Tucson took over posession of 2nd place in the Kirk Division of the
Enterprise League today, after taking both ends of a double headers
against Cincinatti. Tucon has a 33-25 record, half as many wins an
they recorded all last season.
Tucson took the first game 9-1 on the strength of another gem by
veteran pitchter Andy Benes. Benes is now sporting a microscopic 2.19
ERA, best on the team. Benes is having an outstanding season this
year, and leads the team in ERA, Quality starts, and strikeouts.
Benes got plenty of support, as Mike Sweeney, Rondell White, and
surprise star Eddie Grove all homered. By day's end, Tucson had 6
players in double digits for homers, and Todd Hollandsworth in
striking distance with 8.
Jeff D'Amico combined with 4 other pitchers to shut out the Bearcats
in the second game, 5-0. Rich Becker jammed his elbow sliding in this
game, and reported his elbow felt "tender" after this game. D'Amico
picked up his 4th win of the season. Phenom Mathius Lund went 3-4 in
this game, to raise his average back over the mendoza line. Ray
Durham also went 3-4, and provided most of the offense with a 2 run
blast in the first inning.
Tucson's pitching staff is obviously not among the truly elite (like,
say, Galena's with a 2.88 ERA), but it is much improved over last
season (as noted in the State of the PVBL). The staff has lowered
it's ERA by 1.72 runs over last season's miserable performance. Some
of this is accounted for by the league wide increase in pitcher
performance.
Better pitching this year hasn't mattered much to Tucson's hitters,
though. In a year when the league average OPS is .715, Tucson is
sporting a hefty .814. This is nearly 70 points up from last season,
despite better pitching. Tucson has scored 318 runs (most in the
PVBL), for an average of nearly 5.5 runs a game. When combined with a
pitching staff allowing only 4 runs a game, it's easy to see where the
wins are coming from.
Tucson still hopes to add a dominant closer and a solid lefty to their
bullpen, but doesn't hold out much hope of doing anything before the
amatuer draft. Tucson did make a trade which it hopes will impact
their bullpen fairly quickly. Tucson sent grizzled veteran Juan
Samuel (.300 career BA, with and .806 OPS) along with young lefty
Orlando Palmiero to Montreal in exchange for Chuck Bonner and
Montreal's first round draft pick in the amatuer draft (10th overall).
Tucson will be drafting 4th and 10th in the first round of the draft,
and will not have any other picks until the 3rd round (assuming that
there *is* a third round). Tucson lost it's 2nd round pick as
compensation when it signed Rondell White in the offseason.
