The Hunt For Red October - Havana Leones blog
Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:15 am
19 Apr 2021
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. With 12 games played, the Leones finally secured their first win. Serendipitously, the win came in a 12th inning comeback against division rivals, the Amsterdam Lions. Fate it seems has a sense of humor.
Nonetheless the club perseveres. It’s quite sunny in Cuba these days both on and off the field. With the exception of a 6 run loss to London (game 2) all the losses have been by one (6x), two (2x) or three (2x) runs. No time for panic. We knew this was going to be a season of settling in and this is all part and parcel of the process.
Early on it looks like the we trend towards giving up games in the late innings (8th & 9th) It’ll take a while to settle in the bullpen. Miguel Mercado has been slated to close. The 21 year old Cuban and 2020 LRS All Star Selection has come a long way quickly and he’ll need (and get) time to adjust.
Fellow Cuban Joaquín Aguilera has the early inside track on the setup role. The bully will need more time to sort itself out. It’s a little weaker than the typical PEBA pen and there are no quick fixes here. It’s going to be a long slog while the farm system gets rebuilt.
The transition to PEBA has overall gone pretty well. SP Takanibu ‘Decoy’ Murata, a longtime fixture on the mound in the LRS with Championships has performed well posting a 3.66 ERA though his numbers are generally down a bit.
At the plate, 6 time LRS All Star C Yosuke ‘Bus Driver’ Imai has put up a respectable .280 AVG with 1HR and 3 RBI, though his numbers, too, are slightly below last season’s.
It’s early days though and both appear to be on track.
Guys off the rails at this point include perpetual club spark 3B Takeshi Hayashi (.098 AVG 17SO 3 GDP with 51 AB) and the precocious RF Motoki Suzuki (44 AB .142 AVG ) Suzuki, who was playing college ball only two years ago obviously gets a pass. He’s here to learn at this point. Sone of Cuba, 1B Manuel Herrera needs more time to get it all sorted out and will be benched for Sosuke Yoshino, who’s like RF Suzuki is young, impressive and probably still sorting things out.
While 1-11 isn’t where we’d hoped to be it’s ok as we have our eye on the bigger picture. The guys at the top will need to hold down the fort. That will allow us to develop those promising guys down in the system today and let the club restock the system.
“La leña roja tarde pero llega” :)