SOME KIND OF RECORD?

On August 25th, Worcester starter Philip Hughes really "took one for the team", allowing 17 runs over six innings as the Eliminators were bombed on the road, losing 20-4 to the host Riverside Rum Runners. 

 

With that much carnage, the individual numbers for Riverside look great: four homers, including one by 3B David Freese, who also went 5-for-5. Despite the ERA-inflating debacle, Worcester still sports the league's best record at 93-37, seven games ahead of Frostbite Falls (87-45), which seems to be fated to pursuing the wild card...even though at this stage of the game, the Squirrels have a better margin of victory (208) than Worcester (184). Each team has scored about the same number of runs, while Frostbite Falls has pitched better overall. Pythagorean formulas for won-loss would predict that each club would have a winning percentage around .650 and be neck-and-neck, but with a month to go the Squirrels haven't been able to make up much ground in the East.

 Speaking of the East, a road trip through that division by the St. Francis Friars got the Monastics back into the Central Division race. Visiting the "Division of Death" at the same time as Central rival Casselton, the trade-enriched Friars went 8-6 against some of the best clubs in the league, winning three of four series, while the Horned Toads suffered their first extended losing streak of the season. Returning to the Central, St. Francis took six of seven from clubs in the second division, and (with the aid of a doubleheader) ran their mark over the last two weeks to 11-4, a surge good enough to put them in first place (71-59), with a two-game lead over the Horned Toads (70-62). Quite an accomplishment for a club with a mid-4.00 team ERA, that was eight games back in mid-July. But their hot streak may be at an end, their luck run out: a key to their surge (rookie Matt Harvey) complained of elbow pain after his most recent start, and in a stunning setback, it was determined that he a torn ulnar collateral ligament....an injury that not only ends a sparkling campaign, but which signals a tightening of the Central race.

Meanwhile, in the West, there is none of the drama of the Central pennant race, or even the spectacle of two outstanding clubs destined for post-season glory, as in the East. There is only Yuma, Yuma, Yuma, with a BARB-leading 3.17 team ERA, nearly half a run better than any other contender, an 87-42 record and a twenty-game lead on their nearest rivals. Clubs like Riverside and New England, with decent winning percentages that would make then contenders in the Central? Simply also-rans this year to the Yuma juggernaut. While previously-unbeaten hurlers like Kris Medlen and Jeff Samardjzia have proved mortal and actually, you know, lost a game now and then, the Firebirds staff has been too much for their opponents in the regular season. One can only imagine how good their record would be had they not lost the venal Ryan Braun to PED-related suspension.