Through clever management … er, no, actually, through complete lack of foresight, our Commissioner has arranged things this month so we can only get one standings update for the entire first two weeks of July. And this is it.
| EFL | ||||||
| Team | Wins | Losses | Pct. | GB | RS | RA |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 58 | 31 | .656 | — | 466.2 | 331.5 |
| Haviland Dragons | 58 | 31 | .652 | 0.3 | 539.7 | 393.6 |
| Cottage Cheese | 59 | 32 | .639 | 0.9 | 504.3 | 369.0 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 56 | 31 | .643 | 1.8 | 498.2 | 368.3 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 55 | 35 | .611 | 3.9 | 537.8 | 418.0 |
| Kaline Drive | 53 | 36 | .598 | 5.1 | 459.2 | 374.4 |
| Peshastin Pears | 53 | 37 | .593 | 5.5 | 441.3 | 372.7 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 43 | 46 | .488 | 14.9 | 420.3 | 405.6 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 40 | 48 | .456 | 17.7 | 400.6 | 440.7 |
| D.C. Balk | 32 | 56 | .366 | 25.7 | 430.4 | 568.2 |
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Flint Hill: W 7, L 2; 64 – 27. (.246, .331, .460; 85.7 ip, 33 er, 3.47 ERA). The Dragons have fallen! Hefty Evan Gattis leads the Tornado offense this month with his hefty batting line: .381, .458 .952. Tornado pitching is anchored by a pre-season gift from Old Detroit, Dan Straily (14.3 ip, 4 er) and a swarm of relievers with July ERA’s of 0.00 (Archie Bradley, Brad Hand, Anthony Swarzak and Tony Zych).
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Haviland: W 5, L 3; 42 – 29. (.287, .355, .469; 87.0 ip, 33 er, 3.41 ERA). The Dragons haven’t fallen very far! At only 0.3 games behind, they can still regain the lead with the slightest shift of the wind. Something better than 0 for 5 from Eric Young, maybe, or Carlos Martinez (10 ip, 10 er).
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Cottage: W 7, L 2; 66 – 38. (.273, .339, .496; 90.7 ip, 41 er, 4.07 ERA). Nor have the Cheese fallen. They were 1.4 games behind the Dragons on July 1. Now they are 0.9 games out. This could be a great race, especially if Mike Trout comes back soon. In the meantime they’ll have to hang in there boosted by Max Kelpler’s .467, 556, .800 hitting and Parker Bridwell continuing to shut people out (6 ip, 0 er).
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Pittsburgh: W 9, L 0; 65 – 21. (.300, .373, .503; 101.7 ip, 41 er, 3.63 ERA). Noted sluggers Domingo Santana (1.300), Kurt Suzuki (1.467) and Jose Altuve (1.346 — no, I’m not trying to be funny about Altuve, he is a noted slugger and has been for several years now…) led the Allegheny offense as Pittsburgh made a move to join the trio atop the standings. The Alleghenys won nine in a row with roughly the same raw runs scored/runs against as Flint Hill by cleverly allocating Jake Odorizzi and his odorific 9.3 ip, 10 er at 0%, and the Marco Estrada’s equally odious 4.7 ip, 6 er, at 0%, leaving the A’s with 84,7 ip, 25 er, and an ERA more like 2.66 — something like 65 – 15.
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Portland: W 5, L 3; 61 – 45. (.283, .357, .540; 100.0 ip, 63 er, 5.67 ERA). Ouch. I mean, it’s totally nutso that I should utter a vicarious “ouch” for a team that went 5 – 3. That’s something like a .625 winning percentage! But those 63 earned runs hurt when you are trying to keep up with the four teams ahead of the Rosebuds. Newcomber Sean Newcomb didn’t help with his 7.3 ip, 11 er — the ‘Buds had to allocate him at 50% anyway, to supplement the equally 50%-allocated Johnny Cueto and his 9.00 ERA. With Robby Scott (13.50 ERA over 3.3 innings) and Blake Parker (9.00 ERA over 3 innings) — there were just too many bad outings to hide them all. On the other hand, a couple of middle infielders — Carlos Correa at 1.598 OPS including 4 h0mers, and Brad Miller 1.434 OPS involving 9 carefully chosen ABs — led the offense to a competitive performance.
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Kaline: W 4, L 4; 34 – 33. (.244, .307, .416; 79.3 ip, 32 er, 3.63 ERA). Yulieski Gurriel (1.417 OPS) joined stalwarts Kris Bryant (1.048) and Aaron Judge (1.152) atop the Drive offense, although they didn’t get much support from the rest of the lineup. Kaline cleverly confined its pitching disasters to low-innings guys Hendriks (3 ip, 4 er), Lamet (4 ip, 5 er) and McFarland (1 ip, 2 er) so the rest of the staff could cover for all the slumping hitters, allowing the Drive to tread water for the week.
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Peshastin: W 6, L 2; 35 – 20. (.261, .317, .432; 90.7 ip, 33 er, 3.28 ERA). New Pear Corey Kluber delivered: 13 ip, 2 er. This helped to make up for Sam Giviglio’s rough week (11 ip, 10 er), leading to a successful week despite middling offense. Did I say successful? Yes — because when your first place team goes 7 – 2 (and probably a little better than that), then almost keeping up is successful… unless, of course, you’re trying to win a pennant.
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Old Detroit: W 8, L 1; 84 – 25. (.342, .395, .606; 80.7 ip, 28 er, 3.12 ERA). Newly-drafted Paul DeJong has been absolutely unleashed after being liberated by the Wolverines. He is one of seven Old Detroit hitters over 1.000 OPS for the month, with three more over .900 and two more over .800 — that leaves only one under .800 (Steve Pearce at .598). My hitters are finally on a roll — and NOW we have this stupid All-Star Game break? How about we skip it this year?
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Canberra: W 4, L 4; 32 – 33. (.246, .317, .388; 64.7 ip, 27 er, 3.76 ERA). The W’s stated goal for the rest of the year was to terrorize as much of the league as possible. But so far it’s been a complete failure, as far as I can tell. The W’s blew past the ‘Roos so fast they probably neither saw it or felt it. They might be feeling the sudden collapse of Dellin Betances (3 ip, 5 er), but maybe they are consoled by Alex Bregman’s blossoming in the form of an Edgar Martinez Week (.321, .424, .571).
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DC: W 4, L 4; 43 – 44. (.278, .350, .454; 69.0 ip, 36 er, 470 ERA). Among the better draft-day pickups: infielder Pat Valaika, who posted a 1.125 OPS for the week. Among the better trade pick-ups: Mike Clevinger, who has pitched 12 innings so far in July, allowing 1 earned run. I think the days of newby vulnerability are over for the Balk, if they ever even existed.
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Final note: I may be slow, but I’m not completely stationary: I have (just now) figured out why our teams did so well this week: We had one of the longest delays ever in setting rosters and allocations. With the All-Star break, this month is only 28 days long — and we set allocations on the 9th, 1/3 of the way through the month. This is why our performances over the week run from a low of .500 baseball all the way to a nine-game winning streak. Such late starts to the month will ruin our game if we make them a habit, because we give ourselves a benefit no MLB team has: hindsight.