All Americans 2 Steam 3

The All-Americans (4-5) fell to the Cincinnati Steam (8-2) last night in Cincinnati.

Box score

WP - Steven Davis (1-0) 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 K

LP - Mark Miller (0-1) 1 IP, 2 H, 2 R (0 ER)

The All-Americans wasted another solid outing from Burny Mitchem, who pitched 6 innings, gave up 2 hits, no runs, and struck out 10. The offense just hasn't shown up for Columbus yet. Other than the 13 runs they scored against Xenia (helped by 8 Xenia errors), Columbus hasn't scored more than 5 runs in a game. Looking at the line score for this game, it would seem like the bullpen blew it for the team, but the offense is putting enormous pressure on the pitching staff by only scoring 3.8 runs per game. The team ERA is 2.42, second in the league to Cincinnati's 2.00. So, the pitching has definitely been very good so far.

What's wrong with the offense? The first stat that jumps out at me is the very low team OBP. The All-Americans' team OBP stands at .300--last in the league. Cincinnati, the league leader at .385, has scored 23 more runs than the All-Americans in only one more game played. Hitters need to try to get deeper into counts instead of swinging at the first and second pitches of every at bat. The All-Americans are last in walks with 25. Delaware leads the league with 46.

Columbus travels to Newark to play Licking County (4-5) tonight at 7 PM.