle relievers in West Texas for a season or two. That’ll teach him the true meaning of tedium ...
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#43 Post by Fishermen »

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#16. July 17th, 2028


We started the second half under a bit of a cloud and a new manager, Kumanosuke Oshima, he might have just come from A-ball Cheyenne but he has the rings from back in the day in the old LRS. He opened his PEBA stewardship with a bit of a bumpy ride though. We split a two-game series at probably this season’s nearest rivals Arlington. The first game saw the bullpen cough up four bottom of the ninth innings runs to lose 7-6 after looking relatively comfortable all game while in the second game Gordon Fuller snapped a 2-2 tie in the top of the eighth with his tenth homer of 2028. This time the bullpen hung on to get Jose Morin’s second win of the season. He really has done a pretty good job since we brought him in on a minor league deal. Having not pitched in the PEBA since 2023 his performances in the World Independent League with former PEBA team New Jersey deserved a shot so we offered the 35-yr-old a route back. As soon as he arrived in Lincoln after he had just pitched two innings there, we hit another injury crisis in Hartford and his former experience made him the next cab off the rank. Now, eight starts later he has a 2-1 record with a 3.45 ERA and I’m pleased to announce that we have rewarded him for his efforts with a one-year $801,000 extension to the league minimum deal he got when he was called up.

Returning home to Mack Stadium to face Amsterdam another injury call-up, Ralph Morris, gave us seven strong innings and we eased home 6-1. Another player that started the year in Lincoln, Kojiro Hirose, finished the last two innings off. After not quite cutting it in the rotation Kojiro seems to have carved a niche out for himself in the ‘pen, in his last 12 outings from there he has pitched 23 innings giving up only five runs and no homers. We hit a bump then losing the next two games in the series. That’s something we shouldn’t be doing at home to the division’s bottom side and to Oshima’s credit he made that quite clear. Maxime Labrie pitched well enough giving up just a run and four hits in six innings but in a game short of offence (both sides only managing six hits) we went down 2-0. The second game saw Curt Mills, who started 2028 in the bullpen not hold it together too well and we went down 3-6 after being outhit 8-12.

Oshima’s personable attitude around the clubhouse has got the team zinging along again, plenty of smiles and “jolly japes” all round. There is a few skulking in the corners though and one is shortstop Mark Edwards. Already we were at loggerheads over an extension for him, he was after a six-year contract topping the 100 million mark which I was really loath to offer a 30-yr-old, especially one that looks like struggling to reach last year’s reduced 3 WAR, but now he comes in and announces that he is clashing with Oshima too much and will not be signing any extension. That really does leave us with a major headache as our SS backup Min-u Yi is firmly hitting a career .192 over 488 games. The position is very thin in the organisation and there doesn’t appear to be too much coming up in free agency either. Hartford, we may have a problem.
Andy (Sim, Chaan-Shu)
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#44 Post by Fishermen »

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#17. July 24th, 2028

This week was the best of our season so far, we had played a home & home series with San Antonio and OK, they were on a four-game slide but that hadn’t normally stopped us from falling to defeats. The first game of the away series was made a real pitchers duel between Eduardo Romano and the Calzones’ Leon Gil who had been 2-11 for the season. In fact the eight total walks in the game was more than the number of hits which was just six between the seven pitchers that had entered the game. We took the win thanks’ to Carlos Ryan’s one-out solo-homer in the third innings, his 14th of the season was enough for a 1-0 win.

The second game had more offense, but it was nick & tuck all the way. Three times we took the lead and three times San Antonio pulled it back. Jose Morin left after seven with the score at 3-3 having given up seven hits & three runs. The bullpen kept it clean into extra innings despite the visitors getting a runner on third in the bottom of the ninth with only one out. Finally we got the winning run in the 12th thanks to a walk, single and finally an error as the first baseman booted an easy chance to get out of the innings allowing Shojiro Kotara to scoot home from third for the vital fourth run. San Antonio still got a runner to third in the bottom of the innings, but we held on.

The third game finally provided some offence, we scored a run in the first, second and fourth innings to give us a seemingly comfortable 3-0 lead. Ralph Morris though allowed two runs in the sixth though to give the visitors hope of snapping their six-game losing streak and we were lucky to get away with only two runs conceded as Calzones sent eight batters to the plate. Back-up catcher Neil Avery extended our lead to 4-2 in the seventh and although Calzones closed once more to within a single run they could not get closer. Doubles by Jack Allen & Walter Daniel scored the insurance run in the ninth. Morris gratefully squared his record at 5-5 as we swept San Antonio and headed home for the second three-games set with Calzones.

We made a strong start to the home series with three hits and three walks in the bottom of the first plating five runs. That proved enough for the win, the visitors not helping themselves by adding seven walks to the 15 hits we banged out. We padded the score with a run in the seventh and Walter Daniel’s 10 homer, a two-run shot, in the eighth. Maxime Labrie improved his record to 4-4 with eight innings allowing just two hits and two walks while striking out nine.

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Walter Daniel has had 16 hits, nine for doubles and three homers in the last 11 games , driving in eight runs

Second game of the series Curt Mills allowed several hits, but was able to keep them off the board early on. Walter Daniel’s 20th double of the season in the fourth innings led to the opening run when Luis Cedeño drove him in next batter. Mills went into the eighth innings but allowed three singles and San Antonio, mired in their eight-game losing streak, tied the game with two out. Matt ‘Zippy’ Brown came on and relieved him, striking out the final batter of the innings. Brown then kept the scores level at one after striking out the side in the top of the ninth. Daniel was the hero again when second ball of the bottom of the ninth he delivered a solo walk-off homer to run our winning streak to a season tying longest streak of five-games.

Romano & Gil duelled it out again in the last game of the series and again base runners were in short supply. Gil walked two and the pair shared ten hits allowed over 14 innings of work. It was the visitors that blinked first as Walter Daniel came home in the fourth innings on a two-out error by San Antonio at first base. We kept it going again into the eighth before history repeated itself and the visitors tied it at one late on for the second game running. Brown was the fireman we called in again to save the winning streak with five outs to get. Haden Shawver, who hasn’t been as good as hoped when we brought him in recently, drove in the winning run in the bottom of the eighth and Brown completed the job with another five out save. San Antonio slipped to 0-10 in the last ten games while we stretched our winning streak to a season best six games and returned to a .500 record.

Not much in the way of transactions or anything else this week, Walter Winston has less than two weeks left of his rehab stint at Lincoln left so a decision there will have to be made soon while Bob Jackson has cleared waivers and reported to Lincoln. If he knuckles down and plays well in Triple-A he might well head back to Hartford to replace Shawver whose .194 average and four RBI from nine games isn’t really setting the world alight.
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Re: Shoot from the Hartford, A Hartford Harpoon Blog

#45 Post by Vic »

Wow - Walter “Wrecking Crew” Daniel. What a week he had - seems like he was the hero in virtually every game! Another nice write up.
Vic Caleca
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