As May ended, Jersey sat 6 games under 500, trailed the Greenville 84's by 14 games and trailed the St. Louis Browns by 11.5 games and though some hitting had started to come around, the pitching continued to be all but awful. They finished the month with a 14-14 record, which was much better than the 11-17 record they put up in April, but playing .500 ball doesn't get you back in the race.
The team must have taken a sweep by Reno pretty tough. Dropping the last game of a 3 game set on April 28th at home against Reno 7-4, The Bags had an off day before place Austin came to town for their first meeting since the Riversharks knocked Jersey out of the playoffs last season. The series would feature 3 straight quality starts from Lara, Schaefer and Ellis. Something he hadn't seen all season. Three tight games with Jersey coming on top in each one: 3-2, 3-2 and 4-1. Jersey would stay at home and welcome St. Louis, the team they are chasing in the Wild Card race, for a 4 game set. Jersey would take games 1 and 3 but drop 2 and 4 resulting in no movement in the division.
The next 14 games would be the best stretch of the season thus far for Jersey Shore. They traveled to Boston and took 2/3. Defending champions Hendersonville would come town to and Jersey would take 2/3 from them as well. A day off and a flight to St. Charles for a 3 game series would feature Art Ellis pitching a masterful 8 innings, giving up 1 hit and striking out 10. Jersey would take the first two games before dropping the 3rd and final matchup. A trip back home to face slumping Kansas City would result in one of Jersey's few sweeps of the season, outscoring KC 23-13 for the series. The most recent game saw Chicago come to town and Jerry Burgess picking up his 3rd win of the season allowing 1 run over 7 innings picking up 10 K's.
Jersey is 10-3 over their last 13 and 14-5 for the month. Greenville has posted the same monthly record and Jersey still trails them by a gigantic 14 games. Just 19 games ago they trailed St. Louis by 11.5 games for the wildcard. They have chopped 6.5 games off of that lead and now only sit 5 games behind the Browns. After this most current sim, it's the first time all season we can say that the Jersey Shore sits above .500 with a 39-36 record.
Top performers for June thus far:
Art Ellis: 4GS, 3-0, 29.2IP, 18H, 1HR, 3BB, 28K, 2.12 ERA
Jerry Burgess: 4GS, 1-0, 21.1IP, 16H, 2HR, 10BB, 30K, 2.95 ERA
Jose Lara: 3GS, 2-0, 17.0IP, 14H, 2HR, 10BB, 16K, 3.18 ERA
Fransisco Ibarra: .327/.431/.577 3HR, 13RBI, 11R, 10BB
Mikey Bryant: .311/.370/.541 4 HR, 15 RBI, 14R, 7BB
Warren Goyer: .333/.400/.729 6 HR, 15 RBI, 9R, 4BB
Jersey isn't out of the woods by any means and it still looks like it would be a hot race down the stretch to see if this team can make the playoffs for the 4th straight year. It's looking much more manageable now than just 3 weeks ago though.
GO D-BAGS
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