South Oakland scored six runs in the first inning and overcame a few errors to win 11-8 last night in Spring Hill. Brandon Blackstone (W, 4-3) pitched six strong innings and Billy Welsh recorded the two-out save after reliever Cody Quinn left the game with an injury.

The resurgent Ducks (10-10) have scored 39 runs in their last 4 games. They have won five straight, and six of seven.

South Oakland plays next on Sunday, 12pm at Herschel Park against the defending champion Eagles.

Quack.

Last night in Spring Hill, Billy Welsh (W, 3-3) pitched a complete game, striking out 14, while allowing only 2 earned runs against the league’s top offense.

In the top of the sixth, South Oakland led 3-2. The Bandidos scored on a play where two errors were committed by the Ducks third baseman who threw a ball out of play after missing a grounder. (Typically this is where we would fall apart, but Billy shut them down, and then we scored a bunch of runs.)

With the score tied at 3 in the seventh, South Oakland scored 5 runs to put the game out of reach. The scoring was capped with a two-run sac fly by Dillon Williams.

Mark Lombardi, Tom Pulice, Anthony DeFilippo, Ben Gwin, and Jesse Iellimo hit doubles for the Ducks. The win was South Oakland’s fourth in a row. The team is now 9-10 on the season. The Bandidos fell to 12-4.

The Ducks play next Thursday night vs the Devils, 8:30 at the Duck Pond.

Quack.

Box Score

The Ducks beat the Warriors in Plum last night, 9-8. South Oakland scored three runs in the top of the seventh to tie, three more in the top of the eighth, and held off a late Warriors rally. Jimmy Murray had three hits, an outfield assist in the seventh, and a game-clinching diving catch.

Brandon Blackstone recorded his first save of the season, and Cody Quinn worked two solid innings in relief.

Tonight is throwback night at the Duck Pond.

8:30pm start vs the first place Bandidos.

Bad News for Bakery Square

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.

South Oakland dropped back to back games this week to Bakery Square and Butler by a combined score of 21-11. The losses were due to poor defense and attendance issues. The Ducks (3-6) look to rebound Thursday evening with a happy hour tilt at Keystone Oaks, 6:15 in Greentree.

Box Score

The Ducks lost a heart breaker to the Plum Warriors 6-4 in extra innings last night in Spring Hill. South Oakland took a 4-3 lead in the fifth, but Plum answered with an RBI double in the 6th, chasing Ducks starter Randy Patton from the game. Patton allowed 2 ER through 5, and gave the Ducks a chance to win.

Ducks reliever Billy Welsh (L, 1-1) finished the game. striking out ten batters in four innings. He allowed the winning runs on two infield hits, a bizarre no-call on an interference at home when a runner tried to pull the ball from the Ducks catcher’s glove, and a seeing eye single to right. The Warriors battled and deserve credit for working out of several jams, including an inning-ending double play with runners on first and third in the bottom of the seventh.

South Oakland hit well but left 12 runners on, 8 in scoring position. In the fifth inning. The Ducks had two runners thrown out at third base on hits, and also made five errors.

• We have 3 losses by a total of 4 runs.
• It is still early, but we’ve dropped a few that could come back to hurt us in the seeding later in the year. Who knows. Big picture we’re fine, but we need to stop finding ways to lose these games before we fall too far out of the race for a bye.
• I don’t think we can keep hitting this bad with guys on base, some of that will regress to the mean over the course of the year. Maybe it’s an approach thing.

South Oakland plays next on Monday night, 8pm at Herschel Park vs the first place Devils