Interesting Start in Jersey & an Interesting Season for The BSA

23 games into the 2020 season and what is going on?  The Frenzy, Bombers, and Stars sit in first place while the Titans, Beavers and 84's all occupy the cellars in their respected divisions.   Scott Hill is lost for the season and All-Stars John Doby, Al Mills, Zach Hutchinson and Kyuso Fujita are all hitting under .200.  This is The BSA this season.

Meanwhile in Jersey, it has been an up and down 3 weeks to start this season.  The top of the rotation has been excellent.  Jose Ramos and Sergio Martinez account for half of Jersey's wins though both have been blown up once this season. They have a combined record of 6-3 and includes one of Jose Ramos's better starts in his career when he struck out a career high 13 Pikes in his last start against Seattle.  On the other hand the older veterans have been.....terrible and that's putting it lightly.  After an injury riddled season which looked like he was getting back on track, Jose Lara has nearly a 9.50 ERA after 4 starts and has given up 5 or more ER in each of his starts.  Greg Schaefer finally showed life in his last start going 8 shutout innings, but before that he had only gotten out of the 4th inning once in 4 starts.  The good news for the staff is the bullpen leads the CL with a 3.09 ERA, even though they account for 4 losses and 3 blown saves.

Offense has been the tell tale story of the D-Bags season though.  Jersey has scored at least 2 runs in every game this season and in 6 of their 11 losses they have scored 4 or more runs.  In 11 of their 12 wins they have scored 4 or more runs that that includes scoring 8 runs, 6 or more times.  The offense is Top 5 in almost every major offense category, which is a good sign considering Dave Dodd, John Warner and Fransisco Ibarra are all hitting under .220 for the year.

While those 3 have been bad, there have been some very good though.  Lawrence Schroeder is out of the gate scorching hot hitting .393/.446/.786 and has 19 extra base hits in 22 games.  He has hit safely in 20 of those 22 games and leads the CL in OPS and is 2nd in batting average and batter WAR.  After ripping through AAA pitching for 2+ seasons Tadahisa Kisuki is off to a great start to his major league career as well.  He is acting a platoon with John Warner at 1B/DH and hitting mostly out of the 2 hole has put up a .309/.350/.443 line while adding 5 doubles, a triple and 2 HR.  

Rumors out of Jersey is that we will probably see SP Ramon Ruiz sooner than later.  After a very rough Spring Training he has completely dominated AAA in 4 starts to a tune of a 4-0 record, 0.59 ERA, 0.68 ERA while striking out 32 batters and walking 3 in 30.1 IP.  Jersey is almost ready to welcome back hard throwing lefty Hyo-Chin Kim who had suffered a torn UCL tear early in last season's spring training and has missed nearly 14 months time.  He has been rehabbing in AAA and has looked better and better and would be a much welcome addition to the bullpen.  

All things considered, it has been a decent start for Jersey who is more known for stumbling out of the gate than coming out hot.  They sit 3 games out of first place and 1 game out of the wild card.  The D-Bags would prefer to sit back in the shadows than be up at the top with a target on their backs because we have seen that movie before.  Let's hope for a strong close the month and a head of steam going into May.

GO D-BAGS

Milestone for Bryant; Smashes HR #250

I'm sure the league has to be sick of hearing the name Mike Bryant by now.  The superstar now in his 6th full season and 7th total season continues to put up eye popping stats year in and year out.  Earlier this season he was selected to his 6th straight All-Star game and after a "slow" month of April Byrant has hit at least 6 HR and 20 RBI in every month, hit above .330 with an OBP of over 400 in every month except for May and is currently having his most productive month with a week still left over.  

On August 12th, 2019, the first game of a 10 day roadtrip, Bryant didn't take much time hitting a towering fly down the RF line into the 2nd deck of Red Box Field in Madison off of 24 year old reliever turned starter Robinson Gonzales for his 250th career bomb.  Bryant became only the 14th batter to reach this milestone behind classic sluggers such as Crowe, Sagar, Yoko, Delaney, Rivas, Fujita, Alston, Torres, Chouda, Newell and most recently Copriviza.  Not a bad group of players to be associated with.

At the current pace he is on with ~5 or so weeks to go in the season, Bryant would reach 37+ HR for the 6th straight year, 208+ hits for the 6th straight year as well as 119+ RBI also for the 6th straight year.  While he seems to have lost a tiny step on defense and on the basepaths there is really no denying his bat is still going strong.  Bryant will turn 32 a few weeks before the 2020 season and all of Jersey Shore is hoping he ages gracefully continuing to be the heart and soul of the powerful offense.  With his current pace, Bryant should hit the magical 1500 hit mark at some point next season and if he continues on his career HR pace, the 300 HR mark could be hit near the end of next season.

With the emergence of Dave Dodd as a bonafide superstar, he and Bryant make for the one of the most dangerous duos in the current BSA.  They lead all duos with a combined 66 HR, 207 RBI, 193 runs scored and 594 total bases.  Throw in catcher Warren Goyer and the trio makes up for 3 of the top 4 HR hitters in the CL this season.  Will this be enough to push Jersey into the post season?  We can only hope so.  With 5 weeks left in the regular season, Greenville is making a charge and sits 5 games behind Jersey.  The D-Bags only hold a slight lead on the current Wild Card team, the Pocatello Bocabellas as well.  It should be a fun 5 weeks in the CL!

GO D-BAGS