Continuing their roller coaster season, the Mile High Mackerel claimed a 6-3 victory, edging LA of Anaheim by 57 points to establish their first winning streak of the season. Less impressive was the point total put up by the Mack, 353.5, which was the third lowest in the league.
“We need to get better, especially on the mound,” said GM Jon Bielecki, “We’re okay in the win column right now, but we’re a hair’s breadth from having a couple of 2-7 weeks, or worse.”
The pitching for the Mack was inconsistent again, with erratic performances both good (W, 8IP, 12K from Tim Lincecum) and worse than not playing at all (-.50 points from A.J. Burnett).
“We were in a tough spot last week,” Bielecki said, “I was banking on Lilly going twice, but he got pushed to Wednesday. Also Valverde got hurt and Papelbon has been less than solid.”
The offense dropped off a bit, producing it’s lowest score of the season. However the 238 points was very much a team effort. Six players scored 20 points or more, with no one over 33 (Nick Markakis). The Mack bats were hampered by slow weeks from Jimmy Rollins (9 points) and Chris Duncan (5 points). Rollins and Duncan have gone back to the bench for Week 4 with Kelly Johnson returning the lineup and Shin-Soo Choo joining the outfield. But Bielecki’s focus remained on the mound.
“Jimmy will start hitting one of these days,” he said, “It’s sort of like having someone on the DL right now. What we really need is to get more points out of our pitching. We’re giving up too many walks and that needs to stop. Again, I’m confident we’ve got a good core team assembled, it’s just going to take a few more weeks to get all of the pieces together.”
The Mack can take some solace in the fact that the ECB is in the midst of a league-wide parity never before seen. Although they have scored more total points than only LA of Anaheim, they trail second place Baltimore by less than 70 points.
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