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After suffering a series sweep at Washington on June 10, the Joliet Slammers found themselves in a tough spot with a 10-16 record.
They responded to that adversity by winning 10 in a row and that’s helped them go 24-10 since then, while building a Frontier League-best 35-26 record with six weeks remaining.
They lead the East Division standings by 11/2 games over Lake Erie and Schaumburg. Washington is three games out and Traverse City is just
four games back.
It’s just as competitive in the West Division with River City leading Florence by a half game, Evansville is 11/2 back and Normal is 21/2 out, while Southern Illinois is 31/2 out.
So as manager Jeff Isom’s Slammers prepare for the final 12 series of the regular season, they realize that nothing is going to come easy with 10 of those series against teams who still are in the hunt for one of the league’s four playoff spots.
Joliet has twice as many games and series on the road during the rest of its schedule, with eight road series compared with four at home and 24 away games compared with 12 at Joliet Route 66 Stadium.
While the Slammers own a 23-13 record at home, they’re just 11-13 on the road, where they’ve won just three of eight series. So improving their performance in road games over this next stretch is critical.
Three of the next four series are on the road, including three games at Washington, which began on Tuesday. After returning home to play Schaumburg this weekend, Joliet will play at Evansville and Gateway next week.
The following week, the Slammers have series at both Schaumburg and Lake Erie and then play three straight series from Aug. 21 to 30 at Lake Erie, Windy City and Traverse City. They close regular season play with three home games against Schaumburg.
No one in the league owns a current win streak of more than two games, and no team has lost two or more in a row. In the past 10 games, Joliet is one of four teams that have gone 7-3, with three of those wins in their division.
The Slammers continue to have several players who rank among the leaders in the Frontier League statistics.
Entering Tuesday, Trenton Hill was second in average with a .346 mark, just behind Schaumburg’s Zack Weigel, who is at .348. Normal’s Santiago Chirino is third in the three-way race at .344. Hill also is second in the league in on-base percentage (.450) ranking behind Weigel (.462).
Justin Garcia ranks second in RBIs with 48, just one behind Washington’s James Harris, and he is third in home runs with 14 trailing Normal’s Chris Iriart, who leads the way with 16 home runs, and Southern Illinois’ Chance Shepard, who has 15 homers.
Liam O’Sullivan is tied with eight others who have won six games this season, which is good for third place in the league. One of those is Lake Erie’s Sean Renzi, who is a Plainfield North graduate. River City’s Hector Hernandez leads the way with eight wins, and Washington’s Thomas Dorminy is next-best with seven victories.
O’Sullivan also ranks sixth with a 3.15 ERA. He had won six-straight decisions before losing on Sunday. He’s averaging over eight innings in his last seven starts and has a 1.43 ERA in that span. Dorminy (2.23) and Hernandez (2.25) lead the league in ERA.
While the Slammers are seventh in hitting (.250) and just ninth in hits (490), they rank third in runs scored (303) and fourth in RBIs (265).
Joliet is tied for the league lead in fielding percentage at .980 along with Schaumburg and Windy City. Their
43 errors allowed is third-best overall.
The Slammers have improved their ERA to 3.89, which is fourth-best in the league. Teams are only batting .243 against them, which is fourth-best in that category. And their walks plus hits per innings pitched is 1.29, which is second behind only Florence (1.25).