The Haviland Dragons and Old Detroit Wolverines had a little mini-summit meeting over lunch on Tuesday. We spent a good portion of the time commiserating over our teams’ sufferings.
“What sufferings?” you may ask. “You are the top two teams in the league, with a nice 3 – game cushion over teams 3 and 4. How could you be suffering?”
This question only reveals your parochialism. Up here atop the league, the burdens are heavier than you might think. In fact, they are mountainous.
We spent a lot of our conversation on our sufferings at the hands of the Alleghenys a year ago. Last April Pittsburgh was beset by pitching problems. But the Big Allegheny cleverly concealed his team’s weakness by playing two or three fewer games than everyone else, minimizing his replacement innings. He fixed his pitching at the end-of-April draft so he had plenty to cover his needs when it came time to replace those missing games. This brilliant schedule management gave the A’s an advantage they never relinquished, and now their name is on the trophy six times.
Ah. Schedule management. Just another exciting advantage of the EFL.
Did anyone seal in a similar advantage this time?
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 15 | 7 | .700 | — | 120.9 | 79.1 |
| Haviland Dragons | 15 | 7 | .697 | 0.1 | 105.8 | 69.8 |
| Cottage Cheese | 12 | 9 | .555 | 3.2 | 97.7 | 87.4 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 12 | 10 | .545 | 3.4 | 106.6 | 97.4 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 10 | 11 | .476 | 4.9 | 94.9 | 99.6 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 10 | 12 | .474 | 5 | 99.9 | 105.2 |
| Peshastin Pears | 9 | 12 | .448 | 5.5 | 77.9 | 86.5 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 10 | 13 | .428 | 6.1 | 107.5 | 124.2 |
| Kaline Drive | 9 | 13 | .400 | 6.6 | 88.6 | 108.5 |
Old Detroit: DNP, (-1) – 0. .273, .273, .455; 0 ip, 0 er. For the second day in a row, the Wolverines got no pitching. They also got only 11 plate appearances. All three batters got a hit, including Jose Iglesias’ triple — but then, he hit into a GDP, too. Homer Bailey’s shattered arm left the W’s with 1.4 replacement relief innings on the month, not likely to make a difference in the race. More telling: Adeiny Hechavarria’s miraculous .834 OPS disappears into the time-space continuum completely unused, as does 79% of Alex Guerrero’s 1.521 OPS.
Haviland: W, 4 – 1. .250, .250, .250; 6 ip, 1 er. The Dragons snuck in one last game — and made good use of it, raising their already stratospheric winning percentage by .008 and almost entirely closing the gap with the Wolverines. Had Garret Richards gone one more inning, the Dragons would have erased all their replacement pitching — a problem that a lumpy and slightly thin rotation kept piling up and then cleaning up as the month went along. Overall, I’d say the Dragons played it pretty squarely.
Cottage: W, 6 – 5. .409, .409, .636; 0 ip, 0 er. The Cheese could have used some relief innings yesterday so they could avoid cementing in those 5.5 replacement relief innings. One more Kendall Graveman start would have done the trick. It may not seem like much, but don’t look behind you just now, Cheese!
Pittsburgh: W 1, L 1; 5 – (-7). .393, .452, .607; 12.3 ip, 4 er. While the rest of the league essentially took the day off, on the excuse that there were only 8 games in MLB last night, the Alleghenys got all that offense with 31 plate appearances spread over 8 hitters. They also got a game and a half’s worth of good pitching. This entirely eliminated replacement pitching with 2.2 innings to spare among the starters. It also limited replacement hitting to 20 plate appearances. And it squeezed in Altuve’s 3 for 5 with a double to lift his OPS to an even .900, Michael Brantley’s 3 for 4 with two doubles to life his OPS over .800, and Mike Trout’s 2 for thee with a double and a walk and a stolen base. Poor Mike Trout had been dawdling along all month with an OPS down in the .900’s, but his April 30 surge got him back up to a respectable 1.039 OPS.
Portland: DNP, 1 – (-3). .375, .333, .438; 7 ip, 1 er. Nice enough hitting, but only over 16 plate appearances. Those 7 innings from Danny Duffy were nice but they weren’t relief inings so they left the ‘Buds holding 11.7 replacement relief innings. , This left the Rosebuds with a replacement batting line of 70 AB, 16 hits, .229 .316, .357.
Oops! My mistake. That was Superstar Mookie Betts’ batting line, now preserved for the ages. The replacements actually permanently recorded 71 AB, 17 hits, .239, .280, .352. My bad.
Flint Hill: W (-1), L 1; (-2) – 0. .125, .125, .125; 1 ip, 1 er. The Tornados went out with a slight breeze, producing only 8 AB from two hitters, one of whom went 0 for 4 and the other 1 for 4 with a hit-erasing double play; and hurling only 1 ineffective inning of relief. I guess it was a good idea to sit Cingrani down if he was going to produce a 9.00 ERA; the 6.3 replacement relief innings left on the board were better than that.
Peshastin: W (-1), L 1; (-1) – 6. .207, .303, .207; 4 ip, 8 er. The Pears apparently chose a strategy built on getting the best possible drafting position for the end-of-May managers meeting. On the last day they collapsed three places in the standings. They removed some of their replacement at bats with 33 plate appearances on an off-day, but those plate appearances were essentially at replacement levels. And April lasted just long enough to include Chris Sale’s worst outing in who knows how long, a nasty 3 ip, 8 er chulk that left him with an indelible worst-on-the-team starting-pitcher April ERA at 5.32.
Canberra: “W”, 3 – 4. .148, .233, .333; 4.3 ip, 0 er. Another team with replacement-level production from players getting paid to be better than that. Four runs allowed on a day when you get 4.3 shutout innings may seem a little harsh, but all of those innings were relief innings (including Daniel Norris’ 3 shutout innings starting for the Blue Jays). This left the ‘Roos accumulating 5 more replacement starter innings, enshrining 32 starting replacement innings for the month. Still, the ‘Roos managed to avoid the cellar in the final monthly standings.
Kaline: W, 4 – 3. .250, .308, .250; 8 ip, 2 er. The Drive managed to use two Mariners pitchers who didn’t give the game away to the Astros. Paxton’s improved performance (7 ip, 2 er) wasn’t enough on Whidbey Island just as it wasn’t in Houston. Nevertheless, the Drive can hang their hats on this accomplishment: they were the only team in the EFL that fielded no replacement hitters or pitchers in April.