Weekly Top Five: April 20-April 26

New York's Jorge Mora hits five home runs over four games. Nottinghamshire's Gerald Webb tosses a four-hit shutout against New York. Washington comes back against So Cal, and South Carolina comes back against Eureka.

These are just a few of the stories that did not make the Weekly Top Five.

#5: 11th-Inning Fireworks

It's not often that you see a six-run 11th inning, but this week saw two of them.

Juan Ramírez

April 24: Las Vegas 9, Jersey 5. In the Clash of the Clowns, the Jokers and Jesters remain tied, 3-3, after 10 innings. Joker bats explode in the 11th. A triple, two doubles, and two intentional walks score two runs and load the bases for Juan Ramírez. On a full count, Ramírez launches a home run to deep right-center—a grand slam that puts Vegas ahead, 9-3. Jersey rallies in the bottom of the 11th, but they fall short.

Unconfirmed rumors have it that after the game, several Jester players ran into the Joker locker room and started a pie fight.

April 26:  So Cal 8, San Diego 2. In a battle of Southern California teams, the Hops come back in the eighth inning, scoring a pair of runs to tie the game. Miguel Angel Ortíz, who has come out of the gate swinging, singles in one of the runs: he has a .456 average to go with seven home runs so far this season.

Steve Lewis

The Republic offense bats around in the 11th. A leadoff triple (Vegas led off their inning with a triple, too), a walk, and a double score one run. A walk, strike out, and a single score two more. A fly out, and then light-hitting second baseman Steve Lewis caps the inning with a three-run home run.

So Cal win the series from their rivals, and they stay a half game out of first place in the Bobby Cox.

#4: Nine Scoreless Innings

Reijiro
Yamaguchi

April 26: South Carolina 0, Mile High 1. The Bombers traded a lot last season to acquire top pitching prospect Reijiro Yamaguchi. He's flashing his talent this season. In his first two starts of the year, he allowed only one unearned run. Today, he pitches 6 1/3 scoreless innings. (One concern for Bomber fans is that Yamaguchi seems to tire quickly: he's been pitching well, but he has trouble working deep into the game. On top of this, he tends to be wild and to rack up a pitch count.) Today he strikes out four, walks three, and allows two hits—but it's not enough for the win.

Scott Wilson

Meanwhile, Mile High's Scott Wilson, at age 23, is even younger. Wilson had a decent season for a rookie in last year: his 4.47 ERA was league-average, and he went 8-12. This afternoon, he works out of some early-inning jams and settles down to pitch 7 1/3 shutout innings. He strikes out four, walks one, and allows six hits. Wilson has been pitching well this season—he's only allowed six earned runs in his four starts, good for a 2.35 ERA—but he's yet to earn a win.

Both teams have top talent in the bullpen. South Carolina traded for Jim Dorsey in the offseason, and he now sets up veteran closer Charlie Arnold: these two shut down the Mustangs for a couple innings. Mile High's Barry Johnson (an All-Star last season) gets himself into trouble—South Carolina loads the bases in the top of the ninth—but he gets Walt Dobson to ground out. David Reynolds (best known for his ABL-record 70-game save streak) shuts down the Bombers in his inning of work.

All of which is to say, after nine innings, the game remains a scoreless tie.

In the bottom of the 10th, Mile High faces a former teammate, the young flamethrower Cal Henry. He gets Mashashi Kogawa to ground weakly to second, but Gerald Pugh throws the ball away. The game's only error puts Kogawa at second. He moves to third on a sac fly, at which point South Carolina manager Gary Altman calls for two intentional walks. The strategy pays off at first—a ground ball to second forces out Kogawa at the plate—but it leaves it up to Jeff Wade to win the game.

Jeff Wade

Listed at 5'7", Wade might be even smaller, and his strike zone is probably the smallest in baseball. With two outs and the bases loaded, Wade crouches a little more than usual and draws a game-winning walk.

The winning run is both unearned and scored without the benefit of a hit—in fact, South Carolina outhits Mile High, 8-2.

#3: Everyone Love Raymond

Raymond Moor

April 20: Cabo San Lucas 13, Georgia 0. Edward Griffith (2-1) and Chip Wolfe combine to shutout the Grays on only five hits. Hideyori Kiyomizu hits his league-leading ninth home run of the season. (Odd game fact: Kiyomizu also draws four walks.) Dan Smith goes 3-for-6 with a home run. But the story of the day is Raymond Moor.

Moor, last year's Rookie of the Year, hits a sac fly, homers, walks, doubles with the bases loaded (driving in two runs), walks, and hits a two-run home run. That's 3-for-3 with a double, two home runs, two walks, a sac fly, three runs scored, and six runs batted in.

#2: Everett Hits for the Cycle

Stephen
Everett

April 21: Kansas City 9, Jersey 3. The Tornadoes got Stephen Everett for his glove—he's a human vacuum at short—but he's quietly developed into a solid hitter. Last season, he batted .286, hit 17 home runs, and posted an .820 OPS. A great line for a slick-fielding shortstop. But Everett began this season in a deep slump, and he comes into tonight with a batting average hovering about the Mendoza line. His struggling bat has relegated him to hitting from the nine-hole.

Kansas City sends 11 men to the plate in the first inning. Wilson Thompson hits the first pitch of the game 419 feet in the left-center field stands. William Simpson hits a grand slam.* Kansas City scores six runs before Everett even gets his first at-bat, but het joins in the fun by hitting a triple and scoring on a Thompson single.

*Thompson and Simpson are interesting stories in their own right. Both are 25-year-old California natives who, for the past three seasons, have driven up and down Interstate 49 from Triple-A Joplin to Kansas City. The pair came into today with a combined five major league home runs.

In the third, Everett hits a solo home run. In the sixth, he singles. In the eighth, he lines a ball into the gap in right-center and trots into second with an easy double. He later scores on a sac fly.

Everett becomes just the second player to hit for the cycle in only four at-bats. (New York's Bob Fry was the first.) The 4-for-4 day lifts his batting average from .196 to a respectable .260.

#1: Sterling the Improbable

How common are 20-game hit streaks? I wasn't sure, so I looked. Over the first three ABL seasons, there have been 31 hit streaks of 20 games or more. That's roughly 10 per season or better than one per month. So they're pretty common.

Looking through the list of players who've accomplished the feat, you see a lot of well-known names. Dan Smith has the record at 35 games. Frank Powers went 27 games and Danny Burris went 26. Jorge Mora is on the list twice. Craig O'Day, Juan Ramírez, Colin St. John, Chris Collins, Jim Crawford, Alfredo Yánez, Mike Bergeron, Tom Becker, Jesse Clark, Frank Powers (27 games), Jesús Cruz, Joe Herman, Matt Smith, George Sanders, Leslie Whitney—I suppose that it's no real surprise that this list would contain so many of the best hitters in baseball.

There are a few names that are less well known.

• Younger ABL fans may not recognize the name Brian Adams, but he was a rookie phenom in the first half of the inaugural season. He had the league's first 20-game hitting streak. Unfortunately, he crashed into the wall during a game in June, and suffered an injury that ended his career. His 56-game career was short but brilliant: he posted a .364 average and a .964 OPS. 
• Marlon Bentley manned third base for Nottinghamshire until William McKenzie emerged as the better bat. Bentley is now a reserve infielder with San Francisco, but back in 2012 he hit in 21 consecutive games.
• Ronnie Wells has aged considerably the past few years, but he was a good-hitting catcher in 2012, batting .291 on the season and hitting in 24 consecutive games.
• Andrew Padgett has put up respectable numbers for Eureka. Last season he batted .278 with 19 home runs, and he hit in 23 consecutive games.
• Victor Bailey's solid 2014 campaign was lost in the general disaster that was the Texas Gunners' season: he batted .338 last season and hit in 24 straight games.
• Similarly, last season shortstop Michael Lewis quietly hit .300 for last-place Washington. He had a 23-game streak.
• Dennis Crawford is not well known, but he has been a dependable outfield bat (.336 career average) for the Toreros for several years now. In late 2013, he put together back-to-back streaks. After his 20-game hit-streak was snapped one Monday, he returned to the park on Tuesday and promptly began a 22-game hit streak. (Unfortunately for him and for Cabo, Crawford suffered a concussion on opening day and will miss over half of the 2015 season.)

Now consider Terry Sterling.

Terry Sterling

Georgia's Terry Sterling is, by all accounts, a nice guy, but he's also a slow-footed catcher who entered this season with a .228 career batting average. In 2013, he slugged .288. Last season, he showed a bit of pop (12 home runs) but still only managed a .230 average and a .611 OPS. It's not like he's a developing young player: Sterling is 31 years old.

I don't want to sound too harsh on Sterling (who, like I said, is a nice guy by all accounts), but he's a veteran with a proven track record of disappointing at-bats.

Did I mention that Sterling got a hit in each of the final three games in 2014?

He also has gotten a hit in every game this season, including an RBI single in the first inning of Georgia's April 26th game against Jacksonville. That would be game number 17. Now add these 17 games to the three at the end of last season and ...

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Terry Sterling, the least likely player in ABL's history to have hit in 20 consecutive games!