Friday, June 10, 2016

Matchup: Durham Bulls vs. Lehigh Valley IronPigs

The Philadelphia Phillies Triple-A team, the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, are blessed with the only other Triple-A fan blog I know of, Noise Nation, so they must be something special. Plus they get pretty decent coverage from their local newspaper, the Allentown (PA) Morning Call.

As might be expected, given their proximity to Philadelphia, coverage is very Phillies-centric. That's different from what we denizens of the DBAP experience. It’s pretty hard to find a Rays fan at the park. In fact, one of my most frequent questions at a game is who the Bulls are affiliated with. We’re a narrow-minded lot who tolerate the Rays only as long as they give us a decent team to watch.

The North Division of the International League is very competitive this year. At the moment, the IronPigs are tied for third place but are only 2½ games out of first and only 1 game ahead of fourth place. Standings.

The Bulls’ J.P. Arencibia started the season with the IronPigs, so we can expect possibly an even higher level of chatter between him and his former teammates.

The matchup is mostly in favor of the ’Pigs. They are near the top of the league in hitting, much better than the league-worst Bulls. The Bulls have a slight edge in pitching. This is going to be a challenging set.


1 comment:

  1. Hey Chris!

    Here we go. The IronPigs just returned from taking three of four in Charlotte, then two straight in Georgia before forgetting how to hit the last two days. We'll play as the "Steaks" tonight in a "Salute to Philadelphia" marketing gimmick. The IronPigs are chock full of top-prospects in the Phillies system--watch for JP Crawford, Jake Thompson (who pitches tonight), Nick Williams, Andrew Knapp (why JP Arencibia left), Darnell Sweeney, Edubray Ramos, and Ben Lively (who pitches tomorrow). Here's my column for tonight's game: https://noisenation.wordpress.com/2016/06/10/ironpigs-today-how-the-south-was-won-6102016/

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