South Oakland defeated D2 and Cranberry last weekend to raise their record to 7-10, and move out of last place. The wins gave the team two, key tie-breakers as they won the season series against both teams. The Ducks were then rained out on Monday and Tuesday. After a brutal start to the season, the Ducks have won 4 of their last 6 games.

South Oakland plays next on Monday, July 3, against the Plum Warriors, 7:30 pm at Plum High School.

Quack.

South Oakland is mired in last place again after getting swept by the Butler Buccos (8-5) in Spring Hill last night. It was a horrendously officiated contest that featured multiple player ejections. I think the final was 9-3.

Butler had our number this year.

It looks bleak right now, but if we can get out of the 8/9 play-in game there’s not much difference between finishing second or seventh. We’re in a log jam of teams with 5 or 6 wins, and we play Plum (5-10), Cranberry (6-7), and D2 (6-8) in the next week, and we have two games left vs the 6-9 Eagles. So there’s still hope we can move up and figure it out before the playoffs. We will be a tough out if we can finish somewhere in the 5-7 range. Maybe one of these teams won’t pay their dues and we will get lucky and there won’t be an 8-9 game. It’s definitely possible.

Also, the way the league home page sorts the standings by points is annoying.

South Oakland plays next vs D2, Thursday night, 8:30pm at Springview Field.

Quack.

We are 2-5 in one run games, and lost another in extra innings. Our run differential is -3. The other 4-9 team, Plum, has a run differential of -58. I’ve played on bad teams before and this team doesn’t feel like it should be this bad. We have too much pitching. All our games are really close. But we are finding ways to lose. We’re making stupid mistakes, untimely errors, and aren’t making productive outs when we need them. Our shortstop got hurt during the offseason, and we haven’t found an answer.

We had bases loaded with zero outs today, and didn’t score. The runner on third got a terrible jump on a hard hit grounder to short, and was thrown out at home. The next batter K’d after fake-bunting for some reason, and then we had a runner picked of second on a spin move with a full count with one of our best hitters up.

We’ve had runners thrown out at home in the last inning when we were trailing by five only to eventually have the tying run at the plate with two outs. We’ve had bad calls go against us, but so has everyone. We have been stupid aggressive in situations when we need to be smart, and passive when we need to try to force the issue or make a play on defense. We don’t get bunts down. We don’t steal enough, but then we try to steal third with nobody out and get caught, or try to go first to third and get thrown out. These things keep happening and they continue to decide games for us. I guess this is who we are now.

These are mistakes that don’t happen much in general, but when they have happened they’ve killed us. Those are the things we can control. It’s really wild. Some of it is luck. We’re playing like 80% great baseball, but instead of just shitting the bed in 20% of our games, we’re fucking up 20% of all our games and losing by very little, very often.

What sucks is that we are getting great starting pitching, and good hitting. But we can’t get out of our own way. Our record has overshadowed some great individual performances.

We have eleven games left, and our goal should be to stay out of the 9 vs 8 play-in game. This is an attainable goal, especially for a team with our staff. I’m optimistic we can get it figured out and make another deep run, but it feels like were just fucking stuck right now.

The Ducks next game is Tuesday at home at 8:30 vs the Devils.