Karachi Hangs In During Aprilby Hasan Khan, Sports Editor (Karachi Dawn)4 May 2105April is behind us. The Karachi Falcons played decent baseball for the month and stand in second place in the Asian Division of the Intercontinental League of the WBA. That is good news for a team that was not expected to do that well. The Falcons have no perceivable chance to challenge for the division championship – it is almost a foregone conclusion that that honor will go to the Brisbane Bandits (née the Tokyo Samurai). The Bandits have reeled off nine in a row and twelve out of thirteen to lead the division by more than six games.
Karachi is in Brisbane today to begin a three game stand with the tough Bandits after which they travel to Paris for three and then Black Forest for three. That will mercifully end a twelve game road trip and the team will return home to play three at Muhammad Ali Jinnah Stadium before leaving town for another six road games.
Konosuke Sanu had a brilliant April. The 27-year old first baseman is hitting .284 and leads the IBL in home runs with 12 and is second in RBIs with 26. He won’t keep up that pace – it projects out to a 65 home-run 140 RBI season. – but it is nice as long as it lasts. Meanwhile, outfielder
Luis Rivera leads the IBL in runs batted in with 28.
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The Falcons lead the league in home runs (48) and runs (150). Alas, pitching also comes into play in deciding games, and the picture is not so pretty there. The team ranks seventh or eighth out of ten in most pitching categories. There have been a couple of real pitching standouts for the team: Starter
Kipchoge Kemboi has a 4-2 record and a 0.93 WHIP. And closer
Myeong-hwan Lee is a perfect ten for ten is save attempts
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21-year-old outfielder
Erwin Beza has started out the season on fire at Faisalabad (AAA). Chances are we will be seeing him in the line-up in Karachi soon.
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