Press Release Australian Baseball League
SYDNEY, NSW — The Jet Couriers Melbourne Aces are in first place, there are two-way ties for second and third, and the reigning champions are in a tie for third place.
Bet you didn’t think that sentence would be writeable heading into Round 4 of the 2016/17 Australian Baseball League season. The Aces were the wild card at the beginning of the season, and their recent outburst of strength bodes well given the length of the season. It’s been said from the beginning that every game matters exponentially more in a shorter season, and it’s almost crunch time as we look ahead to Round 4.
ADELAIDE (5-7) at PERTH (4-8)
Two teams look to rebound after series losses last weekend, as the Heat host the Bite out west. Adelaide won last year’s season series 7-5, after falling 3-2 to the Heat in the ABLCS the year before.
Adelaide and Perth followed nearly identical patterns in Round 3, falling in the first three games before rebounding to dominate in the series finale. Minus the end results, the Bite actually had a pretty strong series in Canberra in Round 3. They scored early, often, late, and when they needed to. The only problem was that if the Bite offience was a pickup truck going for a Sunday drive, the Cavalry batters were more like an 18-wheeler driving full speed down an empty stretch of highway. Relief came in the form of another amazing outing by young starter Jack O’Loughlin, whose Sunday start continued to demonstrate why he’s one of the game’s best young stars.
For the Heat, it was the dominance of Dan Schmidt that set the tone for Perth, albeit a little late. The Big Lefty’s ERA hasn’t been the greatest in recent seasons, but he was near-perfect in the series finale last Sunday. If Perth at least get good starts out of Schmidt in the series finale and Tom Bailey, who also had a strong run recently, they have a solid shot at at least a pair of wins this weekend. The sad fact is that the Heat still need to score more runs on offence, especially against a Bite lineup that can put a crooked number on the board if they need to. Perth have 42 runs in 12 games, an average of 3.5 runs per game. When your team ERA is 5.19, 3.5 runs isn’t going to cut it.
CANBERRA (7-5) at MELBOURNE (8-4)
The best offence in the ABL collides with the best pitching staff in the league this weekend at Melbourne Ballpark, as the ladder-leading Aces host the tied-for-second Cavalry for four games. Canberra took last year’s season series 5-3 over the course of two series, one at each location.
Melbourne currently lead the league with a 3.20 team ERA, and lead the second-place Bite by 1.36. That 1.36 lead is larger than the Aces’ leading starter’s ERA (Mark Hamburger – 0.95), and epitomises one of the reasons why the Aces have been so effective recently. The 1-2 punch of Hamburger (2-0, 0.95) and Keisuke Honda (2-0, 2.04) has the ability to power the Aces on the mound in the first half of a series.
However, that advantage could be neutralised by the Cavalry bats, which have emerged victorious from battle this season with the best team batting average. Canberra’s mark of .329 is a full 74 points higher than the second-place Aces (.255), and they’ve scored 82 runs in 12 games, a figure that’s almost twice as many runs as the Heat have scored in the same number of matches.
The Aces (6-4) and the Cavalry (7-3) are the only two ABL teams with positive records in their last 10 games, a telling stat in a season that’s just 12 games old. Melbourne also have a 3-1 home record, while Canberra are 1-3 on the road so far this year. Even with the small sample sizes, it’s hot vs hot – whose fire will burn brighter?
BRISBANE (5-7) at SYDNEY (7-5)
There’s baseball in Blacktown for the second-straight weekend, as the Blue Sox welcome the Bandits for the weekend. Last year, the two teams traded series sweeps before the Bandits took the final meeting of the season, winning the overall series 7-5.
Last weekend the Bandits proved the dangers presented by a shortened schedule, dropping from the top of the ladder to the near-bottom over the course of a single poorly-performed round. The typically strong Brisbane pitching staff surrendered 12 runs in the fifth inning or later in the final three games of the series, including losing control of a five-run lead in Game 3. However, heading into the Manager Dave Nilsson shuffled the starting rotation, Ryan Searle is back from attending his mate’s wedding, and Donald Lutz’s bat will undoubtedly be penciled in the lineup this weekend.
On the home side, two comeback wins and a host of great performances highlighted what is shaping up to be a significant start for the Sydneysiders. Former Cleveland Indians farmhand Trevor Foss (1-1, 5.71) had his best start of the season, striking out eight batters to get the series started strong. But starting a series well hasn’t been an issue for the Blue Sox. In the two series that they’ve won, it almost seems like the Blue Sox played with an on/off switch that was “on” for the first three games and then suddenly went “off” for Game 4. They haven’t won a series finale this season, and have been outscored by their opponents 14-33 in those three Game 4 losses. That luck could easily change this weekend, however, with the legendary Chris Oxspring on the mound on Sunday.