Its our first day game and a chance to win the first series of the season after a 6-1 loss last night. Let’s see how the Chiefs bounce back. We head home after today’s game since Sunday is an off day for Easter. It’s about a 2.5 hour ride and Jimmy John’s has already been ordered for the post-game/pre-ride meal. Hopefully a good movie too.

As for today’s game, Taylor Davis gets his first start behind the plate as Rafael Lopez & Taiwan Easterling get the afternoon off. Here is Casey’s Lineup:

Zeke DeVoss 2B
Wes Darvill DH
Marco Hernandez SS
Paul Hoilman 1B
Reggie Golden RF
Eduardo Gonzalez LF
Brad Zapenas 3B
Taylor Davis C
Pin-Chieh Chen CF
Jose Rosario RHP

DeVoss has hit safely in both games so far and we are still waiting for that first home run. Here are April7GameNotesand the pre-game show starts at 1:40 at peoriachiefs.com/listenlive

Thanks to all who tuned in last night for the opener. Tonight the Chiefs try to start a season 2-0 for the first time since 2007 when Ryne Sandberg’s first squad won in Wisconsin and after two snow outs won the next two games against Burlington for a 3-0 start. The 2003 squad started with a perfect 7-0 homestand to give this and all future Chiefs teams something to shoot for.

Only one change in the lineup today as Eduardo Gonzalez replaces Brad Zapenas as the DH. Hope the guys all brought long sleeves, hats and hand warmers cause we are going to be treated to a Wisconsin Winter evening with a first pitch temperature expected to be in the mid 30s. Last night it was 48 at first pitch.

Zeke Devoss 2b
Marco Hernandez SS
Rafael Lopez C
Paul Hoilman 1B
Reggie Golden RF
Taiwan Easterling LF
Wes Darvill 3B
Eduardo Gonzalez DH
Pin-Chieh Chen CF
PJ Francescon RHP

And as usual here are the April6GameNotes, enjoy.

Broadcast starts at 6:10 central time, gametime is 6:30 on PeoriaChiefs.com/listenlive

Well day one has certainly been interesting! Our outstanding bus company tried to give us one of their newest buses. However the 3 trunks we have full of training equipment, first aid, extra jerseys, etc. wouldn’t fit in the compartments under the bus. So we had to unload everything else and wait for a new bus. But since Peoria Charter is awesome they got us a 2nd bus within 15 minutes and we re-packed and got on the road.

Then when we got to the hotel, only 5 of the 20 rooms were ready. Oops. Most the guys used the time to go get lunch while I walked around Wal Mart.

Now we are at the ballpark and once I get a phone line to work, I’ll be perfectly set. Until then, here is our Opening night lineup for Casey Kopitzke’s 3rd season opener as Chiefs manager

Zeke Devoss 2b
Marco Hernandez SS
Rafael Lopez C
Paul Hoilman 1B
Reggie Golden RF
Taiwan Easterling LF
Wes Darvill 3B
Brad Zapenas DH
Pin-Chieh Chen CF
Michael Jensen RHP

And as usual here are the April5GameNotes, enjoy.

Broadcast starts at 6:10 central time, gametime is 6:30 on PeoriaChiefs.com/listenlive

July23GameNotes

It rained in the early morning hours and they cancelled BP and field work cause the tarp was on the field. Instead of coming over at 10:30 we pushed the bus back to 11:30 and got here as they were taking the tarp off the field and starting to get to work on a few problem areas, mostly in foul territory. Looks like we should be clear for today’s game but there is a 40% chance of rain later in the afternoon.

This team is extremely loose for having lost 2 games in a row on the road trip and even though we are 2-9 on the road since sweeping Clinton April 25-27, I really like the makeup of this team mentally. They don’t get down on themselves and you can sense the confidence, even on the bus.

As we start play on this final Sunday in May which is game #50, the Chiefs are in the wild card spot and here is what the standings look like:

Burlington       36-14  .720   —
Peoria             27-22 .551  8.5
Wisconsin       26-23  .531  9.5
Cedar Rapids 25-24 .510 10.5
Quad Cities     25-24 .510 10.5

Beloit and Kane County are both 13.5 back and Clinton cannot catch Burlington as they are 22 back with 20 to play. The top 2 teams in the first half, which ends June 19, make the playoffs and get home field for the 1st round. These next two games are huge for tiebreaking purposes as the Chiefs are 2-4 against Cedar Rapids this season and need to win both so the Kernels don’t take the tiebreaker over us. We are 3-2 against Wisconsin with 4 left to play, all at home and 3-3 against Quad Cities with three left to play, all on the road.Today Burlington hosts Quad Cities and Wisconsin is at Kane County

Also as we start play today, Greg Rohan leads the MWL in batting average at .354 while teammate Matt Szczur is 3rd at .344. Rohan is also 5th in RBI with 33, 4th in hits with 51 and Szczur is 5th in on-base percentage at .410. Pitching wise Eric Jokisch is 2nd in wins with 6, 1st in win percentage at 1.000 and Austin Kirk is 9th in ERA at 2.06, 3rd in WHIP at 0.84 and 3rd in opponents batting average at .180. The Chiefs are 1st in the MWL in team batting at .265 and 2nd in team ERA at 3.19

Rotation for this series:
Sunday 2:05: LH Graham Hicks vs. CR LH Max Russell
Monday 2:05: LH Cam Greathouse vs. CR RH Heath Nichols

Su-Min Jung will piggyback Hicks on Sunday.

May 29 Lineup
Szczur 8
LePage 4
Rohan 5
Cuneo 3
Gibbs 2
Soto 6
Giansanti 9
Fitzgerald DH
Na 7
Hicks LHP followed bu Jung RHP

Here are today’s game notes: May29GameNotes

And as always listen live at 1:50 pm. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook

Tough 2-0 loss last night for the Chiefs to start this roadtrip. Found out yesterday that we didn’t get to be on the field pregame today for batting practice or infield because of something called Orchestra Iowa which was scheduled to start at 4 pm. So we came over at 4 pm only to find out that when they put the huge orchestra trailer on the infield that the infield was still wet so now they will need a lot more post-concert work to get the field ready and we aren’t expecting to start the game until 7:20 pm at the earliest and maybe not til 7:30. Wish we had stayed at the hotel a little longer. The Breakfast Club was on Encore.

In the meantime we are listening to an orchestra with 4 lead singers performing mostly hits from Earth Wind & Fire, Chicago and ELO. Which is great if you like those 3 bands, Or Orchestra music. They are actually pretty good and there are about a thousand people here.

The Orchestra trailer at 2nd base

Dallas Beeler starts tonight for the Chiefs against Brian Diemer.

Rotation for this series:
Sunday 2:05: LH Graham Hicks vs. CR LH Max Russell
Monday 2:05: LH Cam Greathouse vs. CR RH Heath Nichols

Su-Min Jung will piggyback Hicks on Sunday.

May 28 Lineup
Szczur 8
Soto 4
Rohan 5
Jones DH
Cuneo 3
Giansanti 9
Burruel 2
Fitzgerald 7
Alcantara 6
Beeler 1

Here are today’s game notes: May28GameNotes

And as always listen live at 7:05 pm. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook

Back on the road and back on the blog, my apologies for neglecting the blogosphere the last week but the Chiefs were 7-3 on the last homestand after a couple of wins yesterday the included a handful of firsts: First career win for Hayden Simpson, first career save for Eric Jokish, first career save for Robinson Lopez and first doubleheader home sweep of the year.

The Tuesday rain delay also included some tarp sliding and jousting by the great upstairs interns (make sure you check out the other videos on the youtube page too cause Kristin, Cory and Curtis do a hell of  a job getting those put together.

The 7-1 stretch to close the homestand has the Chiefs in the wild card spot and one game up on Wisconsin. This 10 game roadtrip takes us over 1100 miles to Cedar Rapids,  Lansing and Great Lakes. The next home game, after an off day, is on Tuesday June 7.

• In case you didn’t notice, Quad Cities hosted Kane County at St. Louis’s Busch Stadium last night with $10 GA tickets and half price concessions. KC won in front of 1,676 fans. Here’s what part of the seats looked like from the QC game story.
• As a point of reference, we drew 32,103 fans at Wrigley Field in July 2008 and 8,994 last July. We also played in front of 17,880 in April 2009 against Wisconsin at Miller Park in Milwaukee
• Don’t forget to get your tickets for our Miller Park game this year on June 29. All tickets are $10
• Former Chiefs reliever Ryan Buchter was traded to Atlanta for P Rodrigo Lopez
• Former Chiefs hurler Justin Berg was sent back from Chicago to Iowa to make room for Lopez on the Cubs 25 man roster
• The movie of choice today at 9:30 am departure was  I Am Number Four brought by our athletic trainer AJ Larson. I half watched it and half read a book. When it was over, someone from the back asked “What’s Next?” to which I quickly replied, “Don’t we have to watch Number Five next?” AJ didn’t appreciate my humor and the next movie was The Mechanic but we only got about a half hour into it before arriving at the hotel.
• Big thanks to the interns (Jeremy, Brittlynn & Kristin) who gave me some new music for the roadtrip so that i could finally enter 2011′s music scene. Some good stuff there (some bad stuff too) and I only got about halfway through the playlist!

Rotation for this series:
Tonight 6:35: LH Austin Kirk vs. CR RH Jutin LaTempa
Saturday 7:05: RH Dallas Beeler vs. CR RH Brian Diemer
Sunday 2:05: LH Graham Hicks vs. CR LH Max Russell
Monday 2:05: LH Cam Greathouse vs. CR RH Heath Nichols

Su-Min Jung will piggyback Hicks on Sunday.

May 27 Lineup
Szczur 8
LePage 4
Rohan DH
Jones 3
Gibbs 2
Soto 6
Giansanti 9
Na 7
Alcantara 5
Kirk 1

Here are today’s game notes: May27GameNotes

And as always listen live at 6:20 pm. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook

What a beautiful day for baseball as it is 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Its Cubs – Cardinals rivalry Midwest League style and both teams are starting a MLB pitcher. We knew about Randy Wells from Friday but word came in this morning that Cardinals reliever Brian Tallet would start and throw 30 pitches for the River Bandits. Pretty cool setup with MLB guys on both side of the diamond, which has never happened before on the mound in Chiefs history

May 17 Lineup
LePage 4
Soto 6
Cuneo 3
Jones DH
Gibbs 2
Borges 9
Alcantara 5
Giansanti 7
Na 8
Wells RHP followed by Kirk LHP

Ryan Cuneo and Kyung-Min Na are new as Rubi Silva went up to Daytona (he homered today) and Jeff Antigua went down. Matt Szczur is back, and took BP,  but not in the lineup as DJ Fitzgerald went on the DL (hamstring). Greg Rohan was originally in the lineup but he was hit and injured in batting practice causing a shuffle to the lineup

Today’s Game Notes: May17GameNotes

And as always listen live at 6:15 pm. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook

Its still cold , rainy and windy as the Chiefs look for their first win of the series. We have lost five straight road games and 7 of 8 since sweeping Clinton April 25-27.

About 10 minutes ago Kane County switched starting pitchers on us…well they switched on Friday they just didn’t share that information with us until 10 minutes ago so the pitcher in the Game Notes is wrong and all my prep work on Sugar Ray Marimon is useless. We now face a RH named Yordano Ventura who I know nothing about.

Randy Wells will make a rehab start for us on Tuesday night against Quad Cities! The game starts at 6:30 and more information is Here. He will be followed after 50-55 pitches by LH Austin Kirk who was the original starter for Tuesday.

Monday May 16 is a league wide off day, our first since April 24 which was Easter.

May 15 Lineup
LePage 4
Silva 8
Rohan 5
Jones 3
Soto DH
Burruel 2
Alcantara 6
Borges 9
Giansanti 7
Simpson RHP followed by Jokisch LHP

Fitzgerald left with a tight hamstring last night in the 6th inning on Friday and is not available today except in an emergency. He is officially day-to-day.

Here are today’s game notes: May15GameNoteswhich includes our rotation for the Quad Cities series but nothing from the Bandits who have yet to let us know who will be pitching in any of the three games.

And as always listen live at 12:45 pm. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook