Minas Morgul Advances...Finally

via The Minas Morgul Times Picayune

MINAS MORGUL - The Slayers finally got past the first round of the playoffs. After being ousted by the Kings the two seasons prior, Minas Morgul finally got to see a different playoff foe, although no less a daunting one.

Much has been made of the Dead Marshes pitching, ranking first in ERA. They have a solid offense to back it up while the Slayers are often regarded as an offense-first team, despite their quality pitching of their own. It's also been said that the Slayers are a bit "inflated" due to their division.

In the end, the Slayers won the series 4-1, relying mostly on the pitching as the stats show.

Ishanna Seladriel, making her first postseason trip, led the way for the rotation. She picked up a win and was on her way to what looked like another good outing when rain interfered. Overall, she put up 11 innings, allowing just 6 hits and striking out 14. The Slayers got a great performance from Beardcutter. After another weak season in the terms of Win/Loss percentage, but put up a nice 7 inning outing for a win.

The bullpen also played well, in general. Kashi Darkleaf completed 2 of the 3 saves she could, blowing a 6-3 lead in game 2 as her failure. Aside from that blowup, Kashi did well. Arborna picked up the clinching win and Stonejuggler picked up one as well. Steelshaper and Earora provided great support in the bullpen.

Offensively, there was little they could get going against the Uruk-Hai pitching. The lineup did produce 5 HR in the 5 games, but only managed 21 total runs, about 4 per game. Tanta Chubb looked like her usual self as she lead the team in OPS as well as RBI in the series. Imrilron was 2nd in OPS and had the most walks while Sandyman put up 4 RBI. None of the rest had more then 2 RBI.

The next opponant will be Rohan, who advanced against Grey Havens in the first round.

"Rohan will be another tough opponant. They are a well-rounded team and play well as a team. We have to play another round of great baseball if we want to advance to the Championship series. It's great we took the next step, but I hope the players aren't happy with just getting this far." K.L. commented.

Posted at January 20, 2006 06:52 AM | more from Minas Morgul