SIM COMPLETE - 1996 - SIM 16

[mwetts]

There's also management style. If you don't properly manage fatigue, you do get a lot more 4-3, 3-4 SIMs later in the season.

Thats a good point. Ill look into that a little more.

[Pat]

Bold prediction, but had I kept around Curt Race and Alex Torres, I'm a playoff team.

You might be a playoff team if you weren't tanking with guys like Tommy Lang.

[liquidcrash]

Carolina Tobs- 4-3 this week
60-38 overall (1st in Bock)

2-1 vs California
2-2 at Los Alamos

Our second consecutive 4-3 week as our long stretch of consecutive games continued. We pitched better this week but still managed to get roughed up a couple times and had to rely on our bullpen to give a ton of innings. We're not playing all that well, but still have a 9 game division lead heading into the end of July.

The Good

-Jose Guzman led us at the plate this week and he's had a really nice couple of months after getting off to a slow start. He hit .381 with 3 HRs this week. Since June 1st, he's put up a .934 OPS. Maybe the old man just needed a little bit of time to get warmed up.

-Manny Mendez pitched a complete game shutout against Los Alamos, giving up 6 hits and not walking anyone. He'd really been struggling since being named to the All-Star game, I'm not sure what Virginia did to him while he was up there for the festivities. He's got two complete games this season- both against the Bandits (the other was his no-hitter)

The Bad

-Inconsistent pitching continues to hurt us. This week it was Doug Howe who got shelled and couldn't make it out of the second inning. His awful performance came the day after Ivan Gutierrez got a rare start and didn't get out of the 3rd. I'm not expecting greatness from my rotation, but these kind of games are all too common for us and it's killing our bullpen to have to pitch 12+ innings over 2 days.

-Ivan Cervantes can't seem to take the next step and become a solid BLB hitter. We faced a lot of lefties this sim so he saw a lot of action, but only hit .148. Hurry back, Pat Faulkner.

Coming Up

-Seven more games this week, all on the road. Counting this last series against Los Alamos, we'll play 29 out of 35 games on the road during this stretch. We've been ok on the road so far (26-16), and we're not specifically built to play in our ballpark (which is neutral anyway), but it's going to be a tough month. Hopefully we can just go .500 and give ourselves a shot to win the division when we come home in September.

[Spear]

Bold prediction, but had I kept around Curt Race and Alex Torres, I'm a playoff team.

Don't forget the lost acquisition of MR Art Casey.

[Delandis]

Is it me or has the league gotten unusually thin on high end catchers and catcher prospects over the last couple of years?

[Clay]

Is it me or has the league gotten unusually thin on high end catchers and catcher prospects over the last couple of years?

I think there are a lot less coming through the draft. Still a lot of great catchers in the league, but they're becoming more well-rounded types versus the big bat C's we use to get.