Voodoo sabermetrics

Peshastin: “L”, 7 – 4. (.342, .359, .632; 1.7 ip, 0 er.)  Poor, poor Pears. Here they discover, for the first time probably in their 14-year existence, the trials of being the best team in the league: You can outscore your foes 7 -4 and see your winning percentage drop and take a loss. Also — no walks in 39 plate appearances?  Two caught stealings with no SB? Two double plays? How is that championship baseball? What black magic are you using to win without walks and with all those outs given away?  Well, there were those three homers…

Haviland: W, 6 – 4. (.250, .357, .625; 13 ip, 5 er) .  That’s where MY team is supposed to be – duking it out with the pretenders. Now it’s dawning on me what John meant when he said “some teams don’t use WAR.”  They use voodoo!  They take little Wolverine dolls and stick them with pins. (Or they take Anthony Rizzo and stick HIM with pins, more likely — he went 0 for 5 again last night, is OPSing .476 as of this morning.) They suck out Wolverine souls and leave the skins for dead on the road.  I think we should make a rule against stealing souls, and voodoo in general. Freedom of religion can be taken too far.

Cottage: L, 4 – 5. (.225, .311, .450;  7.3 ip, 5 er) Look, if you’re going to beat the Dragons — and the Pears, too — you can’t stumble around and lose games like this. You have to be fierce.  You can’t have Trout and Harper going 0 for 7. Jorge Polanco won’t always make up for it.   If you can’t do it right, get out of the way, and let me do it. (And get those other six teams out of the way, too, while you’re at it.)

Flint Hill: W, 6 – 2. (.333, .436, .364;  6 ip, 1 er). Six walks, one extra base.  This doesn’t seem very tornadoey. At least you didn’t blow Hisashi Iwakuma’s win by giving away 6 runs in the ninth.  In fact, you didn’t even send in any relievers. Somehow you stretched Iwakuma’s 6 innings over an entire game. Alchemy!

Portland:  L, 0 – 3. (.128, .244, .231;  7 ip, 2 er).  Five for 39 isn’t good enough. I know what I am talking about — see below. 10 Rosebud batters went hitless. Only Correa (2 for 5), Dickerson (1 for 4 with a homer and a walk) and Goldschmidt (2 for four with a double) did anything at the plate. I don’t know where that homer went, eitheer, but apparently the black hole of the Rosebud offense sucked it in before it could reach the scoreboard.

Canberra: W, 3 – 2. (.205, .279, .308; 19.7 ip, 7 er).  I suppose Peshastin with its .991 Sunday OPS, or Haviland with its .982, thinks it is the leagues offensive leaders. But if they’re such leaders, how come no one’s following them?  here’s another wimpy EFL offense.  I think we’ll have to look elsewhere for EFL offensive leadership.  The Kangaroos managed a win because they piled up three starting pitchers and got two out of three of their relievers to dominate the opposing hitters.

Pittsburgh: W, 7 – 6. (.273, .385, .636;  19 ip, 10 er).  OK, OK, it looks like the Alleghenys are Pear/Dragon wannabes. Or, actually, since the A’s pulled an OPS over 1.000 (1.021), maybe Pittsburgh is the most offensive team in the EFL.  They love offense so much they let their opponents have quite a bit of it, too.

D.C.: W, 7 – 1  (.353, .476, .529; 6.7 ip, 0 er. ) Hmm.  An OPS over 1.000 (1.005) heavy on OBP.  That’s the best in the league Sunday by quite a bit.  And shutout pitching. HERE is the true Offensive Leader of the EFL.  And it leapt them two places in the standings and .098 in winning percentage. Watch out. Sam Dyson even has his ERA down to 36.00.  Who can stop them?

Kaline: L: L, 6 – 7.  (.317, .378, .463;  1.7 ip, 1 er). Oooh. All that was needed was a little pitching. What a nice day the Drive had otherwise. Chris Owings is out of his mind.  He went 3 for 4 Sunday with a homer, bringing his season line to .360, .407, .520 the highest OPS by far of any Drive with more than one AB. (Christian Vazquez has three plate appearances and a 3.000 OPS: a double and two HBP. That’s a unique offensive profile, but Owings has been more valuable so far.)  No wonder Nick Ahmed never gets to play anymore.

Old Detroit: L, 3 – 6. (.133, .235, .267;  13.3 ip, 8 er). Here is the one truly pathetic team in the EFL.  Tied Sunday for the worst offense in the EFL with the Rosebuds.  Tied Sunday for the worst pitching in the EFL with…no one. They’re the worst all by themselves. (The Cheese? OK, their 6.14 Sunday ERA was a little worse than the Woeverines’ 5.40, but the Cheese had a 3.14 FIP. So it was clearly a fluke. The W’s FIP was 6.74. So if Sunday was a fluke, it was flukishly good.) The W’s are so bad they look with envy at the M’s 10-9 loss Sunday. At least the M’s were ahead for 53 outs.

We’d try voodoo but we’d need 9 voodoo dolls. And where would we get all those pins?