Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
You’ve probably noticed we haven’t written in a while. There’s a reason for that – it’s been a tough team to write about for many months now. But here we are roaring into the final 8 games of the season and… we’re alive. Not only that, but we’ve got a real chance, but Our Marines need to play by far their best baseball of the season – without two of the best players on the team – for the Climax Series to become a reality.
Yes, four members of our Lotte Marines have been selected to represent the Pacific League in the 2015 All Star Series: Ikuhiro Kiyota, Hideaki Wakui, Katsuya Kakunaka, and Luis Cruz. Before we get into that though, let’s do a quick update on the state of Lotteland.
This is the 7th year I’ve been doing this blog, and I just learned something that is both odd and deeply stupid.
Our Marines finished the 2015 interleague season with a winning record of 10-8, pulling themselves back up to the .500 in the process totaling 31 wins and 31 losses on the season.
We’ve long been fans of Ikuhiro Kiyota ’round this site, and I’ve been a strong advocate for putting him in the starting lineup and letting him get comfortable, seeing what he can do with extended playing time. What’s not to like about Kiyota?
We’re at roughly the third-of-the-way point of the 2015 Chiba Lotte Marines Golden Year presented by Steve and Craig at We Love Marines (dot) Com campaign and I gotta say that… yeah, the 21-23 record is a wee bit disappointing. With a win on Sunday at Orix we Fans of Lotte could have said, “Hey, at least we’re at .500”, but instead I’m just going to say “Hey, at least we ain’t Orix.” With that in mind, I want to focus a bit on the things I like so far this year.
We come into the forty game mark at 4-4 since we last checked in and 18-22 overall.
Golden Week concluded with the ninth game in nine days for Our Marines. Lotte went 4-5 in those 9 days, and 5-7 overall in the 12 games since we last checked in at the 20-game mark.
Our Marines have dropped four of their last ten since we last checked in at the ten game mark.
Ten games in and Our Marines are at an even .500 with five wins and five losses.