ROBERTO CLEMENTE LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP

Preview

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Two surprising teams will compete for the first RCL trophy.  Wild Card entry Montreal stunned the Seattle squad in 6 matches while in a battle of division winners the Dallas Texans beat Minnesota, the #1 ABL team in the power rankings, in 7 matches.  Is there a key to how this test match will be resolved? 

If you believe the old adage that pitching wins titles then Dallas, as the league's best pitching side would appear to hold an edge.  Still it it hard to envision how anyone can stop a team that hit .308 for the season.  Still harder when you consider that after losing 16-1 in match 1 of the Seattle series, the Sasquatch could only muster 20 runs in the remaining 5 matches and one of those was a 12-9 loss.  So it is clear that the Bandits have the pitching to throttle any attack.

The Dallas offense is clearly not in the same class of Seattle's, but none the less they have proved to have the mettle to deal with tough series.  In fact the Tommy Lasorda division could have been a good belt tightener for the Texans.  Ann Arbor, Dallas and New York are all top ten teams in the ABL power rankings.  There would be no wild card from the division, so it was clearly a winner take all.  Every series was key to winning the title (even SoCal and Nottinghamshire beat the Texans 7 times combined).  So this if nothing else this is a team of spirit.

But I'll give you more than spirit.  Here are three stats that indicate that the Texans will prevail.

1) Montreal is only a 500 club against lefties.  Bussell is the top lefty in the league (in fact he is the best pitcher).  That could well indicate two Texan wins.  Rafael Lopez is the other southpaw starter.  He has faced Montreal once this season and won.  It is expected that he will start twice against the Bandits.  Unless Montreal can split these games, wining the test match will prove difficlut.

2) While Montreal's offense is very talented, it lacks the killer instinct of the big play.  While 1st in average, they are 10th in extra base hits and 6th in four balls.  When facing the league's top pitching, it will be a challenge to sustain the singles attack.  It may produce hits but runs may be a challenge.

3)  Dallas holds a 6-3 edge over Montreal for the season.  I'm not always one to put a lot of stock in this statistic because when you play a team is important and this can sometimes be misleading.  Still in this case I believe it is reflective f the first two points and thus an indicator of where this test match is going.

Bottom line is I believe it will be Dallas in 7.