#6. May 15th, 2028
I think I should have been out patrolling the Coffee Shops of Amsterdam during our visit there as I swear a lot of our players had been sampling their menus. It was a week where the pitchers were wild, the bats were cold and yet we were lucky to finish all square as both us and the Lions won our home series 2 games to 1. We were also grateful that the Alleghenies couldn’t take advantage of our indifference and our 22-16 record is still good enough to match them at the top of the Seaboard.
Ralph Morris picked up a win in his PEBA debut
Ralph Morris was understandably a bit shaky early on in his first ever PEBA start and gave up a run in each of the first two innings. He steadied though and when the bullpen took over after five innings, he hadn’t conceded any more runs although his control could have been better with a 3/3 K/BB ratio.
Wayne Prior pitched three clean innings and in his first game as the regular first baseman
Gordon Fuller hit a 2-run shot in the eighth innings to cap off the win. Two batters into the second game starter
Maxime Labrie left complaining of forearm pain and once more it was a bullpen game. We had no option but to put
Takejiro Daikawa in and he followed his season’s pattern by surrendering a homer to the first batter he faced. We couldn’t get back into it and were sunk in the eighth when
He Ling was shelled for another two homers and four runs in total.
Maxime Labrie, the starter for the rubber game, was slow of the mark too giving up a run in each of the first two innings. He was seemingly bailed out though in the top of the fourth when
Carlos Ryan led off with a triple and two more hits allowed Hartford to tie the game up. Labrie was yanked after the bottom of the innings when his wild pitching had let Amsterdam regain the lead, he had walked five batters while only striking out two. The bullpen pitched four scoreless innings, but the damage had been done. The cold bats of the hitters couldn’t help as they were outhit 5-6 by the home side.
We returned home desperate to turn the tables on the Dutch boys, but instead fell to a third straight loss as our nine hits, all singles, couldn’t scratch out a run as the Lions put four unanswered on the board. A long team talk in the locker room after the game left the team in no doubt that they had to buck their ideas up if they wanted to finish anywhere near last season’s effort.
Eduardo Romano didn’t fare much better the next day when although he only gave up three hits, it was the six walks that led to he being withdrawn after four innings. Doubles by
Masakado ‘Stubblebeard’ Kato &
Mark Edwards had plated two runs in the bottom of the fourth to give Hartford a 3-2 lead. Pryor came in to pitch his second three clean innings outing of the week, but ‘Damp Squib’ Ling blew the lead when he surrendered a ninth inning homer.
Carlos Ryan saved the game though when his single in the bottom of the 11th innings drove home
Shojiro Kotara for the walk-off win. The final game of the week saw Morris in his second PEBA game cough up two runs in the first innings, Hartford battled back and sent seven batters to the plate in the bottom of the fourth. Three of them crossed the plate to grab a vital 3-2 lead. Morris lasted to the sixth innings but then gave up a solo shot and a 2-run shot to hand Amsterdam a 5-3 lead. The teams swapped runs before
Jon Woods &
Jack Allen hit back to back doubles to score two and tie the game after seven.
Walter Daniel scooted home on a throwing error in the eighth to give us the lead and the old stager
Juan 'Grinder' García pitched the ninth to grab his first save of the season.
The biggest blow of the week was more pitching injuries, with
Alfredo Zambrano already on the DL until early June the last thing we needed was to lose more bodies from the rotation. However we lost two more pitchers this last week,
Maxime Labrie joined Zambrano on the DL with a forearm strain and is not expected back until late-June while
Curt Mills who had just come out of the bullpen into the rotation will head back to the pen after he complained of forearm tendonitis. He is not expected to be able to pitch next week leaving us in a bit of a hole. Thankfully Morris has held his own in his first two PEBA starts so unfortunately we’ll have to restore Daikawa to the rotation and call up yet another Lincoln pitcher,
Kojiro Hirose. Hirose had started well including a 10-innings no decision second game out but has lost both games this last week. He still has a 0.96 WHIP in seven starts where he has pitched 50 innings and given up 13 earned runs, six of those in the first game last week. The front office is also in talks with a couple of pitchers who would be initially probably be ticketed for Lincoln to help them after two injury call-ups but could well be possibilities to end up in Hartford if they showed some form.
Best two bats last week were two unexpected players,
Walter Daniel who had been hitting well below the Mendoza Line perked up and went 6-16 on the week including two of the Harpoon’s three homers on the week as well as scoring five runs. The disgraced
Bob Jackson made himself a useful bat off the bench getting three hits from six AB’s. He also drew two walks and stole two bases.
Carlos Ryan rapped out six hits in his six games but generally failed to do anything with them, scoring just twice and driving in only one run. Catcher
Jon Woods had also been a hot bat in April but successfully registered just one hit, a run-scoring double, in his 17 AB’s last week. Hartford’s homerun king,
Luis Cedeño also had a quite week, five singles and three walks was his tally but that yielded his 36th RBI of 2028 to go with three steals that upped his tally to 17 from 20 attempts.