What I found in Seattle

(stats for games Wednesday through Friday)

Cottage:  W 2, L 1; 18 – 12. (.276, .363, .520; 17.3 ip, 12 er). All is going according to plan. Trout is back (although he only went 2 for 5 with a homer and three walks), and the Cheese are back in front (although this is mostly due to having played 3 more games than the Dragons).

        My apologies to those of you whose team names are not faunal.  I didn’t get much info on you on this last scouting trip. I did go the store later on Thursday for Parmesan Cheese.  But after a long day at the zoo, and having missed my afternoon nap, I wasn’t alert enough to check out the Cottage Cheese while I was at the store.

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Haviland: W 1, L 1; 18 – 19. (.306, .381, .553;   31.3 ip,, 22 er).  All this time we’ve been seeing the Dragons as huge, fiery, fierce beings, something like this:

But I went to the Woodland Park Zoo Thursday with Melanie, Ben, Sam, Enzo and Mateo. We saw what a Dragon really looks like:

I was standing two feet from it. It was lying on a floor almost as high as my waist.  Notice I am looking down at it. It’s long — maybe five feet? — and I wouldn’t try to pick it up and pet it. But it’s not giant. Do you think something like this could breathe fire? Or fly? Or stop a Tornado? Sure it could eat quite a bit of Cheese, and perhaps scale a Mountain, or demolish a Rose or a Pear or, um, do something to a Drive. But a Wolverine could take it, and a Kangaroo could leap it, and a Balk could… award it a free base.  So why are we hiding so deep in the standings from a mere Dragon?  Come on, all you wussies. Dare to pass the Dragons!  (This was written before I realized the Cheese had already met the challenge.)

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Commissioner’s Note: We clearly need to update the Dragon logo and color scheme. Peach and grey seems about right.

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Pittsburgh: W 2, L 0;  9 – 9.  (That’s really 9.6 – 9.2, so those wins were super finely sliced.) (.266, .310, .457;  25.7 ip, 14 er).  Look, I am a sensitive guy.  We saw Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Rainier, and even a glimpse of Mt. Baker on this trip. Plus all the Olympics. I didn’t take any pictures.  I didn’t want all that grandeur to embarrass your poor altitude-challenged Alleghenys.

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Flint Hill:  W 1, L 2; 18 – 23. (.271, .322, .439; 36.3 ip, 26 er). I wrote a sympathy card for the Tornados on Wednesday.  It still seems appropos. I will note that AJ Pollock was one of the three Diamondbacks to hit back-to-back-to-back homers off Max Scherzer last night to start off the game. Haviland’s Jake Lamb was another one.  But it still required a walk-off single from Pittsburgh’s Brandon Drury for the D-backs to beat the Nationals. I love it when EFL’ers dominate the box scores..

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Portland: W 2, L 1; 18-11. (..300, .358, .455; 23.7 ip, 9 er). We also saw many Rosebuds, but any pictures I would have taken are out of date now, since none of them would have shown what the Rosebuds will look like in a few days when the great Manny Machado joins the team. Rosebud management had impeccable timing, inquiring about Machado just as the Wolverine pitching staff was putting the finishing touches on its 3-day Bonfire of the Wolverine Vanity (see below).

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Kaline: W 1, L 1; 10 – 12. (.268, .336, .443; 24.7 ip, 14 er). The whole trip was a long Drive. And I mean “long.”  It took us six hours to get from Wilsonville to the Ballard district in Seattle, what with traffic and uncoordinated potty stops for the two pre-schoolers (and most of the adults).  It took five and a half hours to get home from Seattle, including a forty-five minute gas/lunch/potty stop.  Why is it taking so long these days? People.  More people are turning out for the Drive than ever before — millions of them, dwarfing all the other EFL teams put together.  Drive fans are filling Drive venues to capacity and beyond.  Can Drive management turn this massive popularity into wonderful experience for Drive fans?   Of course, if Michael Fulmer keeps turning in near-chulks (2.7 ip, 5 er this time), the problem might just go away.

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Peshastin: W 1, L 2; 13 – 16. (.274, .314, .453; 26 ip, 16 er) While I was at the grocery store Thursday evening, I probably walking right past some of last year’s Pears at exorbitant prices. I didn’t think to get pictures, not even of Max Scherzer’s rare bad day (5 ip, 5 er)..

Old Detroit: W 0 , L 3; 12 – 32. (.242, .302, .388; 30.7 ip, 26 er). So far only the Rosebuds have had a three day ERA under about 5. The W’s managed a three-day ERA over replacement value.

       We here in Old Detroit kind of lost our heads earlier this month, when we got to July 16th with an OPS for the month over 1.000 and an ERA in the mid-3’s.  We got within 15 games of first place (after starting the month 17 back) and we looked unstoppable.  Could we make an historic run from 17 back to claim the pennant?  We sure could, with those kind of numbers.  But Clayton Richard and Francisco Liriano put a dent in our dream wth back-to-back sucky outings. And Friday evening Alex Wood went only 4.7 ip, ushering in 7 earned runs, including 4 on a grand slam hit by the opposing pitcher. His storybook 2017 season came crashing down on him, burying his dreams and ours in one fell swoop.

I hadn’t realized how bad things are for the Wolverines until I saw this sign at the zoo:

The Zoo collects quarters and pays them to people to study my Wolverines! (Who else qualifies as a “local” Wolverine?)  But this scouting isn’t intended to help competitors.  As the headline clearly states, the purpose is to find ways to help the Wolverines — who are struggling to survive!  How did the Zoo know about the Wolverines’ pathetic situation, languishing in 8th place, miles from the Pears? And why didn’t they start earlier? They are already to0 late to help Old Detroit  keep Manny Machado.

Also, Enzo looked at that picture and declared the Wolverine “cute.”  Gah! He said he wanted a stuffed one to take home and cuddle. “No, no, that’s impossible, Enzo!” I wanted to say. “It will slay you in your sleep!”  But I refrained. It would have been cruel, and this year, untrue. I realized that my poor Wolverines really do need cuddling! And help, even a quarter at a time. (Send your contributions to the Wolverines via the Woodland Park Zoo.) But the zoo store didn’t have any wolverines, so Enzo went to sleep that night cuddling with his new jaguar instead.

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Canberra: W 1, L 1; 9 – 10. (.270, .327, .427; 18.3 ip, 8 er). What wonderful pitching! What a sparkling 3.93 ERA!  And yet the Kangaroos couldn’t outscore their foes. I think I know why.

        Toward the end of our day at the zoo the little boys were getting tired.  But I wasn’t done.  There was still one species in the zoo I needed to scout:  the Kangaroos.  So I promised a ride on the carrousel if everyone would just walk to the opposite corner of the zoo to see the kangaroos.  And here’s what I found:

See how perky the ‘Roo is in this picture? How ready to tango it is? Its vim and verve? Yeah, well, we didn’t see any kangaroos looking like that.

Here is what we saw:

No, the one on the right is not dead. But it didn’t move the whole time I watched him other than twitching to shoo off the gathering flies. The one on the left looked equally morbid  for most of the time, but here I caught it pathetically attempting to stand up.

The ‘Roos are in sad shape.  They need help worse than the Wolverines do.  I will give them all the quarters you donate via the “Save the Wolverines” drive.

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DC: W 1, L 1; 11 – 15. (.286; .355, .321; 4ip, 4 er.)  We didn’t see any Balks. Even if we had gone to Thursday evening’s game, we wouldn’t have seen any. Well, no, I take all that back. Now that I think of it, we saw thousands of balks… on I-5!  Hours of balks. Bumper-to-bumper balking, in Portland, Chehalis, Centralia, Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle proper. Except in these balks people were not allowed to reach the next base without waiting in line.  I prefer the DC brand of Balk.