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Cyclones – Staten Island beats back Brooklyn charge

Summer roundup, Day 6: Are you ready for some baseball?

For a minute last week, it looked like the Brooklyn Cyclones were ready to turn the corner on their disappointing start to the 2008 season.

In winning four of last week’s first five games, the ‘Clones came within four games of the Staten Island Yankees, who occupy first place in the New York-Penn League’s McNamara Division. The week’s last two games would come against Staten Island, giving the Cyclones a chance to cut the Yankees lead to two games.

Alas, Staten Island beat back the Brooklynites on consecutive days by a combined 19-3 margin, sending the Cyclones back to where they started the week: in last place, six games behind the Yankees as of Monday.

Despite their 4-3 record for the week, Brooklyn managed to lose ground in the Wild Card standings – from 3.5 to 5 games – due to a five-game winning streak by the Auburn Doubledays, last year’s NYP League champions.

There is also bad news on the injury front, as two of the team’s best hitters are expected to miss significant time.

Recent first-round draft pick Reese Havens, who has torn up NYP League pitching in his first year of professional baseball, is expected to miss at least a month with a leg injury.

This latest injury represents the second prolonged stretch Havens will have missed this year. He sat out the season’s first two weeks with an elbow injury.

Also, third baseman Zach Lutz, whose torrid hitting has carried the struggling Cyclones offense throughout the year, will miss a few weeks with internal bleeding in his leg.

This does not bode well for a Cyclones team for whom runs have been hard to come by: As of Monday, Brooklyn ranked dead last in the league with 135 runs scored, averaging just 3.5 runs per game.

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The up-and-down week began Monday night in Staten Island, where the ‘Clones sought to beat the Yankees for the second straight time.

With the score tied 1-1 in the eighth inning and a man on base for Brooklyn, designated hitter Jordan Abruzzo cranked a line-drive that managed to inch over the right field wall for a two-run homer.

Brooklyn added another run in the inning, giving them a 4-1 lead nailed down by closer Stephen Clyne.

The next night’s opponents were the Vermont Lake Monsters, a Washington Nationals-affiliated chain who made the trip from Burlington to Brooklyn for a three-game series.

In the series’ first game, Jeffrey Kaplan, who had been one of Brooklyn’s best pitchers at the beginning of the year, turned in his second poor outing in a row.

Kaplan was touched up for three runs in just two innings of work, after which Vermont added three more runs off reliever Tim Stronach.

As has been the case so often this season, Brooklyn’s offense had no answer, notching just 1 run in a 6-1 loss.

Brooklyn’s offense didn’t fare much better the next night, scoring only 2 runs. But starting Scott Shaw made those runs stand up, bouncing back from a bad previous start to pitch his team to a 2-0 win.

Brooklyn’s bats finally woke up the next night, as the ‘Clones pounded out 4 first inning runs before adding pairs in both the third and fourth on the way to an 8-1 win that closed out the series in Vermont.

But the player who turned the most heads was starting pitcher Brad Holt, the 33rd overall pick in this past June’s draft who has dominated NYP league hitters this year.

Holt notched his third win of the season, lowering his ERA to 1.57 (3rd in the league) while striking out 14, upping his league-leading total to 51.

The ‘Clones kept hitting the next night in a win over Staten Island, pounding out 12 hits and scoring 6 runs in a 6-5 win that placed them within four games of the Yankees.

But that is where the week’s good news came to an end. Over the next two games, the Cyclones found themselves on the wrong end of a 4-1 loss and then a 17-2 smackdown, a sour way to end an otherwise good week.