Week 11: Decent Home Series Against the Bats

 The Durham won 4 games and lost 2 against the Louisville Bats last week. They kept their spot in 5th place in the 10-team IL East. Overall, however, the standings are much tighter among the top five teams. Decent crowds, especially Sunday, at the DBAP.

Team hitting and pitching continue to improve. Team OPS edged up from .774 to .781 (a bunch of home runs helped). The team ERA crept down from 4.52 to 4.34. The Bulls team WHIP, which has been worrisome all year, was down from 1.41 to 1.38, but they are 10th in the 20-team IL. A very low WHIP has been a hallmark of previous Bulls teams. 

This week did see a disturbing trend emerge in one of our home-grown stats:  unEarned Run Average — unearned runs per 9 innings. Over the six games, the Bulls’ mistakes led to 8 unearned runs and drove the uERA up quite a bit.

The Bulls are off to Jacksonville, Florida to play the Jumbo Shrimp. Jacksonville is a game ahead of the Bulls in the standings, but the teams are very close to a statistical wash. They have already played each other 12 times this year and they are 6 and 6.

Note that they are on MiLB TV and Kinas is actually traveling with the team for the first time since pre-Covid days. He is at last broadcasting the games from the press box.