Alas, poor Rooick!

Haviland: W 1, L 1; 20 – 15.  .369, .462, .646  — ho hum, EMDay. 15.7 ip, 12 er — ho hum, no reason not to let our opponents have EM Days, too!  Since we’re so far ahead and all.)  They’re playing football or water polo or something in Haviland. 35 total runs — I probably should call them “points” — in two games? That’s like twice the average. I don’t remember anywhere reading that Gary Sanchez would be the Matt Wieters Matt Wieters never was.  Nor the Carlos Santana, nor the Charles Johnson, nor any of the other mythical can’t miss next Mike Piazzas. Here Sanchez goes, in August: .421, .488, .947, to lead the D’s into first place. (Sanchez is featured in the photo accompanying the link to this post.)

Old Detroit:  W 2, L 0; 11 – 1. (.289, .325, .461;  26.7 ip, 9 er)  The W’s are showing us why they used to be contenders: they can run up decent offense and get great pitching. Sometimes.  What you don’t see in the above line is what the ALLOCATED pitchers did.  Take out the 0%-ers Hellickson and Liriano, and the line goes: 17.7 ip, 1 er.  Kluber, Diaz and Harris combined Friday for 8.7 shutout innings. Then Anthony DeSclafani topped them with 9 shutout innings. (And I heard that Tyler Skaggs, of all people, had a great outing today!)  Ah, for the good old days, when Old Detroit was in a pennant race.  Who knows if we’ll ever see such glorious times again.

Portland: W 1, L 1; 14 – 11. (.322, .344, .587;  21 ip, 14 er).  The Rosebuds came back up for air, just under 4 games out, their winning percentage still a bit above .600 on the season. Salvy Perez blasted two homers but only in one game — his team needed that in the second game, too. Mookie Betts went 6 for 9 with a homer.

Pittsburgh: W 1, L 1; 7 – 11. (.188, .300, .377; 13.3 ip, 7 er) The Alleghenys’ lost a little elevation, dipping back under the .600 foot mark for the season. Jose Altuve went an unheard-of 1 for 9 over the two days — unheard of, I should say, once the Cheese and W’s grew weary of exactly that kind of hitting and dumped him off on the Alleghenys.  The team’s offensive here continues to be the immortal Ryan Schimpf, who added 3 hits and 2 homers Friday and Saturday.

Canberra:  W 0, L 2; 13 – 20. (.286, .337, .532;  15.3 ip, 18 er).  Yikes. Michael Tonkin sextuple chulked (0.7 ip, 4 er) — it seems like I’ve written exactly that same thing before this season.  Jacob Turner triple chulked (0.3 ip, 1 er).  Everyone else stank, except Chris Devenski (1 ip, 0 er).  And we had hopes of a Canberra surge into the thick of the late pennant race.  Alas, poor Rooick. I knew him, Horatio.  I have borne him on my back a thousand times…

Peshastin: W 1, L 1; 9-9. (.250, .338, .353;  12 ip, 5 er) Wait — did I say Carlos Santana didn’t pan out? He went 3 for 7 with 2 walks Friday and Saturday. A 1.127 OPS isn’t good enough?  Well, sure, it’s not as good as the mighty, should-a-been Mariner Zack Cozart (3 for 6 with a double, homer and walk), but then who is?  (One wonders what might have been had the Reds not been too distracted to complete their Cozart trade with the Mariners before the trade deadline.)

Flint Hill:  W 2, L 0; 15 – 9. (.317, .369, .517; 9.7 ip, 4 er). Xander Bogaerts, Todd Frazier, and Evan Gattis combined to go 13 for 23, with 2 doubles, 3 homers and 3 walks. Julio Urias went 6 innings with 1 earned run. This is how the Tornados blew past the Drive to retake 7th place.

Kaline: W 0, L 2; 11 – 13. (.242,.356, .452;  17.3 ip, 8 er).  Kris Bryant and Yoenis Cespedes went 6 for 13 with 3 homers and 4 walks, to key the Drive offense and mostly counteract Marcus Stroman’s poor pitching (5 er in 6 ip), but it wasn’t enough.  The Drive’s drive for .500 slipped two more notches after getting oh-so-close earlier in the week.

Cottage: W (-1), L 3;  (-1) – 17. (.148, .216, .205;  13 ip, 11 er). Addison Russell and Jonathan Schoop matched their batting lines: 1 for 9 without any walks.  There were two 0 for 8s and an 0 for 7, plus two 1 for 8s.  That’s 3 for 48.

DC:  W 0, L 2:  10 – 15. (.247, .303, .519;  15.3 ip, 11 er).  Jeff Samardzija pitched 7 scoreless innings and Scott Schebler went 5 for 10 with two homers but the Balk still got swept on Friday and Saturday.  They are still just over 2 games behind the Braves, on pace to lose 105.  That would not set any EFL records, but it would be nice if a strong September could keep the Balk under 100 losses.