Summer Swoon

Through a long baseball season there will be ups and downs, a good team will minimize the downs and thrive on long periods of ups.  Getting through the down trodden parts are the hardest part though.  For this Jersey Shore team we have already seen a few high and lows.  At the All-Star break this team was riding high, having taken over the Eastern Division lead and sat atop with a 1.5 game lead.  It was a rare time for the D-Bags, and it was one of the first and if not THE first time they held the division lead outside of the month of April.  Starting pitching was adequate, upper half of the CL.  Bullpen was the best in the league and the bats were hot, red hot.  Over 5.5 runs a game were being scored.  Decent starting pitching led to a dominant shut down bullpen who rarely gave up hits nor runs.  But as the AS break came and went things changed.  Why is the unkown, but we break it down here:

The AS break took place July 8-11, which left 17 games left in the month of July.  The D-Bags didn't tank but compiled a 8-9 record in that time frame, but it was the end of the month when the real trouble started.  

After taking 2 of 3 from KC, Jersey welcomed the 84's to town and took 2 of 3 from them as well.  Next to town was the Knights of New York.  The Knights punished D-Bag pitching to the tune of 25 runs in 3 games, but the Bags salvaged one game in a 10-7 win.  After an off-day the D-Bags made the travel to Maui to visit the Tropics with a 3 game set.  Somewhere on the long plane ride over to Hawaii the bats were misplaced. Jersey scored 7 runs in 3 games and were swept, including a 1-0 series finale where former D-Bag Jugerta Wemusa out dueled Rob Goodship.  Next came was a trip to Oklahoma.  Oklahoma handed the Bags 2 one run losses before thoroughly beating the Bags 7-1.  The last loss represented Jersey's 8th straight loss, the longest such streak since the team relocated here over 3 years ago.  It had to end here right?

A trip to St. Louis seemed all Jersey needed to bust out of their slump.  They ended the losing streak at 8 with a 7-2 win and went on to take 3 of 4 from the Browns and welcomed the Vista Panthers to town and promptly took 2 of 3 from them.  The Bags seem to be back on their feet with a 3 game road trip to play St. Louis again, who had the worst record in all the BSA.  Things didn't go as planned as the Browns outscored the Bags 21-9 in a 3 game sweep.  

When all was said and done since the break the Bags have turned in a 13-18 record and have gone from 1.5 games up in the division, to at one point down 6.5 games out, now to 4 games out.  Things could be a lot worse, but the competitive division has everyone beating on everyone, so 4 games should be considered a blessing.  The bags have an off-day tomarrow, their only off day in the month of August BTW, then go on a 21 day stretch of having a game every day.  The next 3 weeks probably will determine if the Bags will make a run or fall short as they did a year ago.

Before the break:

5.6 runs per game

After the break:

4.4 runs per game 

Take out the 2 big outbursts of 10 and 12.....3.9 runs per game.