Lakewood BlueClaws Win First-Half Championship

4. Lakewood

With tonight’s 8-3 victory over the Hagerstown Suns, the Lakewood BlueClaws are your SAL Northern Division First-Half Champions!

This gives them an automatic berth in the playoffs and home-field advantage for at least the first round.

Congratulations to the Lakewood BlueClaws players and staff!

15 thoughts on “Lakewood BlueClaws Win First-Half Championship”

  2. I second that Mr. Romano. The top 4 guys in the order had 12 hits between them: Susdorf had 4, D’Arnaud and Gose had 3 and Garcia had 2. It’s easy to win when the top of the order hits like that. Is it me or did D’Arnaud awaken from his slumber when Susdorf started playing?

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  3. In D’Arnaud’s last 10 games he’s hitting .333 and drawing walks. He’s also quietly amassed 8 homeruns, which is tied for 13th in the league.

    I really hope he’s putting it together for good.

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  4. D’Arnaud is young, appears to have very good power and has a decent eye. He had a difficult start to the year, but appears to be turning it around. If he finishes the year well and is promoted to Clearwater for next year, he’ll be right on track.

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  7. Amazing first half for the ‘Claws that show that pitching and defense do indeed win championships…The bats are actually beginning to come around, the team has raised its batting average from .250 to .259 over the past week.

    The second half will be interesting to see how this team holds up. There are a lot of young guys on this team who are playing 80 games in a season for the very first time and by game 140 (or 139 since they’ll only play 69 in the first half) they might begin to tire.

    As for the playoffs…Veryyy much in the future…This team may be very different by then and the last six SAL champions were winners in the second half…for obvious reasons..

    This team and coaching staff deserves a big hand on the job they have done through 65 games…Expect the hitting to get better, and we’ll see what the Phillies do in terms of who leaves from this pitching staff.

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  9. Hopefully we can get a few of these guys up in Clearwater to help things out there. The Clearwater offense is really hurting with the loss of Dominic Brown, and with Chapman and Drabek off of the pitching staff we could use some help there as well. Flande is likely moving up from Clearwater, as may Naylor if he continues to perform as he has in his last few trips to the hill.

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  10. Lakewood’s success is a great story with the young players there. I agree that the team will look different in the 2nd half though with some of the pitchers moving up like DeFratus and BJ plus possibly Susdorf who was a college guy who should be challenged more.

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  11. The young bats will likely stay, IMO, but look at the roster…any successful pitcher over 22 is fair game to go (Cloyd, BJ, Santo) and potentially De Fratus…this would shatter the BlueClaws ‘Pen

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  12. great great job.

    just out of curiousity if they win the second half does anyone know how the playoffs work???

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  13. I figured I would post this here.

    This is a question that I got answered by BA today in their chat.

    Ryan (PA): Thanks for the chat! Any thought of Trevor May for the helium watch? 8K’s through 3.2IP is pretty impressive, even though he was a little wild. Also what is the scouting report on him?

    J.J. Cooper: Thanks for the questions Ryan. As of yet, no helium for May. When you see a question say “even though he was a little wild” what that usually translates into is “he couldn’t find the strike zone with a GPS.” And that’s been the case for May up to now in his one start. Five walks, one hit batter and three wild pitches in three and two third innings means he has some command issues to work through. He has plus stuff and we’re keeping an eye on him, but Sally League batters better not dig in to much when facing him right now.

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  15. Lakewood has announced the promotion of pitchers Jon Velasquez and Santo Hernandez to Clearwater along with OF Steve Susdorf. Rumor has it that Tyler Cloyd will also join them following the SAL All-Star Game on Tuesday. No sign yet of any players being promoted to Reading, but is would make sense to move Yohan Flande now that the FSL All-Star Game is over, and perhaps Time Kennelly too, who has been playing a lot of OF in Clearwater lately.

    Clearwater and the FSL are always slow to update their transactions lists so I will try to get some news this afternoon, or at the game tonight.

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