Durham Bulls, Carolina Mudcats baseball teams contending as weather, competition heat up
The Durham Bulls were the best team in Minor League Baseball in 2021 — and players from that team have the bling to prove it — so it’d be easy to look at the team’s record at the moment and think, “Oof, what happened?”
But the Bulls — the primary affiliate of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays — are right in the thick of things in the International League East Division. After a slow start that saw the Bulls near the bottom of the standings for a while, as rosters have settled and players have adjusted to their roles at the Triple-A level, the team has slowly climbed from near the cellar to closer to the top.
Through Thursday’s games, the Bulls sat in fourth position in the 10-team division at 27-24, 5 1/2 games behind first-place Rochester, the Washington Nationals’ affiliate.
Buffalo is in second, 1 1/2 back of Rochester, and then Lehigh Valley, Durham and Jacksonville are bunched together within a half-game of one another for 3-4-5.
The past week started with a bang for the Bulls, who last Sunday closed out their best series of the season to date with a 4-2 win over the in-state rival Charlotte Knights.
In that final game, Tristan Gray belted an RBI double in the third inning to give the Bulls a 2-1 lead, which they later expanded to 4-1 that inning after a passed ball and wild pitch allowed Gray and Rene Pinto to scamper home. That four-run third inning was enough offense for the Bulls’ Josh Fleming, who went six innings, allowing just the two runs on 10 hits with four strikeouts. To that point, Fleming extended his season record to 4-0.
With no rest day in between, the Bulls launched into a series Monday with the Nashville Sounds.
Despite a solid outing from ace pitcher Shane Baz, Durham dropped the series opener against Nashville, 7-5, but rebounded with an offensive explosion Wednesday and Thursday, posting 26 total runs over two games in wins of 17-4 and 9-7 over the Sounds.
Among the 17-run outburst Wednesday were a grand slam from first-baseman Luke Raley, a three-run home run from Gray and a solo homer from Jordan Qsar, his first Triple-A home run.
In the 9-7 win Thursday, Qsar went yard again, and this time it was Xavier Edwards getting his first Triple-A home run as the Bulls belted a season-high six home runs in the game to pull away for the victory.
With the outburst of home runs this week, the Bulls slugged their way into second place in the International League in OPS, second in total team home runs, second in team slugging and seventh in team batting average.
Individually, Qsar has been the hottest player on the Bulls’ roster, hitting .467 through four games this past week (7 hits, 3 HR, 2 2B, 5 RBI). Raley, Josh Lowe and Edwards were also at or above .400, and six players had an OPS above 1.0.
Following the series finale Sunday afternoon at 5 p.m., the Bulls are back on the road for a week in Memphis before returning home to host the Louisville Bats from June 14-19.
Mudcats vying for first
Meanwhile, the Carolina Mudcats, the Single-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers based in Zebulon, have been at or near the top of the Carolina League’s North Division standings this season, battling with Lynchburg, Fredericksburg, Salem and Down East in a tight race.
Myrtle Beach and Charleston have separated themselves from the pack in the South division.
Helping the Mudcats along on the offensive side of things has been Hedbert Perez, who was recently named the Carolina League Player of the Week for the period ending May 29.
Perez, 19, a top-10 prospect in the Brewers organization, led the league in batting (.474), slugging (.947), OPS (1.447), total bases (18) and doubles (4) over six games, five of which were wins for the Mudcats.
Those five wins in six games vaulted Carolina briefly into the league lead, but a pair of early week losses at Lynchburg dropped the Mudcats temporarily out of the top spot. Weather forced Thursday night’s game to be postponed. It was scheduled to be completed as part of a doubleheader Friday night.
The Mudcats close out their Lynchburg trip Sunday night at 5 p.m., and return home to Zebulon on Tuesday for a six-game set against South Division-leading Myrtle Beach, the Chicago Cubs’ affiliate.
