Italian Weekly: Race for Fourth Place is heating up
by Riccardo Schiroli
After Thursday night game Telemarket Rimini looked out of the playoff race of the Italian Baseball League. Rimini had lost at home against Cariparma and their starter Matt Beech had posted a very poor outing, struggling badly with control. But then Rimini came back, winning two in Parma, and now six teams are back in the race to make the post season. Parma has had a disappointing Saturday (no game was played in the series on Friday, due to bad weather) that kind of erases all the nice words we spent for the parmesans previously. Their offense wasted a lot of runners (especially line up leaders Adolfo Gomez and Orlando Munoz performed well below their potential) and ace reliever Mattia Salsi blew a save opportunity in the rubber match. Winning that game, Parma would have cut out Rimini from the race and clinched a solitary fourth place.
Fortitudo Bologna keeps winning series and when they lose, the opponents need to go extra innings to celebrate. Their last success was against T&A San Marino, a team that is doing even too much, considering they have played a whole series against Bologna without their starting catcher (Matamoros), shortstop (La Fera) and with their everyday center fielder (Buccheri) at DH. Still San Marino is badly struggling with their pitching staff, maybe not with the import pitchers, because Horacio Estrada is a fair enough replacement for ace Figueroa (out with a shoulder problem). But six Italian pitchers (Da Silva, Orta, Marrone, Tonellato, Lucena and Martignoni) gave up a combined 30 hits in game two and three. Bologna has a great offensive potential, but 30 hits would definitely be too much even if they could count on Manny Ramirez and Big Papi Ortiz!
The race for fourth place between San Marino, Parma and Rimini may be the most exciting part of the next six weekends. Nettuno and Grosseto in fact should not have a problem in joining Fortitudo in the post season.
Montepaschi Grosseto will have to overcome the deficit in game three (the one reserved to pitchers of the ‘Italian school of baseball’ or ASI). With star Riccardo De Santis sidelined by a sore elbow, youngsters Lucati and Panerati have struggled to fill the hole and, furthermore, Grosseto won’t be able to count on them during the month of July. They both have signed contracts with MLB organizations (Lucati with the Astros and Panerati with the Reds) and will join their Rookie Ball teams. So the task will be down to veteran Ginanneschi (basically a reliever) and to Lorenzo Avagnina, their starting center fielder. Avagnina (a left hander) has been a good pitcher at the Serie A2 level, but has not pitched much at the next level.
Grosseto will host Danesi Nettuno for a tough series this week end. Game one (Thursday starting 9 PM CET) will be available live in all of Europe through Rai Sport Più.
