Durham Bulls' Headed to an Historical Year

The Durham Bulls finished the first half of the 2026 with a 28-47 won-loss record (a .373 percentage) and on a path to becoming the worst team in Durham Bulls AAA history. How bad are they? At 19 games below .500 they are tied with Norfolk for last place in the Eastern Division of the International League. They are 19 games behind the first place the Washingon National’s Rochester Redwings. Statistics? For the 20 team International League: OPS - .686 (20th), ERA - 5.63 (18th). Recent trends: They’ve lost 8 of their last 12 games, and 14 of their last 18.

This time last year the Bulls were doing fairly well at 15 games over .500 and they finished the year a respectable 11 over .500 and 4th place in the East.

The Bulls have only been around for 28 years and of those years they were typically in the running for a championship. In only five of those years have they finished below .500. This year they are cruising towards a less than .400 year.

Why?

I wish I could find some good reasons. And I also wish that I’d been interested enough to listen to more broadcast coverage this year. But with home stands like last week, where they only won the first game and lost the next five, that’s been hard to do.

They are slightly younger than last year, which might be a factor. 

I’d like to blame the cost-saving schedule, but they’ve been doing that for a couple of years. 

Most of all, I’d like to blame the Tampa Bay Rays, since it is, after all, their team. Or the manager, but he did OK last year. But the facts are that this team does not hit well and, unusual for a Rays franchise, doesn’t pitch well. 

Here’s my guess: The Rays are simply not paying attention to the team. Individual players, yes, but not the team. 

Year	Wins	Losses	Percentage
1998	80	64	0.556
1999	83	60	0.580
2000	81	62	0.566
2001	74	70	0.514
2002	80	64	0.556
2003	73	67	0.521
2004	77	67	0.535
2005	65	79	0.451
2006	64	78	0.451
2007	80	63	0.559
2008	74	70	0.514
2009	83	61	0.576
2010	88	55	0.615
2011	80	62	0.563
2012	66	78	0.458
2013	87	57	0.604
2014	75	69	0.521
2015	74	70	0.514
2016	64	80	0.444
2017	86	56	0.606
2018	79	60	0.568
2019	75	64	0.540
2021	77	43	0.642
2022	86	64	0.573
2023	88	62	0.587
2024	72	78	0.480
2025	85	64	0.570
2026	28	47	0.373

Reset!

 

The Durham Bulls started and ended the first half of the 2024 season with a loss. In between they never managed to get above .500 or even remotely in contention. I am not used to this half-season business and the IL website doesn’t seem to be inclined to provide any information. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Patrick Kinas on the radio, I’m not sure I’d have known about it at all. Starting tomorrow, the won-loss records reset themselves (although the stats do not). That means the Bulls get to try again.

The Bulls ended the first half’s 75 games with a 36-39 record, putting them tied with Norfolk for 5th place in the 10-team IL East, 10.5 (10.5!) games back from Syracuse. They were 10th overall in the entire  20-team IL. Standings

We Bulls fans are not used to seeing a team perform this poorly. We often see a hiccup in the first year of a new manager, but nothing like this year.  The team is weak across the board.

Hitting

The team OPS is .774, which ranks them 11th in the 20-team IL. Plus they are very good at getting on base at .339 (14th). And they strike out a lot -- 713 times so far, the 4th worst in the entire league. Ronny Simon (66th), Kameron Misner (72d), and Tristan Peters (81st) are the only hitters ranked in the top 120 batters.

Pitching

Pitching is marginally better. With an ERA of 4.84, they are 9th in the league. Joe Rock’s 3.86 over 60 innings ranks him 7th in the league. But, he’s the only Bull in the top 30.

Base Stealing: Kameron Misner makes an appearance in the stolen base rankings at #6 with 22 and he’s only been caught once. Ronny Simon is the next Bull on the list, at 60th with 8, but he’s been caught 3 times.

Fielding? Nothing to shout about. They’ve let in 52 unearned runs so far this year. That’s approaching a run per game (.716 per 9 innings). The league average is .516.

Is there hope for the second half? Not much. The team pitching is showing steady improvement as are the run differentials. But overall hitting is pretty stagnant. And in any case, there’s a long, long way to go.

Five in a Row!

 

Are things looking up for the Bulls? Maybe. Certainly, they have a long way to go, but last week down in Jacksonville they did very, very well. And it shows in their numbers. The team OPS improved from .769 to .778 and the team ERA improved from 5.31 to 5.36. That’s still 9th out of 20 on hitting and 13th out of 20 on pitching. 

Nevertheless,  they are 6th in the IL East with only 18 games left in the first half of the season. Standings.

This week they are home against the Gwinnett Strippers, who play in the IL West. Looks like the Bulls have a slight edge in hitting. Gwinnett, however, is 4th in ERA in the IL.

A Slightly Better Week

 

The Durham Bulls are still in last place in the International League East. On the other hand, they did at least split their 6-game set with Gwinnett last week. We saw a slight improvement in ERA as well, so perhaps there’s some hope. But some of that improvement comes from Taj Bradley’s rehab starts and he will not be with the Bulls much longer (assuming that he’s still here).

Nashville is in town this morning. They aren’t have a very good year either.

Dismal Start for the Durham Bulls

 

I haven’t posted anything about the Bulls this year, new manager and all that. But the time has come.

In all the years I’ve been following the Durham Bulls I don’t think they have ever started off dead last. But here they are. Twenty-one games into the season and 5 games below .500.

Why? Pitching, pitching, pitching. 

They do have a team OPS of .843, but that is somewhat driven by that extraordinary 28 run game on April 9th and two 12-run games after that. Nevertheless, they have the worst record of the 20 teams in the International league. 

The pitching is dismal. The team ERA is 639, 19th of 20;  the WHIP of 1.57 is 17th; and the Opponents’ Batting Average is .282 -- 20th.

Will things get better at home (they’ve only played 6 of their 21 games at home this year -- thanks IL schedulers)? We can hope so. But they come home to face the best team in the IL this year. We’ll have to see.

October Begins

 

Summer's End

 John Prine’s great song comes to mind. The summer’s over and the Bulls are coming home (going home might be the better choice of verb).

In the end, however, the Norfolk Tides pretty much owned the Bulls all season. The exception was that extraordinary bottom of the 9th victory on the 4th of July. Otherwise, no doubt after last night's 7-0 drubbing, the best team is off to Las Vegas.

In the meantime, this last month or so we got to witness some terrific baseball. 

See you April 2, 2024, when the Bulls take on the Jumbo Shrimp at the DBAP.