Durham Bulls Swept; Season Ends

The game started out well enough. On the field were a bunch of familiar faces:

• Former Bull Blake Snell, pitching for the Bulls and having a couple of good innings.
• Former Bull Andrew Velazquez, playing shortstop for the Columbus Clippers who went 1 for 4 and scored a run.
• Former Bull Dioner Navarro, playing catcher for the Clippers, who went 0 for 2 with a walk.
• Former Bull Mitch Talbot, who was the Clippers starting pitcher and went 4 2/3 innings and gave up a bunch of walks and one run, but also got out of a bases-loaded mess in the 2nd inning and left the game allowing just one run.

On the Bulls side, not so many familiar faces. In fact, only two starters were in the Bulls opening day lineup, Jake Cronenworth and Nathan Lukes. (Andrew Velazquez was on that lineup as well)

The takeaway was that Columbus was simply a better team. Better pitching—although the Bulls' Aaron Slegers did a fine job for 3 innings, he got hammered for the next two. Better hitting—the Clippers hit a ton of home runs over the three games, 3 last night and a bunch at the two games in Columbus. If not better defense, then pretty darn good.

The Bulls left 14 baserunners on base, but that's been a feature for much of the year.

Now, let's not forget that this is a team that got into the playoffs for us, the fans, and did it under very difficult circumstances.

And they provided us with a ton of fun over the year.

I'll do my usual charts in a couple of days. And I'll miss being at the DBAP. Just wish I were going tonight.

Enjoy the winter!