Week 11: Decent Home Series Against the Bats

 The Durham won 4 games and lost 2 against the Louisville Bats last week. They kept their spot in 5th place in the 10-team IL East. Overall, however, the standings are much tighter among the top five teams. Decent crowds, especially Sunday, at the DBAP.

Team hitting and pitching continue to improve. Team OPS edged up from .774 to .781 (a bunch of home runs helped). The team ERA crept down from 4.52 to 4.34. The Bulls team WHIP, which has been worrisome all year, was down from 1.41 to 1.38, but they are 10th in the 20-team IL. A very low WHIP has been a hallmark of previous Bulls teams. 

This week did see a disturbing trend emerge in one of our home-grown stats:  unEarned Run Average — unearned runs per 9 innings. Over the six games, the Bulls' mistakes led to 8 unearned runs and drove the uERA up quite a bit.

The Bulls are off to Jacksonville, Florida to play the Jumbo Shrimp. Jacksonville is a game ahead of the Bulls in the standings, but the teams are very close to a statistical wash. They have already played each other 12 times this year and they are 6 and 6.

Note that they are on MiLB TV and Kinas is actually traveling with the team for the first time since pre-Covid days. He is at last broadcasting the games from the press box.

Week 10: Bulls Win 2, Lose 4 in Memphis

It seemed to be mostly a quiet time in Memphis last week. The Bulls lost 4 of the 6 games in front of sparse attendance (Memphis has only had 100,000 fans show up at the ballpark this year). 

At the end of the week, the Bulls were still in 5th place in the International League East, just behind Jacksonville (who has a little streak going for them). Up at the top of the league, Rochester has an ugly, 6-game losing streak in progress. At that three-team cluster at the bottom--not much change.

 

The pitching highlight of the week was Josh Fleming's masterful 8 innings on June 10. It was the best outing by any Bulls pitcher this year. Overall, the team ERA worsened slightly from 4.45 to 4.52. Similarly, the team batting showed a slight falling off from an OPS of .779 to .774. Most worrisome is the trend among relievers. That does not look good.

Matchup Bulls vs Bats

In years gone by the Durham Bulls/Louisville Bats matchup was a lot of fun. As Triple-A eases back into life, maybe we'll see that again. However, the Cincinnati Reds franchise is not having a good year. 

Notes:

Nice article in the New York Times on my all-time favorite Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo.

Weeks 8 & 9: Durham Bulls Have a Great Home Stand

 

Click for larger image

The Durham Bulls went 5-1 against the Charlotte Knights and 4-2 against the Nashville Sounds (a much better team). During the home stand they went from a game below .500 to 4 games above .500, and from a tie for 5th place up to 4th place in the International League East.

We have interesting clusters developing the IL East. The Rochester Red Wings (the Nationals affiliate) have been having a terrific year. Unfortunately for the illusion of competitiveness, the 6-game series approach to scheduling has meant that the Bulls will not play Rochester this year. Nearby is a six-team cluster of Buffalo, Lehigh Valley, Jacksonville, Worcester, Norfolk, and Durham. The Bulls play all of those teams although there won't be a rematch with  Buffalo (the Bulls went 4-2 against them in early May). Lastly is a cluster of three teams, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Charlotte, and Syracuse, who appear to be slipping away. 

This home stand was characterized by much-improved hitting. The Team OPS went from .741 to .779, up to 3rd place in the IL East. The team ERA of 4.45 is nothing to shout about, but improved from earlier in the year. They rank 3rd in the IL East.

The Bulls go up against the Memphis Redbirds (St Louis) tonight in Memphis. They are on an even better run than the Bulls, 8-2 over their last 10 games. Overall, it looks like a decent matchup. 

Memorial Day 2023

 

Bald eagle on veteran's grave, Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Photo by Frank Gilk, Minneapolis Star Tribune. Stories by Jon Tevlin June 25 and August 10, 2011.

Memorial Day 2023

The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak

     Nevertheless they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them? 

     They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts. 

     They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us. 

     They say, We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done. 

     They say, We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave. 

     They say, Our deaths are not ours: they are yours: they will mean what you make them. 

     They say, Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say, it is you who must say this. 

     They say, We leave you our deaths: Give them their meaning: give them an end to the war and a true peace: give them a victory that ends the war and a peace afterwards: give them their meaning.

     
     We were young, they say. We have died; Remember us. 

— Archibald MacLeish

Durham Bulls Reach .500!

 

The Durham Bulls got their record up to 22-22 (standings) with a win over the Charlotte Knights last night. This is the first time they've been at .500 since the 4th game of the season, April 8th. That's a big deal. 

What changed? How did they manage to crawl out of that hole they were in back on  May 11th? A baseball truism holds—it was the pitching. A look at the box score for April 8 and the box score for last night shows that the position players were almost exactly the same. The exceptions were Ruben Cardenas who played April 8th was on the bench last night and Ford Proctor, on the bench back in April, was at 3rd base. Pitchers? That was different. But, to be honest, I was surprised that there were any similarities at all. Both games saw 6 pitchers and two of them, Phoenix Sanders and Joel Peguero, pitched in relief in both games. 

Maybe it's just learning to play together. This is a very young team with not a lot of experience at Triple-A.

Here's hoping they can keep it up.

Week 7: Mo' Betta

click for a larger image

The Durham Bulls had another winning series down in Jacksonville, although they did not move up out of 5th place. Nevertheless, their overall play is much better and they took 4 out of 6 games from a good team in that team's home park.

Another nice trend is getting more innings out of the starting pitchers and improvement in their ERAs. 

The Charlotte Knights are coming to town and they are not having a good year, so far. The White Sox franchise is in 8th place and they have some obvious pitching problems.

Week 6: More Light

 

The Durham Bulls moved up into 5th place in the International League East. They won their last four games here at home, the first at-home winning series of the year. Rochester (the Nationals franchise), however, is on a terrific run and is well ahead of everyone in the league, including the Bulls next opponent, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.

Stats

Not much change from last week. The most significant uptick was in team OPS which went from .722 to .742, from 14th to 9th in the overall International League. 

A trend that started the prior week, but continued this last week, was getting more innings out of starting pitchers. 

A trend that has not improved was roster turmoil. In the last week (since May 10th) the Bulls have seen 15 roster changes. 

Overall, it was fun watching the Bulls this week, the most fun we've had this year. Here's hoping they keep it up.