South Oakland opens at home tonight against the North American Lions. After a 9-4 win over the Wolfpack, the Ducks look to start a winning streak in what will probably be wet conditions.
Follow Michael Brandt @Duckpond2014 for in-game updates while you watch the Pens.
The Lions finished 14-9 last year. I have no idea what to expect, but I love how they claim a whole continent. It’s North America’s first game so we’ll probably face their ace.
Dr. Jones will get some innings on the mound tonight.
South Oakland won it’s first game of the season defeating the West View Wolfpack 9-5.
Tony Casale went 4-for-4. Brandon Culp went 3-for-4 with a double and four RBI. Matt Swetz hit a sweet double over some kid’s head. Jason Fetter pitched four innings allowing 1 earned run. Brian Strom allowed 1 run over three strong relief innings. Ducks pitchers combined to strike out nine wolfpacks, nine wolves? nine wolfpack? Whatever. I think West View only had four hits, depending how loose their book is.
We made fewer mistakes than they did, and looked pretty good all things considered. We’re going to score a lot of runs this season.
West View is a basically the old Matadors/Sharks. I don’t know how they scammed their way into that 8:30 John Herb time slot.
The game ended on a dropped third strike with the bases loaded. After the strike out, the Ducks catcher, Anthony Ciccone, picked up the ball and stepped on the plate, to end the game, but the Wolfpack batter ran to first for some reason and tried to run over our first baseman. Nice.
South Oakland plays next on Wednesday, 8pm at Springview Field.
Mike Brandt is going to live tweet the first few inning of the game before he leaves for work. I’m expecting great things. Also, we’ll have our uniforms.
The last time we played the Pirates we were pulling guys off the street to play, and we still put up 10 runs before an epic collapse in the top of the seventh in which Pour House scored nine unanswered and went on to beat us 14-10.
It would be nice if West End got nine together on Friday to at least force Pour House to use up some pitching. They play three games in four days and are one game ahead of us in the standings. This weekend is huge for playoff implications as we get down to the wire. We have almost all our starters available Saturday morning, so we don’t have any excuses if we can’t hold them under 14 runs.
South Oakland (7-12) played with 8 players for five innings and still beat Carrick 4-3 at Beedle Park in Western Maryland on June 23rd.
Fago has won like 5 straight decisions on the mound, and leads the team in wins and saves.
South Oakland lost 6-0 to the Cleveland Indians on Sunday in a rain-shortened affair.
[Standings as of Monday, July 1st]
The Black Sox have picked it up, going from 10th to 7th over the last couple weeks.
Everyone else is falling back to the pack.
The Ducks have two games to reschedule vs. West End, Pour House this Saturday, then finish with Elliot and Brookline on the season’s final weekend.
After looking at the schedules of the rest of the teams outside the top 4, basically, we control our own destiny since the other 5-10 teams will beat up on each other.
I said at one point we needed ten wins to make it in, and i think that should still do it.
After a 1-9 start we could conceivably finish as high as fifth, but we have to keep winning. Pending rescheduled games, South Oakland plays Brookline on the last day of the regular season.
Ducks Pitcher, Mark Guthrie, earned his first victory of the season Saturday going five and a third strong innings, before giving way to James Fago to recorded the 1 and 2/3 inning save.
Matt Johnston had 4 hits to lead the resurgent Ducks’ offense. Stahl and Skovron both hit doubles and had multi-hit games, and there were a lot of singles and walks. Goering drove in a run. 8 Ducks starters recorded hits, and everyone in the lineup reached safely at least once. I wish I could offer more specifics, but i don’t have the book and I was half asleep during the game. We got out to an early lead and held on. The Bulldogs had the winning run at the plate in the bottom of the 7th.
James Fago pitched a complete game for the victory in game 2. South Oakland scored 2 in the top of the first. The Bulldogs answered with a run in the bottom half of the inning. The score remained 2-1 until the top of the fifth or sixth, when South Oakland scored six runs. Skovron and Fago walked, Gwin singled to load the bases and Matt Limbach doubled to make the score 4-1. Then Guthrie, Fetter and Goering singled in succession. Garret Moore drove in a run with an rbi ground out. Fago doubled in the top of the seventh and scored on an rbi ground out by Limbach.
The Bulldogs were 10-2 coming into the double header. With the victories, South Oakland raised it’s record to 6-11, and is a half game behind Monroeville (5-9) and Carrick (6-10) who sit in 8th and 7th place respectively.
South Oakland has a tough 3-game stretch coming up in which we play the artists formerly known as Day Toyota, and then a double header against the Bulldogs at John Herb the following weekend.
Standings as of 6/3:
Upcoming games:
(click to enlarge or just go to the league site.)
There is some serious separation going on here between the haves and have-nots.
It’s going to be a shit show at the bottom of the bracket. Conceivably we could see the militia, Carrick and pour house drop a few games coming up.
right now, Elliot, Clinton, the Bulldogs and Ashley Shaffer are battling for position in the top four and then it’s everyone else.
Elliot is good.
Cranberry sucks.
that’s my expert analysis.
Unfortunately our team is constructed as such that we can lose 15-1 to teams that suck because we lack pitching depth and infield depth, and sometimes our players don’t show up.
The winable games we dropped to Carrick, Pour House and Cranberry and the forfeit to the Militia really hurt right now, but at least we’re finally putting up runs and winning games.
We have to steal a couple against teams that are above us in the standings, which is almost everyone.
We might be able to jump in the standings before we play this sunday.
We need all hands on deck Sunday. Jefferson Davis Hills is good. If we have to throw out a patchwork lineup with random single A players we will get embarrassed.
We can give them a game if everyone shows up.
This is most likely the last season of the Ducks as a Double A team, we at least need to make the playoffs and give it one final run.
South Oakland jumped out to an 8-0 lead after three innings, and held off a late Brookline rally to win 9-5.
James Fago pitched a complete game for the much-needed victory, and added an RBI single.
Ducks right fielder Zach Skowvron literally knocked out the Sox starting pitcher with a line drive to the groin area that went for a bases loaded, rbi single in the third.
I hope that guy isn’t pissing blood. it looked like it really hurt.
The Ducks did a good job of stranding Black Sox runners, and getting timely hits.
For the Ducks, Baumgartel hit a triple, Anthony Ciccone was 2-for-3 with two doubles, Stahl 2-for-4 with a double, Gwin was 2-for-4 with a double and 3 rbi, Skowvron was 2-for-3 with a walk. 8 South Oakland starters recorded a hit, and all nine reached base safely at least once.
The above might not be 100% accurate, I don’t have the book, but we hit well.
For the Sox, Kenny Powers and Goldie hit triples.
Florian hustled.
A win against the Black Sox, in Brookline, is always big.
South Oakland has scored 26 runs in its last 3 games and looks to keep the momentum going throughout the weekend.
South Oakland next plays a double header at Cranberry, Saturday, 1pm.
These two storied franchises enter tonight’s game at Moore Park with a combined 3 wins between them, in a battle to gain ground on the 8th and final playoff spot.
The Black Sox sit at 2-6 in ninth place, while the 1-9 South Oakland Ducks look to climb out of the cellar with a win.
These games used to be for first place in the division, now we’re fighting for our post-season lives and the season isn’t even halfway gone.
Sox 3rd base coach, Randy, is already getting mentally prepared for the game tonight
We’ve lost in every way imaginable, blown leads, close losses and ten-run drubbings, we’ve hit and not played defense, we’ve played defense and not hit. We’ve forfeited.
We can still make a run at it, but there’s not much margin for error. Luckily there’s a logjam at the bottom of the standings and we still have to play the teams in front of us.
One of the most fun seasons i can remember was 2008. We had a huge turnover in our roster from 2007, and it took a while for us to come together. TC just took over as manager. We started 3-9, got on a roll and went on to finish 12-10-2 and sneak into the playoffs on the last day of the season.
Tonight is the start of a four game road trip that will determine whether we’ve been underachieving, or if we’re just bad. Maybe we’re just bad. That’s a definite possibility, but i still think there’s enough talent on our team to compete.
Tonight we face an old nemesis in the unfriendly confines of Moore Park and there’s no better place to turn our season around.
We’ve dug ourselves a hole as deep as the mosquito filled woods behind the visitors bench.
South Oakland Ducks Baseball 