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FL Lake Erie Crushers

Crushers Weekly Outlook (August 13-18)

August 12, 2024 - Frontier League (FL)
Lake Erie Crushers News Release


Avon, OH - Usually when your week starts off with a tornado touching down at your place of residence, the rest of your week goes...well, not very splendidly. For the Lake Erie Crushers, the first half of that statement is resoundingly true, but the second half has a positive end to it.

On Tuesday, August 6th, the Crushers were just about ready to take four o'clock batting practice when the skies darkened and the winds suddenly picked up drastically. The Crushers players and staff fled the field for the clubhouses only to be met with the lights going out and the tornado sirens blaring.

When the team emerged from the clubhouse, they were met with a sobering sight. The center field fence was caved in. The batter's eye had a chunk taken out of it. The batting practice turtle was bent like a pretzel into the netting. The sky was still very dark, but the light towers were off. In one quick swoop, Crushers Stadium was in disarray.

No game was played on Tuesday, but the Crushers staff worked with the team and the Evansville Otters to play a game on Wednesday with no lights, no scoreboard, no speakers, and very few fans. The 7-1 final score didn't help the feelings of Tuesday go away any easier, but the Crushers turned the other cheek to Wednesday for a doubleheader.

In game one, the Crushers struck for seven runs in the first inning on their way to a 9-0 winner in a shortened seven-inning affair. Game two was much the same on the pitching side, but the Crushers couldn't find an elusive run and fell 1-0 in eight innings. Evansville had managed to plague Lake Erie since the Crushers swept them just before the All-Star Break. Regardless, the past was in the past, and the new obstacle stood in front of them: the Schaumburg Boomers - just 2.5 games behind Lake Erie for the last playoff spot in the West.

After two days and three games of maybe 100 people in the stands, power was restored to Crushers Stadium late on Thursday evening, meaning that the weekend series could commence as originally intended.

Friday's game was, in the most basic way to put it, historic. The Crushers and Boomers played through 10 scoreless innings, prompting sudden death. The Crushers elected to pitch. Sammy Tavarez came in with an auto-runner at first base, surrendered two more baserunners, but managed to find the final out of the game without the Boomers scoring. The final score...0-0. Nothing-nothing. Zilch y zilch.

That was a first. With the Frontier League's unique sudden death rules, Friday's game was the first time in professional baseball history that a team had won a game without a run crossing home plate. MLB.com even published an article highlighting the feat.

Despite not scoring, the Crushers had a win under their belt, and with a packed out Crushers Stadium, Jared Lemieux noted that it felt like a playoff atmosphere. Lake Erie built off the series opening victory and put together another winning effort on Saturday to take the series from Schaumburg.

A series win was a great development, but something about the makeup of the first two games indicated that Lake Erie was not satisfied just yet. They wanted more. They smelled opportunity, and on Sunday they pounced on it.

After falling behind 3-1 to Schaumburg, the Crushers clawed their way back to win 4-3 and sweep the Boomers in what was the biggest series of the season to date. The difference between a mere series win and a series sweep is a whole two games in the Frontier League West standings. The Crushers now sit 5.5 games ahead of the Boomers for the final playoff spot in the West - a needed cushion given the gauntlet schedule they're about to face in the next two weeks.

With Sunday's sweep and players joining the kiddos in a trick-or-treat event, all was well in the land of Avon. What started as a week shrouded in uncertainty and adversity ended in glorious victory and serenity.

But what's next for the Crushers? "Surely", you say, "they have much more work to do." You would be correct in that statement, insightful reader.

Lake Erie will hit the road on Monday morning for their final extended road trip of the season. They'll start by heading to Sauget, IL to take on the Gateway Grizzlies.

The Crushers began 2024 with a series win over Gateway, a strong showing for a young team matching up against a championship caliber team from 2023. The Grizzlies got the upper hand of Lake Erie and took 2-of-3 in Gateway several weeks later. The upcoming series will be the first time the teams have met since June 23rd with the two splitting six games, 3-3.

All-Stars Anthony Escobar and Jack Eisenbarger are penciled in to start two games against the Grizzlies, and the two have combined for 11 2/3 innings pitched while only giving up three runs.

Offensively, keep an eye on Jack Harris, who is hitting .450 in six games against the Grizzlies. Vincent Byrd Jr., fresh off the injured list, has also hit well against Gateway. He sports a .385 average in 26 at-bats with two home runs and 10 RBI.

Gateway leads Lake Erie by just 2 games in the West standings, so a series win or better could give the Crushers a huge edge going into the back half of August. It's a big series, no doubt, and Gateway will return to Avon in the final week of the season for the final of four series matchups.

Then, on Friday, August 16th, the Crushers make for the Pittsburgh area to take on the Washington Wild Things in a weekend series. The rivals have also split six games 3-3 with the home team winning their respective series. Four of the six matchups have been determined by two runs or less, so look for this to be a tight battle against the West Division leaders.

The Wild Things are no strangers to good pitching, as they've been jostling back and forth with the Crushers all season long for the Frontier League lead in ERA and WHIP. Both pitching staffs are in the elite echelon in the league, and it's no surprise that neither side has scored off of the other in the 8th inning and on this season. The Crushers bullpen, literally, has not given up a run to the Wild Things all year. That, in itself, is ridiculous.

After a rough patch against some lethal offenses like Florence, the Crushers bullpen has returned to form in the last week. They look like the squad that sent two relievers to the All-Star Game and has six or seven more that would be lockdown closers on any other team. The starting pitching has wavered slightly against Washington hitting, but the bullpen has swept up the excess and put games to rest with consistency.

Expect this series to be low scoring. In six games, the Crushers barely own the overall run differential at 18-15. If trends continue, these will be tight pitchers duels just like we've seen already in 2024 between these two talented pitching teams. However, it's baseball, so nobody actually knows what the heck is going on half the time (see 0-0 win for example).

The upcoming week is the most important week of the season for the Crushers (until the next week and I'll probably be saying the exact same thing). Skipper Lemieux is well aware of the implications these next several games hold, but he's content to pump the breaks and look at what's on the docket for the day. "When we start looking too far down the road and losing sight of what's right in front of us, that's when we get in trouble," he said after Sunday's sweep-clinching win. "This bunch has some great chemistry, and we're going to ride that into these next couple weeks and see what damage we can do."

With Lake Erie nine games back of first place in the Frontier League West, it's unlikely that they'll be in the race to evade a one-game wild card if they do make the playoffs. But, at the same time, the Crushers were at the bottom of the barrel in 2023 and managed to climb to the tops of the Rocky Mountain foothills by mid-August in 2024. Weirder things have happened (see 0-0 win for example).

Maybe a ravenous tornado is just what this team needed.

Quoting renowned magician and 21-time Emmy award winner, David Copperfield, "There is a safe spot within every tornado. My job is to find it."

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