Bulls Return; Playing for September

The Bulls are back after a fine 4 win/2 loss road trip with a couple of those wins against the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rail Riders. (Note to folks who name teams. Doesn't "Rail Riders" read better than the marketers version "RailRiders"?)

The Bulls come back 13½ games ahead of Gwinnett and only a few games away from clinching a South Division championship.

What's left to play for in these last seven home games against Gwinnett and Norfolk and the seven away games against Charlotte and Gwinnett? Well, there's September.

September is the month that players on the major league 40-man roster have a shot at getting called up. Only four Bulls position players are on the 40-man — Curt Casali, Willy Adames, Taylor Featherston, and the recently returned Mallex Smith. So those guys have at least have a shot at a call-up. As do the six pitchers on the 40-man. The unknown piece of the equation is what the Rays need or want. Hard to tell. Believe me, if they see a need, they can do some pretty tricky stuff with rosters. Mostly, I think they'd just like to win a game or two after their awful performance these last few weeks.

The other event closely watched by only a couple thousand Bulls fans will be the Governors Cup. We'll write a bit more about that as it happens, meanwhile here's a chart on who might be playing whom.

The first round is between the West Champion and the South Champion, and between the North Champion and the Wild Card. Just now it looks like Indianapolis in the West, but Columbus can't be counted out. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre has a lock on the North and Lehigh Valley's long slide may have taken them out of contention for the wild card, but they remain in reach of Rochester. Standings.