Maple sits in 3rd place tied with South Carolina and 2.5 games back of San Francisco as July comes and goes in the ABL. Despite a 47-57 record, Maple stays alive in the subpar Billy Martin TML Division.
Maple did comes to terms with Mile High for SP Jesse George. Maple sent $2M cash + SP Jesse George for young SP Jeff Andrews who will instantly get a promotion to Astoria in AAA and 2B Kazuhiro Kojima who also gets the instant promotion to AA. We hate to see Mr. Consistency go but, we don't feel we can win the championship this season with the likes of Cabo San Lucas and Nottinghamshire around. This will free up some contract money next year in free agency for Maple and we will play the wait and see game with both prospects of which are borderline ABL players at this point in their projection.
Maple finished July at 12-15. We have slipped in the team batting categories and team pitching has been overall respectable and still a surprise to us. Losing George will hurt our Team ERA which ranks 5th in the TML currently. Ron Cutter has been hot of late in the CL roles since Johnny Tiller went on the 60 day DL. Ron in his past 16 G, 9 SV, 0.52 ERA and 21 Ks in 17.1 IP. Also hot is Dan Wilder in his new SP role, he has gone 1-0, 1.57 ERA in his last 5 G with 22 Ks in 23 IP. Highly touted spec Dave Guenette 3B just can't get it going at the ABL level, since his call up he has struggled in his opportunity going 9 for 79, .114 bavg with 0 HR, 5RBI in 22G. The organization is growing impatient with him and perhaps a change of scenery is best for him at this point in his career. Anthony Lewis OF coming off waivers as unclaimed sparked him to a super 17 for 42 clip, .405 bavg, 4 HR and 10 RBI in his past 12 G. Anthony was pretty vocal about his disappointment being waived by Maple's management. It is clear if you don't produce the patience in MAPLE will be short with any high paid players.
Maple management is very high on OF George Evans who at AAA is batting .273/.337/.553 with 21 HR in 311 ABs for Astoria. He might join Billy Greer in the OF next year for Maple :-) CL Manny Palma was demoted back to AA based on his wild performance at AAA this year. OF Brad Thomas has been a pleasant surprise at A Kingwood this year batting .296/.381/.426 with 12 HR in 371 AB. He might get promoted to AA by the end of August if he continues to swing the bat at this pace.
Astoria in AAA is 45-59, 13 1/2 GB and in 6th place; Sandy Springs AA is 55-50, 8 GB and in 3rd place and finally Kingwood A is 59-45, 14 1/2 GB and in 4th place despite playing over .500 for the first time in their teams history.
Maple's MVP is Billy Greer so far. This OF is batting .300 with 26 dingers, 62 RBI and recently moved over to DH with the call up of defensive specialist Antonio Alvarez to roam CF.
It will be interesting to see who gets the September call ups from Maple this year as there are a few youngster that would benefit from some ABL experience going into next year. Then again, we might be in 1st place in this division so you never know what can happen in the wild and worst division in ABL baseball...
Jason/Maple
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