American Association Insider: Thursday July 30th Takeaways

 Kevin Luckow

(non member of IBWAA)

Five games including a nailbiter in Kamp Oconcomowoc, a matinee in Fargo, and a power outage in Gary SouthShore.

Fargo-Moorhead 8 Lincoln 2

The RedHawks won the businessmen's special at Newman Outdoor Field on a stormy Thursday afternoon. The longball was in play for the Hawks as Juan Fernandez had a two run home run and later Andy Nelson hit a three run shot. Tripp Clark went 2-4 to bump his average up to .350. Matt Walker won his third start in a row. Take a stab at this, SABR geeks. Has a starter ever won three games in a row throwing the same number of innings, runs and hits? Walker for the third straight start allowed one run on four hits in six innings to get the win. 

Cleburne 8 Milwaukee 1

The Railroaders, up 3-1 in the eighth, put up five insurance runs to pull away from the Milkmen. Cody Thomas stayed hot collecting three hits including a solo HR. Frankie Tostado homered and drove in three runs. Rookie Merik Carter collected his first three professional hits. John Baker got his seventh win throwing seven innings in his fourth straight start. 

Kane County 6 Chicago 2

A Chance Sisco home run in sixth evened the game at two. In the Cougars seventh, Matt Bottcher, having a great season at the plate, finally got the zero out of the home run column with a three run shot in the seventh to put the Cougars up for good. Josh Allen had homered in the first to give the Cougars an early lead. Reese Sharp went six innings allowing two runs in a no decision. Ethan Wilder had hits to lead the Dogs. The Dogs are now 12 games out of a playoff spot with 36 games left. Can they make the playoffs? Sure. But it would require the Dogs to go 29-7 just to get back to .500. At some point, if Stan Cliburn is going to get a chance to run it back in 2027, he has to consider selling off some pieces for futures. Wilder would be a nice middle infield piece for a contender. 

Sioux Falls 6 Lake Country 5

Mercy Mercy Mee. What a rally for the Canaries in the ninth inning. Down 4-3, with two runners on, rookie Grady Mee tripled to right field to score a pair of runs to give Sioux Falls the lead. Mee alertly scored on a groundout to third base, making a run for it after a throw to first base. That loomed large as the DockHounds scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to pull within a run. Mee also homered earlier in the game, his second of the season. Michael Curialle also homered earlier in the game. It was a slow night for the DockHounds as Jake Snider had their only home run of the game. Marc Davis threw well going seven innings allowing two runs, but the pen could not hold the lead. 

Gary SouthShore 3 Sioux City 2

In a game that featured a stadium wide power outage in the seventh inning, the RailCats turned out the lights on the Explorers offense, picking up  a series win. Down 1-0 in the fourth inning, a Nick Podkul two run home run put the RailCats ahead for good. Dominic Cancellieri made it through five innings allowing one run to pick up the win. Braulio Vasquez drove in two runs to pace the Explorers. The Explorers, much like Lincoln right behind them are 3.5-4 games behind Winnipeg for the final playoff spot in the West. It has to signal alarms that the Goldeyes are playing good baseball right now, Fargo is 7-3 in their last ten games. Sioux Falls have won 10 of their last 12 games. So right now there isn't any low hanging fruit to catch. Both the Explorers and Saltdogs have shown glimpses of playing real good baseball, but each team will need to start winning a stretch of series in order to catch the teams they're looking up at. 

Photo courtesy of Jennifer Andreachi


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

American Association SUNDAY Insider: Speaking in terms of "what if?"

Image
 Kevin Luckow (non member of IBWAA) What was once a rumor passed between league colleagues, has now been reported by media. The story being the potential move of the Kane County Cougars and Cleburne Railroaders to the Frontier League, soon to be renamed National Association of Professional Baseball. The move would be made for the 2027 season. A real blow to an American Association that has ambitions of expansion.  To get a real feel for what this would mean to AAPB, let's go all the way back to 2006. In the Fall of 2005, the St. Paul Saints, Sioux Falls Canaries, Sioux City Explorers and Lincoln Saltdogs all departed the Northern League. Philosophical differences between ownerships being cited as a major reason for the defection. But a four team league was not going to cut it. Enter the St. Joe Blacksnakes as a stopgap, a team that likely would not have long term stability but filled an immediate need.  Enter Texas. The Texas-Louisiana League was winding down. So the five...
Read more

American Association SUNDAY Insider: The underpaid, overworked liaisons of the American Association

Kevin Luckow (non member of IBWAA)  The idea of this Insider came to my head on Thursday night as I was watching a game in Cleburne. It was the 750th American Association broadcast for voice of the Railroaders, Brad Allred. The Railroaders produced a video for Allred with numerous colleagues from the past, former players and current players paying tribute to Allred.  It got me to thinking just how important the play by play men are to the teams which they are employed. Teams in the AAPB do not have local newspapers following the teams on the road. Often times it is the play by play guys that may put a game story on their team website that the local newspaper picks up to condense into a tiny part of the newspaper. Not to discount the media relations director who also do gamers with no byline given if the newspaper picks it up.  For myself this goes all the way back to the Northern League. Although St. Paul had great coverage from Mike Augustin (mentioned a few weeks ago in...
Read more

American Association SUNDAY Insider: American Associaiton returning to Minnesota

Image
 Kevin Luckow (non member of IBWAA) It's been funny. I've seen stories, thoughts and opinions all around about the announcement of an American Association team in Blaine. They are nice recaps, crosses the t's and dots the i's. But all from an outsider perspective. There's a phrase I like to use when people refer to me as knowledgeable about the going ons in Independent Baseball. It's not that I'm smart, it just means I've been around a long time. For this story I think we have to go back to September of 2020. The St. Paul Saints were playing their final game of the Covid season against the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks. It was in front of a relatively sparse crowd. A weeknight in mid to late September and there was nothing at stake outside of who was going to win the American Association batting title. Drew Ward would end up edging Correlle Prime after Prime was robbed of a base hit late in the game. After the game I talked to Jeff Bittiger who was traveling w...
Read more