Every Year is Golden Year in Chiba
Last road trip of the year? Yup, last road trip of the year. Hard to believe we’re at that time of year already but indeed it’s true – this series in Sendai makes the last three road games of the 2014 season.
This series sadly also is the final opportunity for Our Marines to win a season series with a PL team. Chiba has 12 losses (exactly) in every head-to-head matchup except with Rakuten, against whom we have 11. Hey, it’s not much, but it would be nice to be better than at least one PL team.
Our Marines might be out of contention, but all kidding aside, it’s been an entertaining September. Take away the three shutout losses and 29 inning scoreless steak – which in it of itself became compelling – and Our Marines are 5-1. Playing spoiler to the Hawks’ first place run this holiday weekend could add some more September gratification.
Ah, the fun time of the year, right? We fans, resigned to our fate as a B Class team, get to enjoy the stress-free pleasures of meaningless September ball. But is it so stress-free when the team can’t seem to put any runs across the plate?
It’ll be interesting to see what surprises us await us in the last month of the season. For starters, let’s see if we can take something positive from this weekend’s home series versus the last place Eagles.
The goals for the remaining games are basically (a) get the younger players some more experience (b) play the spoiler. Wait, I forgot to list the most important goal! (c) BEAT SEIBU. Interestingly enough, we get 7 games in 10 days vs our Tokorozawa – this 3 game set at Seibu Dome and next week a 4 game tilt at QVC – and that’s it for the season. Seibu’s in just about as hopeless a position as is Chiba, so really we should look at this as a 7 game series to determine PL Kanto supremacy once and for all.
Want some good news? Sure it’s thin on the ground here, but our lovely rookie Ishikawa (arguably the best pitcher on the team this year, and undoubtedly the best among the starters) is back and starting game 1. The next three games are against the Fighters, sitting in third. The math is very poor indeed, though, and Chiba really, really, really needs a sweep of this three game set in Tokyo Dome to even begin to think about making a run at A-Class.
It’s actually quite simple – don’t worry about Hamu. Lotte’s just gotta win some games. There’s 30 games left for Our Marines, 33 for the Fighters. Assuming no ties, that means if Hamu maintains its season winning percentage of .509, Chiba’s gotta go 22-8 in these last 30 games to overcome. Can it be done? Sure, why not? 7 of the remaining are vs those same Fighters (all in Kanto), and 13 of the remaining are vs the nothing-to-play-for Lions and Eagles. Why not win a whole lot of those games?
We fans should never complain when our team goes into the final game of a series with a chance for a sweep, especially versus a solid team like Orix. So even though the result in that final game feels disappointing, like an opportunity missed, we’ll be happy with taking 2 of three.
I know I’ve written off the team on two separate occasions in just the last three weeks. We’re fans, that what we do. We’re still mathematically alive though, and this coming two week stretch is likely going to be the true determining period for Our Marines. The next two weeks features a home-and-home with the 2nd place Buffaloes, a home set with the 1st place Hawks in between, and then we end the month with a 3-game Tokyo Dome series versus the 3rd place Fighters.
That glimmer of hope we all had after the 5 game win streak has summarily been smashed against the cold, unyielding truth of reality. Chiba has lost 8 in a row to the Fighters, a team which (if I try to think objectively) just should not be as good as our guys. Not now. But unfortunately the results on the field are saying otherwise, and the 2.5 game deficit that seemed so promising just 4 days ago is now a bleak 5.5 game pit.