What’s that, Dear Reader? You had us totally written off going into that three-game series with the league’s best team? Truth be told, ownership was pretty pessimistic too.
It’s useful to remember that code bits don’t know anything about what came before. So the ones representing Jack Bauer Squared had no knowledge of their poor start or Hitmen 24×24 and their strong one. It’s just head to head and let the algorithm play it out.
Mike Cuellar retired the first nine batters he faced, and we gave him a 4-0 lead to work with. But for whatever reason his code bits are misfiring repeatedly this season, and he’s not performing as expected. Cuellar gave the lead back and then some with a 6-run 4th inning, but run-scoring doubles from Ryne Sandberg and Bobby Bonilla put us back on top in the bottom of the inning.
Bonilla wound up driving in 6 runs with a 4-for-5 day, and the bullpen allowed just 1 run over 5 innings as we held on to win, 11-7. Bonilla is now starting at 3B every day for me, as his switch-hitting bat and slightly better defense have left Bob Bailey on the bench for now.
The offense didn’t save much for the second game of the series, however. The teams battled to a 1-1 tie going into the 9th inning, but Hitmen broke through for 3 runs to claim a 4-1 win.
That took us to the rubber game, which continued to feature the dominant pitching from the previous game. Bert Blyleven may have been drafted as our 4th starter, but he’s getting results like an ace. Blyleven (5-3, 3.11 ERA) took a shutout into the 9th inning, and Bob Woodward got the final two outs for his 9th save to seal the 2-1 win.
Kal Daniels hit his 6th homer to take the team lead. Our leadoff guy against right-handed starters, Daniels is slashing a team-best .333/.450/.600 and definitely justifying his place on the roster.
Stats start to become a bit meaningful now that we’re 35 games into the season and the sample size is developing. Our team OPS of .731 is just above the league average of .718. And our team ERA of 4.31 is just above the league average of 4.36. So even though our record of 14-21 reflects a .400 winning percentage, there’s reason to think we have at least a slightly better than average team. And underperforming could give hope that playoffs are a possibility if we can get the record to better reflect the team.
Next up: two more interleague series as we get our one glimpse of two other teams from the distant lands.
