Looters Stumble in July

The Looters were flying high at the end of June at 54-27 (.667) and leading the wild card, but faced a tough opening to the month in July.  That stretch included series against fellow wild card contending Los Angeles Bruins, division leading Hendersonville Hitmen, and Eastern division contending Baffin Island Beavers.

In those games so far the Looters have stumbled going only 2-6 against (1 game remaining vs Baffin).  All of those games occurred in New Orleans as well which makes things especially troubling.  Overall, the Looters are 7-7 in the month thanks to a sweep of the struggling New York Knights, and taking 2 of 3 from Maui.

Thankfully for the Looters sake, the Bruins have also gone 7-8 in the month causing the Looters to actually gain half a game so far in July on the Bruins who came into the month 1.5 back of the Looters for the wild card.  The bigger story is in the West where Los Cabos who was embroiled in this three team race for the division lead and wild card has gone 10-6 in the month gaining 2 games on the Looters and 2.5 on the Bruins to a 3 game lead on the Bruins.  If they keep up their hot month, they could put enough distance to shrink this 3 team race for 2 playoff spots to a 2 team race for the wild card.

The key question though for the Looters is what has gone wrong this month?  Overall in 14 games the Looters have scored 80 runs for 5.7 runs a game.  True it's a departure of about a run from their near 6.7 runs per game this season, but 5.7 is enough to win.  Even in their series vs the Bruins, Hitmen, and Beavers, the Looters have averaged 4 runs a game.  Their downfall has truly been pitching so far this month.

Reliever Leonard Lucas who had been a solid piece of the bullpen this year has been awful this month with 6 runs allowed in 6.2 innings with a 1-1 record.  He's also got a 2.10 WHIP in those innings. Past them, the rotation as a whole has been worse than normal recently with only Armando Felix pitching hot recently only allowing 2 earned runs in 17.1 innings over two starts with a 2-0 record.  The other starts have July ERAs between 5.11 and 5.51 with Montano the outlier at 7.43 after having been pitching great the last few months.  The Looters have to hope all spark up late this month and level out somewhere in between.