League Updates Uncategorized

Huh

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published at 9:01 Thursday evening. I forgot to categorize it as a league update.  My apologies.

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Our standings disappeared into a long, dark tunnel on the morning of August 1 — 8 days ago.  At that time, the Wolverines had just slipped into first place, and looked precarious in that post.

Well, our league just came out of the tunnel, and what do you know?

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EFL Standings for 2018
EFL
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB RS RA
Old Detroit Wolverines 72 43 .622 552.6 421.1
Portland Rosebuds 69 47 .599 2.6 590.1 476.9
Brookland Outs 67 47 .591 3.6 601.6 508.4
Canberra Kangaroos 62 52 .541 9.3 519.3 482.0
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 61 52 .539 9.6 587.8 553.7
Cottage Cheese 61 53 .531 10.4 580.9 544.4
Flint Hill Tornadoes 59 56 .512 12.6 517.8 502.3
Kaline Drive 59 56 .509 12.9 516.6 504.0
Haviland Dragons 58 57 .507 13.2 519.6 510.5
Peshastin Pears 54 62 .463 18.3 490.4 531.7
D.C. Balk 48 66 .424 22.7 479.4 561.0
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Old Detroit: W 6, L 0; 47 – 17.  (343 PA, .294, .359, .497; 83.7 ip, 29 er, 3.12 ERA) The W’s started August unbelievably hot at the plate, OPSing over 1.000 all four days. They’ve cooled off some since then, but that raw .855 OPS (.914 in the EFL after allocations) is miraculously high from the Old Detroit point of view.  Ohtani is OPSing 1.400 — that’s not a shocker. But Mallex Smith at 1.177? (I offered him in several trades earlier in the season… whew!) Austin Hedges at 1.131? Nick Ahmed at .994?  Kolten Wong at .974?  Maybe you can see why I still feel this is all tentative and precarious. That 3.12 ERA is pretty sweet, though, especially since it was relatively easy to subtract 5 ip, 5 er from that figure by leaving Clayton Richard inactive, dropping the team ERA most of the way to its 2.62 EFL level.  How are the two Iglesiases doing?  Jose is doing sort of ok: .296, .296, .4o7. But Raisel crashed badly in an early outing (0.3 ip, 3 er) and has had to work hard to get his ERA down to 13.50.
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Portland;  W 4, L 3; 30 – 24. (316 PA, .236, .326, .380; 75.3 ip, 31 er, 3.70 ERA). Mookie Betts is still doing his thing — .375, .500, .667. — but the rest of the lineup is mostly going through the doldrums, especially JT Realmut0 (1 for 23 for an .087 OPS). The pitching is better, with only Sonny Gray struggling over more than one inning (5.7 ip, 7 er).  Fortunately, his kinsman Jon Gray is his teammate now, and his 8 ip, 1 er brings the Gray ERA down to just under 5.50. Can the Rosebuds get back to their roots and recover their EFL lead?  Of course… except…
Brookland: W 6, L 2; 30 – 13. (318 PA, .224, .308, .356; 79.3 ip, 17 er, 1.93 ERA)… except the Outs are even hotter than the Wolverines. They’ve gained a half game on the W’s despite the 2 losses they seem to be carrying. (I am pretty sure I could show you how rounding errors account for this apparent anomaly). Clearly the Outs are riding their pitching during this surge. Bartolo Colon (5.14 ERA) is the only pitcher with an era above 3.38 in August.  Arrieta, Moronta, Oh, Peacock, Robertson and Rodon have contributed a combined 27 scoreless innings. This strikes me as almost as improbable as the W’s sudden hitting prowess.  So we have some interesting things to watch — can the W’s keep hitting so improbably? The ‘Buds regain their June/July form? Or the O’s keep pitching so improbably? One problem for the Outs: they don’t have any players who share the same last name.
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Canberra: W 3, L 4; 30 – 39. (313 PA, .246, .313, .394; 59.3 ip, 37 er, 5.61 ERA).  The new standings are great news for the W’s and the O’s, bad news for the Rosebuds, but probably even more discouraging for the Kangaroos.  Canberra has been in the pennant race picture pretty much all season. They had drifted back to 6.2 games out by August 1 — but now, just 8 days later, they find themselves 50% further from the top. Can they pull themselves back into the race?  Paxton’s pitching well right now, as I type this Thursday evening, but has just lost a batter on a very questionable call… bases are now loaded with 2 outs in the bottom of the 6th)…
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Pittsburgh: W 5, L 2; 27 – 15. (241 PA, .241, .303, .406; 59.7 ip, 15 er, 2.26 ERA). The Alleghenys are running their offense pretty lean, with just barely enough PA’s to avoid replacements — if all the allocations were perfectly tuned.  They’re not — a replacement has taken 5 PAs for the A’s at shortstop.  Nevertheless, the Alleghenys ran down the Cheese while we were in the tunnel, and are breathing down the necks of the Kangaroos. JD Martinez is leading the August Allegheny offense with an awesome .462, .517, .885 line. His sidekick is Jurickson Profar (.280, .379, .600).  Adalberto Mejia is anchoring an amazing Allegheny pitching squad with 10 ip, 0 er. Dereck Rodriguez has produced 7 scoreless innings to, and Ryan Borucki 8 more in a series of relief appearances.
… Paxton just gave up 2 runs in the 6th, making it 4 earned runs in 5.7 innings..  Not good news in Canberra. There are still 2 Paxton runners on base… But the relief pitcher got the third out.
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Cottage: W 3, L 5; 33 – 45. (263 PA, .230, .304, .443; 52.7 ip, 32 er, 5.47 ERA). Franklin Barreto’s August OPS is 2.500 — but that’s in only 4 plate appearances. Yasmani Grandal, with 26 PA’s and a 1.028 OPS featuring 3 homers.  But the rest of the Cheese hitters leave the team with only mediocre offense. Match that with disappointing pitching, in which only Yonny Chirinos has surrendered an earned run.  He pitched 5 shutout innings, but every other Cottage  pitcher — whether appearing for as little as 1.7 innings or as many as 12.7 — has surrendered at least one run. In fact, all but Jose Alvarado (in 3 innings) have coughed up at least 2 earned runs. In fact, other than Scott Alexander (2 er  in 3.3 ip) , all the rest have hand-delivered at least 3 earned runs… again, when they’ve pitched as few as 1.7 innings.  Here’s what the Cheese need to do: get at least one, and even better both, of their two Diazes into the majors. They were climbing the standings steadily until about July 24, when Yandy Diaz was sent to the minors. Isan Diaz has been there all along.  Correlation isn’t causation, blah, blah, blah — but it also isn’t causation unless it’s correlation, so… huh.
Flint Hill: W 3, L 3; 20 – 20. (213 PA, .219, .291, .328; 55 ip, 17 er, 2.78 ERA).  It’s hard to keep track of the Tornados.  They traded away 12 players for 10 players in the 17 days between July 22 and August 7.   They traded away an entire starting rotation (Paxton, Ray, Bieber, Archer, Gray) and acquired another one (Archer, Urias, Gausman, Sheffield, Espinoza). Every position on the field lost and/or gained a traded player. Put it all together and you get — .500 baseball, about what they’ve been doing all year. Maybe they should open the Barnes door a little wider: Austin has only 6 plate appearances, and Matt only 2 innings pitched.
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Kaline: W 3, L 3; 18 – 22. (241 PA, .258, .311, .457; 59 ip, 33 er, 5.03 ERA)  Steve Pearce. Sigh. I traded him away last off-season in a desperate attempt to get some salary cap room for Ohtani.  It worked, but Pearce has been punishing me ever since.  This time it’s because he is the  August offensive leader for the Drive:  .333, .467, 1.333. That’s 4 homers there in that 1.333. 4 homers in 15 plate appearances.  On the other hand Brian Johnson — whom I could have had instead of Ryan Schimpf in return for Pearce and Jorge Soler — pitched 12 innings but allowed 9 earned runs so far in August. There’s been a little too much of that kind of pitching in Kaline this month.
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Haviland: W 4, L 2; 29 – 18. (242 PA, .255, .355, .490; 59 ip, 21 er, 3.20 ERA).  The Dragons have had a good opening week in August. Bryce Harper has been his old self : .367, .457, .767.  Yasiel Puig (1.081) and Steven Souza (1.014) have brought their good bats to the plate. Avila, Sano, and Soto have been chipping in at over .900 OPSes.  And the pitching has been great, other than Taylor Williams’ sextuple chulk (0.7 ip, 4 er). Take that out of the Dragon’s pitching stats, and their August ERA drops to 2.62 — which happens to be exactly the Haviland August ERA through August 8. They’re no dummies there in Haviland.
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Peshastin: W 5, L 2; 32 – 21. (317 PA, .266, .315, .515; 49 ip, 11 er, 2.02 ERA).  The Pears, I presume, are gearing their draft planning toward having a pick in the middle of the draft, given how their team keeps floating up toward the .500 surface.  This isn’t how the book tells you to do a rebuild, but the Pears are resourceful. If the trio of Gallo (1.386), Diaz (1.185) and Baez (1.121) keep it up, .500 is attainable before the end of the month. And with the highest ERA in the pitching staff being only 5.40 (Wade Miley – no surprise there), the pitching is there for a late season surge, too.
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DC: W 4, L 3; 24 – 28. (347 PA, .273, .340, .389; 72 ip, 29 er, 3.62 ERA).  The Balk lead the league in something!  It’s Sacrifice Flies for the month of August, with 3. If they left Kyle Barraclough (2 ip, 7 er) and Alex Wilson (2.7 ip, 4 er) inactive, they’d almost lead the EFL in team ERA with 2.42. A rotation of Bundy, Carrasco, Clevinger, Cobb, and Musgrove would have a 1.88 ERA.  Meanwhile, Andrew Benintendi would lead the B’s in offense with his 1.200 OPS for the month … except utility player Isiah Kiner-Falefa outdid him with a 1.203 OPS!
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Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2018
AL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Boston Red Sox 81 34 .704
New York Yankees 71 42 .628 9
Old Detroit Wolverines 72 43 .622 9.5
Flint Hill Tornadoes 59 56 .512 22.1
Tampa Bay Rays 57 57 .500 23.5
Toronto Blue Jays 51 62 .451 29
Baltimore Orioles 35 79 .307 45.5
NL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Philadelphia Phillies 64 50 .561
Atlanta Braves 62 49 .559 0.5
Canberra Kangaroos 62 52 .541 2.3
Washington Nationals 58 56 .509 6
D.C. Balk 48 66 .424 15.7
New York Mets 47 65 .420 16
Miami Marlins 47 69 .405 18
AL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Cleveland Indians 63 50 .558
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 61 52 .539 2.1
Minnesota Twins 53 60 .469 10
Detroit Tigers 47 68 .409 17
Chicago White Sox 41 73 .360 22.5
Kansas City Royals 35 79 .307 28.5
NL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Brookland Outs 67 47 .591
Chicago Cubs 66 48 .579 1.4
Milwaukee Brewers 66 51 .564 2.9
Cottage Cheese 61 53 .531 6.8
St. Louis Cardinals 60 55 .522 7.9
Pittsburgh Pirates 59 56 .513 8.9
Cincinnati Reds 50 65 .435 17.9
AL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Houston Astros 73 42 .635
Oakland A’s 68 47 .591 5
Seattle Mariners 65 50 .565 8
Kaline Drive 59 56 .509 14.4
Haviland Dragons 58 57 .507 14.7
Los Angeles Angels 58 58 .500 15.5
Texas Rangers 51 65 .440 22.5
NL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Portland Rosebuds 69 47 .599
Arizona Diamondbacks 64 52 .552 5.4
Los Angeles Dodgers 63 52 .548 5.9
Colorado Rockies 60 54 .526 8.4
San Francisco Giants 57 58 .496 11.9
Peshastin Pears 54 62 .463 15.7
San Diego Padres 45 71 .388 24.4