Pop Quiz

Yes, this is an exam.  All you have to do to pass it is to be reading what I’m reading, seeing what I’m seeing, and thinking what I’m thinking.  In other words, it’s no harder than any good college class.

1.  Whom among us did I discover last night surreptitiously serving as an executive in a baseball league, and therefor probably should be punished with a term as EFL Commissioner?
2.  Of the two EFL teams who played a triple header yesterday, which one lost the most games?
3. Which one fell the furthest in the standings?
4. Which EFL pitcher pitched a complete game two-hit shutout?
5. Which two EFL stars collided and knocked each other out of the game referred to in question 4?
6. Which EFL “slugger” had a two-homer game?
7. What MLB utility player I had never heard of before this week blasted two homers off Madison Bumgarner to lift his batting line against lefties this season to .727, .750, 1.455?
8. Which former EFL player, who did nothing much in the EFL, became the first Baltimore Oriole to hit 2 homers in the same inning last night?
9. Which EFL player drove in the game-winning runs to lead an MLB team to its first win of 2016?
10. Which MLB team was the last to win a game in 2016, to (sort of) end Merrill Johnson’s personal nightmare?
11. Which supposed Rookie stud, recently unfairly maligned in these pages, got his first extra-base hit in the game referred to in question 10?
12. Which other supposed Rookie stud, also unfairly maligned, only got in as a defensive replacement in the last half-inning?
13. Which other Rookie stud, unfairly mangled, didn’t get into any game anywhere?

Canberra:  W, 8 -3.  (.300, .391, .550; 13.7 ip, 5 er). Bryce Harper his his 101st career homer, Chris Carter got one stolen by Rosebud Starling Marte but still OPSed 1.800 on the day, and three other Kangaroos also OPSed 1.000 or better to lead the ‘Roos back to the top of the league. Unfortunately, Logan Forsythe was the victim of a Dexter Fowler from a rival EFL’er (not Fowler) and had to leave the game. Fortunately, Forsythe got the better of the collision and probably won’t miss any further time.

Portland:  W, 6 – 0. (.326, .383, .512; 17 ip, 4 er). Chris Sale holds the EFL record for a veteran contract ($14,500,000 per year for 5 years). Will he be worth it?  Maybe. Sale buried the league last night: 9 innings, 9 so, 2 hits, 0 walks, 0 earned runs.

Haviland: W 1, L 2; 14 – 14. (.356, .408, .556; 11 ip, 4 er).  Brutal. A tripleheader. It is so hard to fend off ravenous zombie replacements when you have to play three games in a day.  You need at  least 90 plate appearances to cover 3 games. The Dragons got 49 and tumbled two places in the standings. But at least Miguel Sano got an extra base hit. It was a double, his only safety in 4trips o the

Old Detroit:  L, 4 – 7.  .297, .350, .351; 5 ip 4 er. Kike Hernandez torments lefthanders — and did the two-homer number on Bumgarner last night. If Hernandez was on the free agent list, I’d have to draft him just to offset the risk to my ace pitcher.

Flint Hill: L, 1 – 5. (.125, .250, .167; 0.7 ip 0 er).  Byron Buxton has fallen so far he hasn’t started the last two games.  He came in last night only for the bottom of the ninth.  But with the proper perspective, this isn’t maybe quite so devastating: Buxton’s principle value right now is his future value.

But this makes me think about the most important EFL position I manage:  Commissioner.  What will happen if my performance suddenly falls off a cliff (taking the rest of me with it)?  Are we developing a future commissioner to be ready to take over?

Well — this is not General Moters, nor even ancient Rome, where successors get anointed by predecessors. We’re not even a nepotistic hellhole like North Korea, the Democratic or Republican Parties, or even Liberty University.  Ryan is not assured the position on my demise.

Dave has many of the traits of a good Commissioner, plus he has a power base in his database.  Opponents could find their teams struggling unaccountably were Dave to instigate a coup. I am now imagining Dave as Darth Vader standing 20 feet away from the EFL owner he’s strangling for talking back to him. It’s a pretty compelling vision. But I don’t think Dave would do that, and I suspect he likes being a step away from the throne rather than in it.  Much safer from assassins, for one thing.

I’ve mentioned Mark J as commissioner material because a) he knows the rules better than I do; b) he catches more of my errors than anyone else, and does it gently and (at least on the surface) respectfully, and c) he seems like a capable guy.

Now it’s time for me to restore some balance at the extended Johnson family dinner table and put in a word for Jamie.  I discovered last night that Jamie is the Vice President of the Newberg Cal Ripken/Babe Ruth Baseball organization!  The EFL doesn’t even have a vice-president. It may already be a title grander than any in our polity.  We’ve been run all these years by some guy who hasn’t been president or vice president of anything since 1977.  Why wouldn’t we toss our old fakir aside immediately for an actual, honest-to-goodness vice president of something? Especially when that thing is an actual functioning baseball league? (Well, functioning except for the Babe Ruth part, which never got off the ground this year.  But that wasn’t Jamie’s bailiwick — it’s not his fault.)

(And even if the disappearance of Babe Ruth baseball is some kind of sign of dysfunction, since when have we ever considered dysfunction to be dysqualification for our Commissioner? Since never, is the answer to that one. An easy bonus question. )

Pittsburgh: L, (-2) – 2. (.114, .184, .171; 8 ip, 0 er) . The Alleghenys ran a slightly fuzzy copy of the Rosebud’s strategy for success. Odorizzi went 7 shutout innings, got another from Xavier Cedeno, to shut down their opponents’ offense.  But, alas, the A’s shut themselves down too. Odorizzi and Cedeno surrendered 4 hits total. The A’s managed four hits.  Odorizzi and Cedeno struck out 8 between them; the A’s struck out 7 times. Odorizzi and Cedeno allowed no runs.  The A’s scored no runs (although, somehow, Altuve drove in one — but then, he’s Altuve). We really shouldn’t allow teams to pitch entirely to themselves.  The conflicts of interest are pervasive.

Cottage: L, 5 – 7. (.220, .270. .486;  5.7 ip, 4 er).  See this lackluster result?  It’s not enough to make any Cheese fan happy, nor enough by itself to engender despair.  But it still has to be discouraging. But just think how bad it would have been if not for that mighty Hall-of-Famer Jonathan Schoop (pronounced “Shop”)”  who went 3 for 5 last night. Two of his hits were homers.  He OPSed .598 in 2014. He brought that up to .788 last year.  If he continues that trend he’ll reach .978 this year.  His OPS right now?  1.037.

Peshastin: W, 7  – 5. (.276, .364, .517; 0 ip, 0 er) So it was a sunny, upbeat day in Peshastin yesterday.  Very nice hitting, over an adequate 33 plate appearances, and apparently enough pitching to handle a holiday for the pitching staff. What could go wrong?

Odd that you should ask.  Who was that historically great defensive outfielder the Pears stole from me by bidding a breathtaking $8,750,000 over 4 years?  The one hitting .154, .313, .154 this year? The one who ran smack into Logan Forsythe and got his bell rung and his hat handed to him?  The defensive wizard who claimed afterward that he didn’t see Forsythe coming?  Why, that was Kevin Kiermaier!  The good news is Kieremaier said he felt fine afterward.  But, then, Schwarber claimed right after his collision that he wasn’t feeling that bad, either.

Kaline:  W 0, L 3; 9 – 20. (.245, .288, .408; 6.7 ip, 4 er).  Yikes!  The other tripleheader shows up. It buries the Drive in a landslide of replacements, forcing Kaline to slip one spot in the standings. A smallish landslide on the hitting side — only 10 AB.  But on the pitching side the scene is devastation: 11.6 replacement innings  including 2.3 ip among starters, 5.3 ip among relievers, and 4.0 inning pitched among lefty relievers. If Kaline gets one lefty reliever in for 1/3 of an inning, it would immediately cancel the 4 LHRP innings.  So that problem is remediable — especially if the pace of games played goes back to something normal.

Less remediable is this regret:  that the Drive no longer own Mark Trumbo, who hit two homers in one inning. No Oriole has ever done that. Not Frank Robinson, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Murray, Boog Powell the Elder, Cal Ripken,  Chris Davis. Trumbo is, by this measure, better than any of them… now that he’s an ex-Drive.

DC Balk:  “W”, 6 – 7.  (.421, .429, .684; 1.7 ip, 0 er)  Elvis Araujo arrived from the minor leagues and joined with Trevor May for that scoreless 1 2/3 inning.  It may not seem like much, but May’s innings were crucial.  Despite issuing 3 walks, he held opponents scoreless, a key element in the Minnesota Twins’ first victory of the year.  A little earlier in the evening, the Balk’s offensive leader so far, Adonis Garcia, had another fine day (2 for 4 with a double) to lead the Atlanta Braves to THEIR first victory of the year.  So the Balk, possessors of only 1 win themselves, provided the key pieces for both of the MLB teams behind them in the standings.  Such unselfishness! Such generosity from the team with the least abundance!  God rewarded the Balk with their second win of the season.