Louisville Bats Notes: May 21
May 21, 2018 - International League (IL1)
Louisville Bats News Release
TONIGHT'S OPENER: The Louisville Bats and Indianapolis Indians meet tonight in the opening game of a four-game series at Victory Field. For the Bats, they are entering the final stretch of their longest road trip of the season, a 10-gamer that started on May 15 in Durham. LOU is 1-5 so far on the road trip, with its longest homestand (10 games) of the season starting this Friday, May 25 against the Durham Bulls (5/25-5/28), Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders (5/29-5/31) and Gwinnett Stripers (6/1-6/3).
AGAINST INDIANAPOLIS: Last season, the Bats went just 8-15 against the Indians, 4-7 in their home ballpark. The defending IL West Champions outscored Louisville 117-64 in the 23 contests. In an interesting International League scheduling quirk, Louisville and Indianapolis did not have their first scheduled game against each other until June 22, playing all 23 of their matchups from that point on. Last series, Louisville's 3-1 win over Indianapolis in the opener on May 7 snapped a season-long 6-game losing streak.
SWEPT IN FIRST DOUBLEHEADER: The Bats dropped both games in their first doubleheader of 2018 yesterday, by 3-1 and 6-5 scores to the Norfolk Tides. Louisville has already lost as many DH games (2) as they did last season, finishing an impressive 10-2 in doubleheader games during the 2017 season, despite the club's 56-86 overall record. Sunday was the first time LOU was swept in a DH since September 1, 2016 at Indianapolis.
IN CONTROL: Louisville pitchers combined to walk just one batter during Sunday's doubleheader over 12.0 innings of work. Game two starter, left-hander Justin Nicolino walked the only Norfolk batter of the day, shortstop Adrian Marin . It was the second time in the Bats' last four doubleheaders that the pitching staff combined to walk just one batter, also occurring on August 15 last season against Pawtucket when Rookie Davis (CG, 0 BB), Tyler Mahle (5.0 IP, BB) and Alejandro Chacin combined to walk just one.
SCORING FIRST PARADOX: The Bats scored first in game two of Sunday's doubleheader, leading 3-0 in the middle of the fourth inning before Norfolk scored four runs in the bottom of the inning. Two of the 3 runs were produced by Dilson Herrera and Steve Selsky solo home runs. LOU fell to 7-14 this season when scoring first in a ballgame, easily the worst winning percentage in the league at .333. The Bats actually have as many come-from-behind wins (7) as they have victories when scoring first (7).
CONNECT FOUR: The Bats scored in 4 consecutive innings (3rd-6th) in game two yesterday for just the second time this season, also occurring on April 11 (2nd-5th) in an 8-2 win over Columbus. Yesterday's game at Norfolk was the first time LOU scored exactly one run in 4 consecutive innings since they scored exactly one run in the first 5 innings on June 17, 2017 at Norfolk in an 8-6, 16-inning win over the Tides.
AT THIS POINT LAST SEASON: Despite the Bats owning the worst winning percentage in the IL (.333) to this point, LOU was 12-27 at this point last season, and improved to 13-27 at the 40-game mark in 2017, snapping an 8-game losing streak.
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