Colorado Springs: The Sky Sox started making their way to Sacramento on Wednesday, with tonight marking the start of a four game set against the best team in the PCL this year. The River Cats have been faltering lately, however, while the Sox have been as hot as any team in the league, so hopefully the series goes our way nonetheless. Heading into tonight's action, Colorado Springs is two and a half games back of Salt Lake in their division.
Tulsa: Like the Sky Sox, the Drillers have also won eight of their last ten games, and significantly for Tulsa, six of those wins have come at the expense of what had been the division leading Wichita squad. Wichita's now in second place, three and a half games behind after Tulsa completed a series sweep with a 6-5 victory yesterday. Ryan Mattheus continued the story of his season with another solid, albeit unspectacular outing, giving up three runs on six hits and two walks with five K's in six innings. Steven Register celebrated his birthday by picking up his fourteenth save of the season. According to the Drillers' official site he had a scary incident when a comeback grounder struck him in the hand, but proved to be alright. On offense, Joe Gaetti had two hits, including his fifth homerun of the season, and Matt Macri reached base four times, twice by base hit and twice by walking. Jonathan Herrera, Matt Miller and Tommy Duenas all also had a multi-hit game.
Modesto: With all of our affiliates playing so competitively this season, it makes moves before first half playoff spots are secured (or teams fall out of contention) a little less likely. I'm hoping that Brandon Hynick's the exception. I know we've got a couple of very worthy candidates in Asheville (Weiser and Paulk) and Tulsa (Reynolds and Clarke) but after another seven innings of stellar work yesterday, it's obvious that Hynick's case trumps them all. Cole Garner had a double, a single and a stolen base and Chris Nelson reached three times via walk or hit and scored twice to help give the offense more than it needed with Hynick on the mound. The win over San Jose pulled the team to 3.5 games back and into a tie for second place in the division with a 21-19 record on the year.
Asheville: Of course, no team in our system is hotter than Asheville, which starts a big series between SAL division leaders tonight against West Virginia.