Among a season for the Shorebirds that has shown lots of promise for young prospects, it has also featured a lot of losses.
This series against the Fredericksburg Nationals may have been the toughest yet.
In all six games over this past week, the Shorebirds came out on the short end. The offense struggled, as they failed to put up more than five runs in any of the games. That didn’t seem to matter much, however, as the pitching staff allowed a total of 59 runs over these six games.
However, there are still some bright spots to look at in this series. Without a doubt, the highlight of the Shorebirds’ season has been the emergence of outfielder Heston Kjerstad.
As we know, the 2020 draft pick Kjerstad has had an extremely tough road to begin his professional career. Now with a decent sample size under his belt, it seems all that adversity did not affect the left-handed power bat.
In this series alone, Kjerstad recorded nine hits in his 17 at-bats. He hit safely in all five games he played, while also adding another home run and double to his season total. The former No. 2 pick now sits at an OPS of 1.097 and .418 average after 67 at-bats.
From the mound, nearly nothing went right in this series. Maybe the only of two bright spot was 20-year-old Juan De Los Santos.
Across two appearances, De Los Santos tossed a total of 4.1 scoreless innings with seven strikeouts. This two-game scoreless stretch is the longest of his seasons so far.
The other bright spot on the mound was Deivy Cruz in his start in game three. At only 18 years old, Cruz has proven himself as a prospect to watch, as he currently sits at a 2.14 ERA with 25 strikeouts in just 21 innings.
In his start against the Nationals this past week, Cruz added five scoreless innings, where he allowed just two hits. It was his first scoreless outing this year, while also tying his season-long of five innings.
While the rest of the offense outside of Kjerstad did record a decent amount of hits, they really didn’t amount to much success in this series. Players like Frederick Bencosme, Steven Acevedo and Roberto Martinez notched a few multi-hit games that fly by the wayside due to the 0-6 record in this series.
Graduations of players like Darell Hernaiz and Isaac Bellony have certainly hit this lineup hard. However, there shouldn’t be much worry.
Come trade deadline time, it is not crazy to think that Orioles GM Mike Elias will have a good time carrying out a few trades that bring even more talent into this Shorebirds lineup. Hopefully, some of that talent is pitching.
Here are your “not so lovely” final scores from this series:
Game 1: DEL 0, FBG 8
Game 2: DEL R, FBG 15
Game 3: DEL 4, FBG 5
Game 4: DEL 2, FBG 9
Game 5: DEL 5, FBG 12
Game 6: DEL 2, FBG 10
The Shorebirds see their next action against the Salem Red Sox on the road. You can stay up to date with each game on milb.com or by checking in with The Baltimore Battery for all your Delmarva Shorebirds news and updates.
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