The Eugene Emeralds stayed in the thick of the three-team division race last week, splitting a series on the road against the Hillsboro Hops.
Things appeared to be slipping downhill for the Emeralds at first. They lost five out of six to the Tri-City Dust Devils the previous week, then lost three out of the first four to the Hops. But they bounced back with a doubleheader sweep on Sunday, moving ahead of third place Everett and just a half game behind first place Spokane in the High-A West.
Offensive struggles
While they weren’t as anemic as they were during the Tri-City series, the Emeralds’ hitters still struggled. They batted just .229 as a team for the week and posted the lowest OPS in the High-A West with a .680 mark.
At the front of the struggles has been Marco Luciano, who was recently bumped up to the fifth-best prospect in all of baseball. The 19-year-old is yet to fully adjust to the High-A level. He went 3-for-18 with seven strikeouts and no extra-base hits last week and is batting .218/.270/.287 in 111 plate appearances as an Emerald.
His season OPS, which was at .930 with Low-A San Jose, has plummeted more than 100 points to .828. He’s also made six errors with Eugene; while fielding percentage is far from a perfect statistic (especially in small samples), a .908 mark is rough.
The team also continued to struggle mightily with runners in scoring position, batting just .167 in those situations. To show just how tough this road trip was, that’s actually a better number than what they posted against Tri-City.
Should be a tight three-team race in the final two weeks
The Emeralds still miraculously came away with a pair of wins on Sunday, edging out the Hops 2-1 in a suspended game and 6-1 in the nightcap.
The Everett AquaSox, who have led the High-A West for most of the year, and at one point even seemed to have run away with it, continued their struggles and fell all the way down to third place.
Meanwhile, the Spokane Indians, who had fallen below .500 and appeared to be out of the race entirely, have surged out of nowhere and actually lead the division now. Such is the unpredictable nature of baseball. While they are still on fire, their last two games got canceled due to COVID-19 contract tracing within the Dust Devils.
The Emeralds will take on the AquaSox this week at PK Park. It’ll be the first time they face off this season where neither of them lead the division. It’ll also be the last time they face off this season, and the last series at PK Park in 2021 for the Emeralds.
After five games against Everett, Eugene will travel to Pasco, Washington for a “home” series against Tri-City to finish out the season. Spokane, meanwhile, will take on the fourth place Vancouver Canadians this week and finish out their season against the AquaSox.
With just one game separating the three teams and a handful of games left to play, it’s going to come down to who can play the best baseball over this final stretch.
