Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolverine?

I’m puzzled.  There’s a certain lethargy in the standings these days.  It’s only June — way too early for the dog days of summer.  It makes one wonder if all those other teams are a little bit afraid of walking through the forest to see Grandma in the stands at the World Series.

EFL
Team	Wins	Losses	Pct.	GB	RS	RA
Old Detroit Wolverines	48	26	.650	—	382.8	279.8
Haviland Dragons	46	27	.624	2.1	354.3	275.9
Cottage Cheese	41	29	.579	5.6	318.5	266.7
Peshastin Pears	40	32	.562	6.7	309.2	271.8
Flint Hill Tornadoes	40	34	.544	7.9	359.2	328.5
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	36	32	.525	9.4	316.8	301.6
Kaline Drive	34	39	.473	13.1	291.6	310.0
Canberra Kangaroos	33	38	.467	13.5	387.7	412.8
Portland Rosebuds	26	46	.359	21.3	299.0	402.7

 

Old Detroit: W 1, L 1; 8 – 8.  .244, .314, .378;  7.3 ip, 2 er.  The W’s keep fading.  Now the Dragons are only 2.1 games back. We may not last out the month!

Haviland:  W, 3 – 3.  .219, .286, .281;  24.7 ip, 8 er.  Not that the Dragons seem to be in any hurry to resume their position in first place. Odd.

Cottage:  W, 5 – 3.   .294, .342, .471;  4.7 ip, 1 er.  The Cheese seems to smell.  I mean, the Cheese seem to smell an opportunity. They nailed down a nice win and edged forward  a grand total of…  0.2 games?!?  Shouldn’t they be leaping and bounding up the standings?

Peshastin: “L”, 7 – 5.   .295, .354, .500; 12.7 ip 9 er.  The Pears also gained 0.2 games.  Does anyone really want this league championship?  Where’s the drive? Or the Drive? Where’s the passion? All these puny little 0.2-game gains while the Wolverines are burning.  Well, there is this: Welington Castillo hit a home run!?  What did you do to that guy?  On the other hand, Danny Salazar almost pulled a Bauerian chulk:  4.3 ip, 6 er.

Flint Hill: W 1, L 1; 11 – 5.  .231, .263, .442;  11.3 ip, 3 er.  Has Colin McHugh been on the DL or something? I haven’t noticed him for a while. I noticed him today because he had a fine 8 ip, 2 er outing yesterday.  I notice Kevin Kiermaier most days, because you offered him to me in trade a couple of times and I turned you down and now he’s hitting .358, .386, .567 in June. This gave the Tornados the biggest standings boost of the day in the EFL: a whole half a game. Whoopee.

Pittsburgh: L, 3 – 12.  .192,  .300,  .423;   6 ip, 4 er.  Ooooo.  Pittsburgh only allocated Strasburg at 33% so didn’t get much value from his 5 scoreless innings.  They did, however, get every speck of the impact generated by Dellin Betances’ quadruple chulk!  That’s right: Betances allowed 4 runs in 1 ip. That’s 80% of the runs he’s allowed so far in 36 relief innings.  As a result, the Alleghenys were the only EFL team not to gain on the Wolverines yesterday.  We are grateful.

Kaline: “L”, 5 – 2. .241, .389, .345.  14.7 ip, 4 er.   What’s the deal here?  Mike Zunino is coming to life, too: 1 for 3 with a walk.  He apparently thinks he’s Welington Castillo.  He led the Drive to a 0.4 game improvement in the standings, much better than any of the top three pursuers could manage.

Canberra: W, 13 – 9.  .500,  .513,  .639 !   1.7 ip, 2 er.  Wow. Bryce Harper went 0 for 4, but everyone else got at least one hit, and Jose Abreu and Jason Kipnis each got four hits. This gave the ‘Roos an above-average 0.3 game boost in the standings.

Portland: W, 10 – 9.  .367, .457, .733 (!!);  3.7 ip 5 er. Maikel Franco is going bonzo: another homer plus a double a walk and a hbp in 5 plate appearancesore offensive fireworks from the bottom of the league.  If the Dragons had done this they’d be at least a half-game closer to first.  Instead it was left to our Little Red Riding Hood of a team, the Rosebuds, to show some spunk.  Too bad they left their good pitching behind, though.