Photo by Matt Filar/Humboldt Crabs Baseball – Myles Standish
Go Kings!
That will be the mantra of the Humboldt Crabs this weekend as they look to secure a spot in next week’s Pacific Empire League championship series.
Going into the final weekend of PEL action, the Crabs need help to finish second and qualify for next week’s big series.
Three loses to the league-leading Healdsburg Prune Packers last weekend, coupled with the Lincoln Potters’ two wins over the same team this week, has seen the Crabs’ chances of qualification diminish substantially.
They can still advance to the second-annual PEL deciding series, but they’ll need help.
The Crabs must rake care of business in their three-game series against the Medford Rogues at the Arcata Ball Park and hope the West Coast Kings can knock off the Potters.
Going into the weekend action, the Potters are 17-8 in league play (.680 winning percentage) with two games remaining, while the Crabs are 14-8 (0.636) with three games remaining.
Seeing as the Potters will have played two more league games than the Crabs, the coveted spot in the PEL championship series will be decided on winning percentage.
Essentially the Crabs need the Potters to drop one of their two games and to sweep the Rogues, or for the Potters to drop both of their games and to take two of three games against the Rogues.
The Kings are 7-16 in the PEL and the Rogues are 7-15.
The league schedule has not been fair to the Crabs.
Not only do the PEL teams play a different number of league games, but the Crabs have had to play the frontrunners six times each — three home and three away against the Packers and Potters — while those two clubs have had to play each only five times.
Still, the Crabs had their chances and were in the driver’s seat to qualify for the PEL championship series going into the second-to-last weekend.
However, they lost all three games against the Packers last week to see their hopes dashed, while the Potters have been taking care of business since dropping four of six games to the Crabs earlier in the campaign, including a pair of big wins over the Packers this week.
Lincoln won 4-0 on Wednesday and 5-2 on Thursday.
Friday night’s series opener between the Crabs and Rogues takes place at 7 p.m.
The Potters and Kings will play their two games on Lincoln on Saturday and Sunday nights.
Categories: baseball, Humboldt Crabs
I will probably not have a popular opinion on the matter, but I am going to cut to the chase on this matter.
Whose idea was it for the Humboldt Crabs to have a league schedule with only 25 league games? That is one of the wackiest things I have seen in my life. I could use other words for that type of schedule, but some people might have too thin skin to handle my thoughts on the matter.
If you are in a league with five other teams, it should be simple math on how many league games each team plays. Two series of three games for each opponent in the league would come to 30 games. To have a true league structure, 15 games would be at home, 15 games would be on the road. That is the solution to that issue going forward.
I have a feeling Crabs fans would complain about losing six games on the road with the plan outlined above. Don’t make this new league similar to the psuedo league that the Crabs played in over a decade ago.
I know the Crabs talked to most teams in that defunct league from the 2010s to play their league games at the Arcata Ball Park instead of on the road for the Crabs. That is why I viewed that league as a psuedo league. More than half of the league were at home for the Crabs and less than half of the league games were on the road.
In the end, the Crabs can only blame themselves for the situation they are in right now. The plan outlined above would prevent this abnormality from ever happening again. There is no other way to sugar coat the matter here.