Our three-game series against Royal Gamers didn’t go well at all. The hosts swept us, sending us to a four-game losing streak overall and dropping our record to 5-7. We are fortunately only 1 game behind in our division still, and 12 games is still very early, but 6 losses in 7 games definitely starts to mess with your confidence.
In the series opener we were facing Sid Fernandez, a longtime Met who was famously hard to hit. In fact, he started off our 24×24 season by throwing a no-hitter! We put an end to his hopes of doing it again in the 2nd inning and held a 4-3 lead until Royal Gamers rallied for 4 runs in the 6th and went on to win, 7-4.
In the second game, once again we held a one-run lead in the 6th inning and gave up 4 runs in the bottom of the inning. Bob Bailey hit a solo homer in the 9th inning to get us within a run but we fell short, 6-5.
The final game of the series was another close loss, this time 3-2. We scratched out a couple of runs off Catfish Hunter, and he was just a little bit better than my Bert Blyleven. That made us 0-4 in one-run games, which is a very frustrating stat. If those break 2-2, we’d be 7-5 instead. And based on our 66 runs scored vs. 57 allowed, we should be 7-5. That’s a sign we should even things out soon.
We start an eight-game stretch of division games at home next, with Steroids Make You Fast; Just ask Jose coming in first. They are off to a 3-9 start so maybe it’s a chance to get this team back to winning ways.
