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
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