Bulls in First Place; Abreu to Tampa Bay

Game 61: Bulls 0, Bisons 1
Wrap, Box, Indy Week Story

Game 62: Bulls 7, Bisons 2
Season: 38-24
Wrap, Box, Indy Week Story

Have to tell you how much fun it was to update my charts this morning and see the line bounce up above Norfolk in the Southern Division. We’re there! Good for the Durham Bulls.

Adam Sobsey’s account (see Indy Week link above) does a fine job depicting the challenges faced over the last weeks in keeping the Bulls in contention, and manages a 5-B headline to boot. More than in contention, we’re in first place with the best record in the league. This is gonna be a fun year.

I can’t add much except to note that both the last two starters are new (Cromer and DeSalvo) and they both did very credible jobs. And the bullpen, what can you say? After DeSalvo handed over the ball in the latter part of the 6th inning, only one Buffalo runner got on base (a walk by Bateman). And Dale Thayer seems to have gotten past his return from Tampa Bay problems, three up, three down in the 9th.

If there’s a guy on our roster who should be up there with the Rays, it’s Winston Abreu. He was called up yesterday. [Thanks for the heads up, DRR]. I wrote something about him a while back, but I certainly didn’t envisage this circumstance.

Coverage about Abreu’s callup down Tampa/St Pete way is here and here. Among the bloggers, DRaysBay is particularly happy about the move. A lengthier discussion is over at Rays Renegade, which has a link to a very scary video. I don’t care what anyone might think about Jason Isringhausen, this should never happen to any athlete. I can only hope that it isn’t as bad as it looks. However, Abreu was called up very shortly after this happened, so surely enough of a problem to put Abreu on the Rays’ 40-man roster.

Bulls have a day game today (I wonder how come they never play on Sunday afternoons in Durham?) so I have an excuse not to do anything at all today except listen to baseball.