Two Weeks Into Season — Not Looking Good

The first two weeks

The Durham Bulls' season comes in 6-game chunks, Tuesday thru Sunday. We are two weeks into the season and the Bulls have faced two teams: the Nashville Sounds and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. They have played just 12 games. How are they doing? Not good at all.

This is not the sort of team that we are used to seeing here in Durham. 

How grim is it?

The Bulls are in 9th place in the 10-team East Division.

Batting: The team OPS is .674, 14th in the 20-team International League

Pitching: The team ERA is 5.43, 17th; the WHIP is 1.534, also 17th, and the OBA (opponents batting average) is .269, the worst in the entire IL. 

So this team has a long way to go. We can only speculate about the causes. Certainly, the pitching could be much, much better. They have 18 pitchers on the roster, most of them quite young. Plus there has been a lot of roster turmoil in the first two weeks of the season, something like 30+ transactions, many involving pitchers.

Nevertheless, in two short weeks the Bulls have dug themselves a hole that will take some time to get out of. They are off to Norfolk for a six-game stand with the Baltimore franchise, the Norfolk Tides, then come back to town for six games against the Memphis Redbirds. We'll see.