Fired-up HarbourCats slay the giant

Bryce Greager finally saw some playing time today

Perhaps it was Saturday night’s three bench-clearing incidents or perhaps it was the rare show of emotion from head coach Bob Miller, but for some reason the HarbourCats were fired up on Sunday afternoon, pummeling the mighty Corvallis Knights in a convincing 19-10 victory (did the Victoria placekicker miss two extra points?). The win not only salvaged the final game of the three-game set for the HarbourCats, but it was also the first-ever franchise win over Corvallis in six tries.

Based on the excessively loud bench jockeying in the top of the first inning, the Knights initially looked like the fired-up team on this day. Andrew Nelson came out of the gate firing, however, and his strikeout of Marc Gallegos in the second at-bat of the game immediately silenced the Corvallis bench. Nelson would go on to retire the Knights 1-2-3 in the first two innings, transforming the Corvallis bench jockeys into men as meek as Ned Flanders for the rest of the day.

There was a lot of good news on this day from the potent Victoria offense. The under-utilized Bryce Greager may have finally forced his way out of Bob Miller’s (questionably-populated) doghouse by driving in five runs just a few hours after hitting a pinch-hit solo homer on Saturday night. Greager went four-for-six on Sunday and he’s now hitting .268 with two homers and 17 RBI on the season.  Although that batting average may not sound impressive, he does have a .377 OBP and an .800 OPS (6th-best on the team). He also has a solid .972 fielding percentage, 3rd-best among HarbourCats infielders, behind only Sean Watkins and Gabe Clark.

Collier's summer has been a head-scratcher 

The other positive development over the last couple of games has been the resurgence of Danny Collier, who had his second consecutive multi-hit game to finally raise his batting average over the Mendoza Line. Collier walked twice in the game and reached base in four of his six plate appearances, but I was most impressed with his double in the 4th inning off of Sean Eberhardt. Collier has been pretty passive at the plate all summer, but instead of relying on his normal slap swing that merely puts the ball in play, Collier actually turned on a pitch and pulled it down the right-field line. Let’s hope that the Freshman All-American from the University of New Mexico has some success the rest of the way to make the best out of a what has been a disappointing season so far.

Hunter Mercado-Hood also had a big day for the HarbourCats, reaching base in five of his six plate appearances and driving in three runs. Mercado-Hood now leads the league with 39 RBI and he’s on pace to knock in 50 and break the all-time WCL record for RBI in a season (48, set by Mitchell Gunsolus of the Wenatchee AppleSox in 2012).

HarbourCatNip

• The HarbourCats matched their franchise record for runs in a game (19), originally set this year on Canada Day against the Kitsap BlueJackets. They also matched the franchise record for hits (21), set on July 2nd of this year against those same BlueJackets. Given the state of the Kitsap and Corvallis pitching staffs, today’s explosion was far more impressive than the numbers put up against the weak BlueJackets hurlers. The full box score for today's slug-fest can be found on the Pointstreak site.
• Christian Stewart of ISN has reported that "Sean Watkins, Quintin Torres-Costa, Mark Marinch and Angel Delgado are all heading home on Monday." Wow, our pitching staff just got a heckuva lot weaker. Look for some high pitch counts and more slug-fests down the stretch.
• Victoria heads to Wenatchee on Tuesday to start a three-game series against the AppleSox. The HarbourCats then return home on Friday for a weekend set against the tough Bellingham Bells.
• Given the three bench-clearing incidents on Saturday night, it’s no surprise that their was some animosity in the handshake line following Sunday’s series finale. The bloggers have exclusive video of a portion of the verbal exchange and we highly recommend that you check it out.