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This is by Marc Katz at the Dayton Daily News

Batting slump wasting strong pitching

I know, pitching, pitching, pitching, is the name of the game.

Well, I happen to think offense has a claim to some of that name, too, and the Class A Midwest League Dayton Dragons know something about that.

"We're not scoring runs," Dragons manager Billy Gardner Jr. said Sunday night after his team lost its third straight game at South Bend, and its fourth game in five. "A handful of guys went into a slump collectively.

"You can have one or two guys go into a slump and other guys kind of pick them up, but we've had four, five guys go into a slump, which obviously hurts our run production."

Meanwhile, the pitching has been exemplary, if not exceptional. Over the previous eight games entering Monday afternoon's game at West Michigan, the Dragons have allowed as many as five runs only twice, and two or fewer runs four times.

Not everyone is slumping, of course, but the team is scoring fewer runs. Outfielder B.J. Szymanski began the current road trip hitting .252. He entered Monday's game at .251. Fellow outfielder Jay Bruce might be in the first real slump of his young career. He was at .282 at the start of the trip, and had fallen to .263 Monday. Shortstop Eric Eymann might be coming out of a miserable slump. His average dropped to .224 from .241 in eight games.

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