[ed. note - "This is the fifth piece from Federalbaseball.com intern Patrick Kenney. For much more from him on the Syracuse Chiefs follow him on Twitter @PRyKenney."]
SYRACUSE | Central New York weather is as unpredictable as it comes, but the Syracuse Chiefs have become all too familiar with it.
"I'm pretty sure it has rained every day for the past two months," said Corey Brown, the Chiefs starting centerfielder.
With seven doubleheaders over the past month due to Mother Nature's wrath, the Chiefs have found a myriad of ways to pass the downtime created by a rain delay, but the main one isn't as crazy as some may think.
"We don't really do anything special, just watch baseball and wait for the rain to stop," said Brown about delays.
July 10 night was no different. With the Chiefs and the visiting Buffalo Bisons (Toronto) tied, 3-3, in the seventh, the clouds rolled in and opened up, and stalled things for a little over an hour.
When play was finally resumed, the Chiefs stumbled to a 4-3 loss that dropped their record to 38-55.
"I feel we have some players that can be really good hitters and once we get going we can create some problems for our opposing pitchers," said Syracuse manager Tony Beasley.
Syracuse's starting lineup consists of seven players on the Nationals' 40-man roster, and it showed its potential in the first when leadoff hitter, Eury Perez, slapped a triple down the third base line. The bats seemed to disappear though as the Chiefs were held to three hits in the final six innings.
Buffalo seized control of the game in the ninth and got Brad Lincoln his first win of the season.
Syracuse second baseman Danny Espinosa continued to break out of his initial Triple-A slump. With a 2-3 effort including his first home run in Syracuse, Espinosa has hits in seven of his last eight games (13-for-31, six runs, three doubles). Espinosa is hitting .210 in Syracuse now.
"They'll get off to a slow start but once everyone figures it out we will be a tough team to beat," said Brown.
"I look forward to good things in the second half," said Beasley about his lineup going forward.
The Chiefs travel to Scranton/Wilkes-Barre for two against the RailRiders (Yankees) before finishing up the first half of the season with the LeHigh Valley IronPigs (Philadelphia) at home over the weekend leading into the All-Star Break.