Not I. Not I as owner of the Wolverins.. t This morning I, with the “help” of BP and Dave’s database, produced four different standings. The first showed the Dragons up by over a game. The second showed them in fourth place, 1.4 games back. The third showed them in third place, 0.6 games back (but with a better win-loss record than the Cheese or Tornados). Then we got a fourth with the Dragons 0.8 games up.
These are the correct standings. The winning percentage fits the record, and the Dragons’ Friday performance, and so does the Dragons’ position atop the standings. The first faulty standings were caused by me not noticing I had loaded the Dragons’ entire season’s stats from BP even though I am supposed to be using only stats since July 1. The second were the result of me loading July Dragon stats but not realizing Dave’s database wouldn’t erase the season stats for the players who haven’t appeared for the Dragons in July… some of them dragged the Dragons down considerably. The third standings PARTLY reflected my ham-handed attempts to delete from July the Dragons who hadn’t appeared in July. The database got the record right, but not the games behind. The final record reflects Dave resetting the Dragons’ July stats so I could work from a clean slate.
I am NOT trying to break the spirit of the Tornados or Cheese (or Alleghenys, who were ahead of the Dragons in the second iteration of the standings). Sure, broken Tornado (or Cheese or Allegheny) hearts make for good update copy, but even I wouldn’t stoop that low just to boost readership. It all stemmed from me being a little too hasty with the update we have all been waiting for. I will try to be more careful in the future.
On the upside – I caught and partially corrected the error myself because I’ve built in several layers of safeguards. Unfortunately, I can’t see some of them until I post a set of standings visible on the EFL website.
Anyway: Here are the standings for today.
| EFL | ||||||
| Team | Wins | Losses | Pct. | GB | RS | RA |
| Haviland Dragons | 59 | 31 | .657 | — | 551.6 | 398.1 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 58 | 32 | .647 | 0.8 | 466.5 | 341.5 |
| Cottage Cheese | 59 | 33 | .645 | 0.8 | 507.7 | 370.6 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 57 | 31 | .642 | 1.6 | 503.5 | 370.3 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 55 | 36 | .603 | 4.7 | 542.0 | 430.8 |
| Kaline Drive | 53 | 37 | .593 | 5.7 | 465.8 | 384.9 |
| Peshastin Pears | 53 | 38 | .584 | 6.4 | 441.8 | 379.2 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 44 | 46 | .492 | 14.8 | 431.0 | 411.1 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 41 | 48 | .459 | 17.8 | 404.9 | 443.8 |
| D.C. Balk | 33 | 56 | .371 | 25.6 | 439.7 | 573.8 |
Haviland: L, 3 – 5. (.200, .333, .333; 16.3 ip, 9 er). Kevin Gausman sank the Dragons with his 3 ip, 8 er outing. Lucky for him (and the team) debutant Jacob Faria spun a 6.7 ip, 1 er. gem.
Flint Hill: L, 0 – 10. (.214, .261, .262; 16.3 ip, 11 er). Given the choice of “run for the ages” or “colossal melt”, the majority of the Tornado electorate seems to be opting for the melt, at least in these early returns. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow, right? Maybe a Dragon starter will be out of gas. Maybe Trout will go 1 for 5 again.
Cottage: “L”, 3 – 2. (.275, .356, .510; 6 ip, 0 er). Mike Trout returned. And even though he only managed a single in 5 trips to the plate, his team still managed to catch the Tornados and cut the Dragons’ lead by 33%.
Pittsburgh: W, 5 – 2. (.289, .325, .421; 3 ip, 0 er). Pittsburgh was spotted for a split second in third place, despite an unremarkable offense. But there is bad news ahead. Steven Piscotty has been hiding on Pittsburgh’s Baseball Prospectus “watched list” instead of the active list. His .171, .216, .200 batting line will start counting with the next update, retroactive to July 1. We may not get a four-team melee atop the standings after all — although it would sure be fun.
Portland: L, 5 – 13. (.261, .320, .500; 9.7 ip, 13 er). Ouch. Jon Gray quadruple chulked (2 ip, 8 er), and Jose Berrios (1.7 ip, 2 er) and Johnny Cueto (4.0 ip, 3 er) didn’t help. Yasiel Puig’s two homers were nowhere near enough to make up for the damage. So Portland missed a golden opportunity to join the scrum atop the league.
Kaline: L, 7 – 11. (.298, .353, .489; 11 ip, 11 er). The Drive followed the Rosebud’s path, with slightly better hitting and slightly less bad pitching. No one chulked, but Nick Pivetta’s 9 er in 5 ip more than undid James Paxton’s solid 2 er in 6 ip.
Peshastin: 1 – 7. (.147, .194, .147; 8.3 ip, 6 er). Carlos Carrasco stumbled (6.3 ip, 5 er) and the offense toppled. Still, the Pears inched 0.1 games closer to first place. With 71 games left to play, 0.1 games a day gets the Pears to first place with almost two weeks to spare.
Old Detroit: W, 11 – 6. (.349, .404, .674 — Happy EMD!; 6.3 ip, 4 er). Clayton Richard tried to sabotage the day (5.7 ip, 4 er), but the Tornados’ Phil Maton stopped the bleeding in San Diego (thank you very much) while the W’s Shane Greene did the same in Old Detroit. That allowed the Wolverines to enjoy their fine day at the plate. For the month, of 14 Wolverine batters, 13 are OPSing at least .751, and 8 are over 1.000. The 14th batter is Kolten Wong, who was 0 for 3 in his first game off the DL.
Canberra: W, 4 – 3. (.235, .278, .412; 14 ip, 5 er). Good pitching and ok hitting led by Michael Conforto’s 2 for 4 with a homer and two walks produced a win, and a full game lift in the standings. Wouldn’t it be fun to see the EFL’s mammals both get back over the .500 mark real soon? We’re all mammals here, right? So of course we all root for mammalian success, right?
DC: W, 9 – 6. (.278, .395, .639; 2 ip, 1 er). The other day I noted that every team was within range of a truly colossal but not unprecedented melt by the Dragons. And lo! the first melted drop is oozing down the Haviland ice cream cone! ButI warned the Balk that, at 26 games back, they were on the very edge of historical precedent for a swing in the standings that would put them ahead of the Dragons. Even so, I bet if you asked the Balk-in-Chief whether he was planning to pass the Dragons this year, he’d pooh-pooh the idea. Nothing could be further from his thoughts. And yet… look what the Balk did yesterday. They cut their deficit to the Dragons by 2 full games. They’ll run those fiery lizards down before the end of the month, at that rate. And they moved o.4 games closer to first place.