Sports stats



FL Lake Erie Crushers

Crushers Weekly Outlook (August 20-25)

August 19, 2024 - Frontier League (FL)
Lake Erie Crushers News Release


Avon, OH - The Crushers are coming back home for a nine-game homestand, their final home stretch to end the season. Their last road trip that featured matchups with the top two teams in the West Division didn't go swimmingly, but let's take a deeper look to see what we can make out of their 2-4 stint.

Up front, the Crushers only scored 11 runs in the six games they played during the week of August 13th. All things considered, to win two games while only managing crooked numbers (scoring more than one run in an inning) in three innings is highway robbery. The Crushers, on several occasions, have been on the receiving end of some of these games, a few happening in recent weeks. What this road trip shows is that absolutely nothing is free in these final two weeks, and the Crushers will have to trudge through every inning, out, and pitch to make their way to the playoffs.

As of Monday, August 19th, the Crushers are in a playoff spot with a 3.5 game cushion over the Schaumburg Boomers. Guess what. The Boomers come to town on Tuesday for the final matchup between the two teams this season. With Lake Erie owning the season series 6-3, one or more wins in the series would give a little bit of confidence. However, there's a wide margin between winning one and winning two games in this upcoming series.

The difference between winning and losing the series against the Boomers (assuming neither side sweeps) is, effectively, two games of position in the standings. Should the Boomers win 2-of-3, they'd be just 2.5 games behind Lake Erie with nine games to go. If Lake Erie flips the script, they would edge away and be 4.5 games up on Schaumburg with nine games to go. You see how pivotal this series is, even in just a single game?

I said in the last weekly outlook that the Grizzlies series was the most important series of the season. Well, now the Schaumburg series is (I warned you). The nice things is that the Crushers are coming off a salvage win against Washington (whom I'll get to in a minute), and they swept Schaumburg at the end of the last homestand.

Burle Dixon had a nice road trip, and he's been hitting Schaumburg hard all season long to the tune of a .478 batting average. Anthony Escobar and Jack Eisenbarger have also pitched extremely well against the Boomers, as the Crushers have won all three of their starts. Overall, Lake Erie has outplayed Schaumburg in the season series, but again, nothing will come easy, especially with the Boomers smelling their shot at getting back in the playoff race.

After the Boomers series, the Crushers will match up once again with the Washington Wild Things over the weekend. Right now the Wild Things own the season series with a 5-4 record over the Crushers, but that doesn't mean a whole lot now with Washington being 11 games up in the West Division (anybody in for a little 2012 Oakland A's magic?).

The previous series with Washington went pretty much like I predicted: low-scoring, close games. Only the series opener wasn't particularly close, and the Crushers had a chance to take the lead in the 9th on Saturday but just couldn't find the big hit.

Washington now controls the run differential 27-25, and this is what brings me to the biggest key for this week: big numbers. The Crushers only scored in 8 innings this last week. For reference, the Kansas City Royals managed to score in five innings in one game on Saturday. This isn't a knock on the offense, in fact it's the furthest things from it. The two pitching staffs they faced this week have their respective teams in the one and two spots in the division for a reason. As the Crushers come home, they need to find runs in chunks, and the way you do that is by having traffic on the bases and causing chaos.

This past week the Crushers struck out 48 times and walked just 18 times. Of the Crushers' 11 runs, six of them were driven in on home runs. That's over 50% of your run total accounted for with the long ball. You might look at that number and say, "Wow! That's good! Home runs are good," to which I would say, "You're right, but when you live and die by the long ball, you're more often to die."

Let me make an MLB example of this principle to demonstrate this to you. Currently, the Arizona Diamondbacks lead the MLB in runs with 656 (over 20 more than the #2 team). They're currently 10th in the MLB in home runs (150). Now, this number doesn't account for how many people are on base when home runs are hit, but that's not exactly the point. Now let's look at the New York Mets, who are 5th in the MLB in home runs with 156. Notice how the Mets have hit just six more home runs than the Diamondbacks, but here's the number that proves my point: the Mets have scored just 593 runs, right around league average and good for 11th in the MLB.

The Diamondbacks hit a home run in 3.1% of their at-bats, which is just above league average. The Mets homer in 3.3% of their at-bats, which is in the top 10 in the league. A 0.2% margin doesn't seem like much, but when you take into account the massive sample size, these numbers tell a big story. The Mets are indebted to home runs to find their offensive output, and their run total is far less despite them hitting many more homers than the rest of the league. So how can a team like the D-Backs average well over five runs per game without extensive home run hitting? Having traffic on the bases and causing chaos.

The Diamondbacks are 2nd in MLB in on-base percentage, and their game is fashioned around situational hitting, which includes making productive outs with runners on base, laying down quality bunts to either get on base or move runners over, and then, occasionally, finding the home run ball in a meaningful situation to put the nail in the coffin. The Crushers had adapted this playstyle in the first half, but they've lost their identity a bit in the second half. Matching up with good teams the rest of the way, Lake Erie will need to play sound baseball and go back to the status quo to get into the playoffs.

The Crushers have gone away from their stolen base frequencies of the beginning of the year a good bit, and when you consider a team like Lake Erie who has struggled to score runs in bulk recently, it makes sense with not wanting to make outs on the base paths. However, in the two series we saw against Gateway and Washington, both teams ran, even in close games. Now, John Tuccillo has been incredible at catching base stealers this season, so they weren't always successful, but that shouldn't deter the Crushers from running all over Schaumburg and Washington this week.

To steal bases you need base runners, and Lake Erie has, admittedly not had a whole bunch of them recently. If the Crushers can cut down on the strikeouts and force the defense to make a play, they'll increase their odds at having more traffic on against opposing pitchers. Lake Erie will see Cole Cook again when Schaumburg comes to town. He was lights out the last time he pitched in Avon. The Crushers had just a .286 on-base percentage last week. They'll need to commit mentally to getting on base and not taking the massive home run cuts we've seen recently.

Alberti Chavez has been the perfect representation of the ideal approach for Lake Erie ever since he was acquired. His .452 OBP is a combination of selective plate appearances, being content with his walks, and using the opposite field to dump in oodles of singles. As a pitcher, when you see a little rinky dink, soft serve single to the opposite field, it grinds your gears. Look for Lake Erie to adopt more of this playstyle at the plate to have the edge over Schaumburg and Washington this week.

On the pitching side, they've returned to form. Save the opener in both series, the pitching staff limited two really good offensive teams to just nine runs over four games. Both Anthony Escobar and Jack Eisenbarger are slated to pitch against Schaumburg. These two all-stars will need to carry the freight for Lake Erie as they try to churn the wheels of the offense this week.

Safe to say that these games are playoff games, so why not make it a playoff atmosphere! I know the kids are getting back into school soon, but the Crushers are aware of that. We've got 6:35pm start times so you can get your little ones in bed at a decent hour...after you bring them to Crushers Stadium of course.

We've got a lot of fun promotions that will be listed below. There's so many reasons to come watch Crushers baseball this week! Don't let summer go away so fast! Baseball is the epitome of summertime fun. You don't want the fall vibes to come just yet, because that means that winter is close behind. (Being from the south, I'm not exactly sure what "winter" means, but I'm assuming eastern Ohio residents do.)

There's nothing like heating up the end of summer with the fires of playoff baseball in the picture. With that, we'll see you at Crushers Stadium this week for some cutthroat, primetime baseball!

This week's promotions:

Tuesday, August 20 @ 6:35pm - Bark in the Park presented by Crisis Canines and K9 Resorts! Bring your pupper to the park and enjoy $1 hot dogs! The first 50 dogs in the gate will receive a free poop bag dispenser, and kids and dogs can run the bases after the game!

Wednesday, August 21 @ 6:35pm - It's Sensory Friendly Night featuring reduced stimuli, a Sensory Suite, and sensory kits available at the front gate! Kids can also run the bases after the game.

Thursday, August 22 @ 6:35pm - It's everyone's favorite Thirsty Thursday presented by Great Lake Brewing! Snag a nice, cold Great Lake Brewing product for half price all night long!

Friday, August 23 @ 7:05pm - 9 innings. 11 eras. It's Swiftie Night (AHHHHHHHHHHH) with Eras Fireworks after the game (AHHHHHHHHHHH)! Join us for Taylor Swift trivia, greatest hits, and a Taylor and Travis lookalike competition! If you win that, you'll totally be a pop-star (or legendary NFL tight end, whichever you seem to gravitate towards)!

Saturday, August 24 @ 7:05pm - Answer: Game Show Night presented by First National Bank! Join us for a night of your favorite game show contests with a bunch of amazing prizes at stake! Oh, and stick around after the game for Fan Appreciation Fireworks!

...and Sunday, August 25 @ 2:05pm - It's the Crushers Back to School Bash! Celebrate back to school with us! All educators get free admission to the game! It's a Sunday Fun Day presented by Main Event, so kids can run the bases after the game and get autographs from all their favorite Crushers! Kids, bring a pencil and a scorecard to score the game and convince your parents to let you be a sport management major in college!

We can't wait to see you at Crushers Stadium with us this week, and we hope there will be a whole lot of fearing the grape to go along with all the fun we have planned!

Check out the Lake Erie Crushers Statistics

• Discuss this story on the Frontier League message board...

Frontier League Stories from August 19, 2024


The opinions expressed in this release are those of the organization issuing it, and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.

OurSports Central