Over the long course of a professional baseball season, common logic and fundamental odds and statistics dictate that teams are destined to go on hot and cold streaks. It doesn’t matter if you’re the 1927 Yankees, the famously-dubbed “Murderer’s Row” — you’re going to reel off a few consecutive losses. Same applies to the 2003 Detroit Tigers or this season’s Baltimore Orioles — regardless of how inempt your roster may be, you’re going to have at least one multiple-game win streak at some point over the course of 162 games.

As a good friend of mine, a noted baseball afficionado, always tells me, the great thing about baseball is that every team is going to win one-third of your games and you’re going to lose one-third of your games. What separates the first place teams from the last place teams — the Yankees from the Orioles, the Cardinals from the Pirates — is what happens in that remaining third. Winning streaks and losing streaks are all a part of the game, but what matters is sustaining that success and avoiding that prolonged failure.

Think of the 2010 installment of the Louisville Bats as a case study of sorts, with their season, up to this point, being divided into four different parts. The first of those occurred when a young, inexperienced roster got off to a predictably slow start, with their record making them one of the worst teams in the International League. The second epoch came when the team heated up, bringing their record close to the .500 mark. The third was when the team regressed a bit, more so plateauing than regressing drastically. The fourth is what is happening right now, a stretch in which the Bats have won 17 of their past 22 games, a 17-5 mark that has made them the best team in the IL in that period of time.

The prior three divisions of the season have been pretty easy to explain in general terms. The losing at the beginning of the year was largely a byproduct of a young roster filled with guys who had little to no experience at the Triple-A level, a hodge-podge assortment of players who were thrown together to compensate for such a high turnover of players to the parent Cincinnati Reds. The second part happened once the newcomers began to figure things out — the pitching staff solidified and came into its and luck started to join the Bats’ side of the equation, with many of the one-run losses that defined the early part of the season going the other way. The third part was a return to the norm; after all, you can’t stay hot forever, and it was more or less an indication of how good that Bats team was, seeing as they weren’t actually as bad as their early record would have indicated, but they weren’t nearly as good as their hot streak made them out to be.

What exactly has been at the root of Louisville’s recent 22-game run then? Being in the midst of it all, and not having the gift of hindsight that the previous three streaks have afforded us, it pays to look into some statistical variations that have taken place over the last month of the season. Has the pitching continued to excel? Has the offensive production improved? Has the bullpen been able to hold on to leads and close out games.

Below, I will provide several reasons as to why the Bats are no longer in the cellar of the IL West and if they can continue to maintain or progress in the areas of improvement that I have listed:

Production from the Leadoff Spot

Simply put, this has been the basic substitution of removing Chris Burke and putting in Gary Matthews, Jr. Matthews has excelled in all the areas of the game in which Burke, quite frankly, failed, aspects of the game that define the success of a leadoff hitter and a lineup in general seeing as the first hitter can set the tone for an entire offense. Matthews is currently batting .317 with .361 on-base percentage, to go along with 16 runs in just 23 games played. For a team that struggled with offensive production for much of the season, the easiest way to get runs on even a mediocre offensive night is to get on base and make the most of those opportunities. Matthews has done just that, as well as some of the other players thrust into that leadoff spot, most notably rehabbing Reds outfielder Chris Dickerson (.400 average, .500 OBP, 6 runs, and 3 steals in just seven games).

The Re-emergence of Juan Francisco

While the heading for this may make it seem like a title of an episode of a mid-day Telemundo soap opera, this is no laughing matter — Francisco’s increased offensive production has truly meant that much to this team. Coming into the 2010 season as one the Reds’ prized prospects, as well as a player who showed immense promise in a short stint with the Bats at the end of last season, there was a lot of hype and expectation surrounding Francisco and what he was capable of doing for this team as a coveted power hitter. In all fairness, a lot of that promise and potential remained unfulfilled at the beginning of the season as Francisco struggled mightily, posting a low average, and perhaps most importantly, not collecting very many extra base hits and home runs. Better late than never, though, right? Francisco has begun to make amends for his slow start with some rapid progression here in the Bats’ hot streak. Since July 15th (so for the past two weeks, about), Francisco has batted .317 with seven home runs and 15 RBIs, bringing his season totals to .283 with 15 HRs and 45 RBIs. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Louisville has gone 9-2 in that same period of time. A reliable source of power has been something that the Bats have desperately needed throughout the season, and with Francisco finally coming through, look for that question mark to turn into a potential weapon for this team.

Continued Success From Starting Pitching

At the arrival of the All-Star Break, one of the few remarkable things about this Bats team was their starting pitching and its ability to stay consistent and steady despite losing guys like Sam LeCure and Travis Wood to the big leagues. Not only have the Bats improved in many facets of the game, but they have been able to maintain their strengths, which has been just as important to this 17-5 run as their progression in previous weaknesses. Sure, there have been the occasional 8-7 wins and 9-4 losses, but for the most part, a new-look Louisville starting rotation has been doing it’s job, namely preventing runs, through it all. In this 22 game stretch, the Bats have given up an average of only 3.54 runs per game and have posted four shutouts in this same time frame. Matt Maloney, Ben Jukich, and Chad Reineke have all been solid, if not spectacular in this stretch, more than making up for the loss of the likes of Wood and LeCure.

Bullpen Improvement

Much of this has to be attributed to an improvement from the closer’s role, with Jon Adkins having been cut to make room for what has become a “closer by committee” rotation. While the prospect of not having a set-in-stone closer may not sound promising to some, it has been a welcome upgrade over Adkins, whose ERA was approaching 5.50 by the time he was let go by the club. Jared Burton has notched three saves since assuming the role, and coincidentally, the Bats have been holding on to leads and having ninth inning one or two run leads translating to wins. The decision to send prized prospect Aroldis Chapman to the bullpen has undoubtedly paid dividends, both for the Bats and for Chapman’s development as well.

A Top-Notch Manager

A young, inexperienced team that gets off to a slow, unsuccessful start could spell doom for many teams out there, but it takes strong leadership to keep the proverbial ship on course, and luckily for the Bats, they have just that in Rick Sweet.  Sweet has long been regarded as one of the best managers in the minor league ranks and has had a string of recent success with the Bats, having led the Bats to division titles in each of the past two seasons. He’s a valuable presence to that clubhouse, especially such a young and potentially explosive one that he deserves a large amount of credit for overseeing a team that has frankly overachieved at this point to be at the 53-50 mark that they are right now. Substitute an average manager to put in Sweet’s place and this Louisville club is, at best, eight to ten games under .500 at this point.

The question now has to be asked if all of this will continue, whether these different contributors to Louisville’s success can, simply put, maintain what they’ve been doing this past month. A couple of them are easy to prognosticate. Sweet has long been a very capable manager and that in no way will change over the course of the next month and a half. And the Bats’ starting rotation has more than proven it’s ability to succeed with great talent and also maintain that level of success when the makeup of players changes with the flucuation of the roster. After 103 games, I think it’s fair to say that this Louisville pitching staff has proven itself.

For the others, the answers are not so certain, but yet pretty optimistic. Is it a guarantee that Burton, Klinker and Co. can continue to close out every game that they pitch in? Absolutely not; closers, even the elite ones, the Mariano Riveras of the world, blow a game every now and then. The key will be that they don’t blow save opportunities too frequently and see their ERAs rise to the level of the man they’re following in Adkins, something I think it is safe to say won’t happen. Matthews, with the crowded outfield situation that currently exists up in Cincinnati, will likely be with the Bats for the remainder of the year and he has shown that he can get on base and hit for average in the 23 games he has played for Louisville, a fair sample size to be sure. His numbers may rise or drop a bit, but we’ve seen a pretty accurate picture of what Gary Matthews, Jr will provide for this team over this past month.

The remaining question is perhaps the biggest one and that is can Francisco continue to swing the bat the way that he has been. Nobody can reasonably expect Francisco to continue on his seven homers in two weeks tear, but what his production in July perhaps did indicate is that Bats fans should expect to see the Juan Francisco of late-2009 for the rest of the season, as opposed to the shell-of-his-potential player that was so readily present early in the year. Off hand, I would expect his average and home run totals to subside a bit, but I think it can be realistically expected that Francisco will be that middle-of-the-order presence that the Bats have been desperately lacking all year, making him just another piece in a very complicated puzzle that can hopefully come together in the form of another playoff appearance for this surging club.