League Updates

It Can’t Rain On Your Parade Unless You’re Having a Parade

Those of you unfortunate enough to have your team offices outside the Greater Dundee/Newberg Area are right this minute missing the Old Fashioned Festival. The theme this year is “Unique Past — Fantastic Future.”

OFF---2015-Poster-PRINT

We just got back from the centerpiece event in the OFF: the parade.  Speaking of unique experiences: Ben marched in the parade with his taekwando dojo, and Sam and I left the parade five minutes before it was over because the cool drizzle was turning to cold rain.

That’s right:  it rained on our parade for the first time I can recall.

In keeping with the OFF theme, which encourages us to recognize milestones in our community’s history (and future, too, I guess), I am happy to announce that today is a landmark day in the EFL’s passage from its unique past to its fantastic future. This morning MLB.com directly mentioned an EFL team for the first time, right up there in one of its headlines:

Alvarez tags Scherzer with Allegheny blast

Yes, MLB got the batter wrong — Alvarez does not play for our Pittsburgh — but I think we should cut them some slack.  They are clearly still familiarizing themselves with our rosters, and at least they got the victimized pitcher right.  As with so many other justice-seeking movements, our progress is slow, but today we have reached a new height.

EFL
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB RS RA
Haviland Dragons 62 34 .648 477.7 352.7
Old Detroit Wolverines 61 34 .642 0.7 478.1 355.5
Cottage Cheese 53 43 .556 8.9 408.3 361.7
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 53 42 .554 9.1 444.4 399.0
Peshastin Pears 54 44 .552 9.1 422.6 379.9
Flint Hill Tornadoes 50 45 .523 12 446.1 425.9
Kaline Drive 45 51 .467 17.3 374.0 400.7
Canberra Kangaroos 41 54 .433 20.6 486.7 556.2
Portland Rosebuds 37 61 .381 25.8 388.4 502.4

Haviland: W 2, L 0; 12 – 5.   .273;  .338, .470;  25 ip, 6 er.   I wrote an update yesterday but then clutzily deleted it when I meant to post it. I hadn’t the heart to rewrite the whole thing. But if you look at the standings you’ll note that the Dragons converted a 0.6 game deficit into a 0.7 game lead in the last two days — and if you looked real closely you saw that they did half the work yesterday, enough to take over the lead.  Given how poorly the W’s are doing, I suspect the Dragons will look back at the 2015 Old Fashioned Festival as the date on which they finally dispatched the Wolverines as competitors for the EFL championship.  Fantastic Future indeed, at least in Haviland.

Old Detroit: W 0, L 2; 8 – 13.  .225, .287, .325;  37 ip, 19 er.  You’d think the W’s would get better results than 13 runs allowed with that pitching, but only if you didn’t realize that the two best performances were by Francisco Liriano and Wade Miley (6 ip, 1 er each) and Miley is allocated at 000%. Anyway, the result is, the W’s have lost their spot atop the standings. Again. So forgive us if we seem a little soggy and bedraggled.

Cottage:  W 0, L 2; 5 – 8.  .218, .228, .400;  23.7 ip, 11 er.

Pittsburgh:  W 0, L 2; 3 – 12.  .219, .261, .375;  16 ip, 6 er.

Peshastin:  W 0, L 2; 8 – 11.  .256, .312, .337; 12 ip, 9 er.   These three teams had remarkably similar performances over the last two days, and find themselves in a tight, lively race for third place.  In fact, the race is so tight that it went Pittsburgh/Cottage/Peshastin two days ago, with 0.4 games separating third from fifth place.  Yesterday Peshastin was in third, followed by Pittsburgh and Cottage, still within a game of each other.  And today’s standings have Cottage and Peshastin trading places, with Pittsburgh still in fourth  – and the total gap among all three half the size it was two days ago.  So, the Allegheny’s hallmark achievement of getting mentioned in an MLB headline is richer than it appears at first glance.  Mike Trout’s homer (it had to be him rather than Alvarez) into the Allegheny River off Peshastin’s Scherzer was probably enough all by itself to reshuffle the standings.

See? All this exciting stuff is going on for the teams in second-through fifth places, even though we each went 0 for 2.  We should consider ourselves lucky. Sure, it rained on our parade. But at least we’re having a parade!

Flint Hill: W 1, L 1; 13 – 11.  .351, .375, .468;  7.7 ip, 5 er.  The Tornados used to dance with the cool kids who are now so closely clustered around third place.  But somehow they got left a little behind. On the other hand, they’re a little less behind than they were two days ago, thanks to solid performances from all 11 hitters who appeared , each of whom maintained at least a .250 batting average.

Kaline:  W 2, L 0; 8 – 4.  .245,.322, .491;  11.7 ip, 2 er.  Mike Zunino!  Two doubles in 5 trips to the plate for a 1.200 OPS over two games.   Justin Turner!  two doubles and a homer, plus two more hits in 9 trips to the plate. I wish I’d figured out how to re-sign him; he’s better than Alex Guerrero (back in purgatory again, I see), that’s for sure. Tom Koehler!  7 shutout innings.

Canberra: W 1, L 1; 9 – 9.   .264, .316, .434;  8 ip 1 er.   Too bad the ‘Roos didn’t get two-games’ worth of pitching.  But this is the EFL, full of grace:  just get the pitching done before the end of the month, and you’ll be ok.

Portland:   W 1, L 1; 6 – 3.  .233, .258, .367;  23 ip, 8 er.  Fister and Young combined for 8 ip, 8 er.  But Jimmy Nelson and Ervin Santana combined for 15 ip, 0 er, so it was more than okay.