Great Lakes Loons plowing through 2nd Half of the Season

The Great Lakes Loons are off to a slow start in the 2nd half of the Midwest League season with a 9-12 record after dropping Friday night's game to the Cedar Rapids Kernals 8-3.  The Loons however did win the series by winning the first 2 games against the Kernals.   Starting pitcher Ralston Cash took the loss for the Loons and his record dropped to 1-5.

The Loons despite their losing record are drawing well at the gate again this season.   Their were 4,464 fans in attendance at the Dow Diamond and this followed over 5,000 fans on a Thursday night game.   Loons manager John Shoemaker commented after the game "that is a pretty good team that we faced."  What concerned me about that comment is that Kernels have a worse record than the Loons do in the 2012 campaign.   The Loons fell behind 8-0 before they scored the 3 runs for the final score of 8-3.

In attendance at Friday nights game was Essexville native and Fox Sports national baseball writer Jon Paul Morosi to visit Dow Diamond.  The Essexville Garber and Harvard University graduate was their to check out Dow Diamond and meet some of the staff of the Great Lakes Loons.  He did several innings of commentary on the Loons radio broadcast with Brad Golder and then meet Alex Wassel Director of Communications for the Great Lakes Loons.  Jon Paul has been covering Major League Baseball for the past two seasons on a national level and covers the MLB playoffs for Fox. 

In the battle of Los Angeles affiliates the Loons did take two out of three games.  They now need to make a push and run a series of victories to position themselves for a Midwest League playoff spot.  The top two teams in each division will qualify for the playoffs.   The Loons after last nights loss are only 3 games out of 1st place in the Eastern Division. 

The Great Lakes Loons proudly tout every day in the notes that are provided to the media the number of former Loons that have made it to the Majors.  In the short span of only 5 years the Great Lakes Loons have sent on 15 players who have made it to the show.   11 players have made it to the parent club Los Angeles Dodgers with the other four being with other MLB teams via trades.   All in all you will see some pretty good talent here at the local level knowing that some of the players today will be in the majors in a few years.