Our garbage disposal won’t drain. I have tried several things to get the water flowing again — running hot water, using the plunger, etc. The other half of the sink drains fine.
When this happened before I got things moving somehow with a combination of vigorous plunging and high flows of water simultaneously in both halves of the sink. But this time nothing is working. I will probably have to disconnect drains and pull out the wad of egg shells and orange peels (if it’s my fault) and potato skins (if it’s Melanie’s fault). This will be a yucky, hours-long job. I figured I’d better do this update before I move on to that phase of the project.
Although I don’t know if I will be able to tell the difference between this update and the kitchen sink. The Wolverines are about as disgusting as my garbage disposal drain…
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EFL Standings for 2019
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Portland Rosebuds | 93 | 51 | .648 | — | 910.9 | 671.1 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 90 | 53 | .628 | 3 | 896.0 | 677.1 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 85 | 58 | .591 | 8.2 | 842.5 | 696.0 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 79 | 63 | .556 | 13.3 | 761.1 | 667.1 |
| Peshastin Pears | 76 | 68 | .531 | 16.8 | 748.3 | 704.6 |
| Haviland Dragons | 74 | 69 | .516 | 19 | 797.4 | 767.4 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 73 | 70 | .512 | 19.5 | 800.4 | 784.9 |
| Kaline Drive | 68 | 75 | .479 | 24.3 | 674.8 | 704.2 |
| Cottage Cheese | 63 | 79 | .442 | 29.5 | 787.3 | 874.3 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 62 | 80 | .438 | 30.1 | 652.8 | 743.4 |
| Brookland Outs | 60 | 82 | .426 | 31.8 | 695.6 | 810.8 |
| D.C. Balk | 57 | 86 | .398 | 35.9 | 632.2 | 782.3 |
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Portland: L, 2 – 3. (57 PA, .200, .293, .220; 6 ip, 3 er 4.50 ERA).
Not a stellar day, and it allowed the Tornados to keep their hopes aflame. There were plenty of hitters, but not much hitting. Charlie Morton wasn’t shiny, either, but these days a 4.50 ERA would be welcome news to many an EFL owner.
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Flint Hill: W, 9 – 2. (32 PA, .292, .406, .708; 10.3 ip, 2 er, 1.74 ERA)
I will, of course, never take sides in the Johnson-clan’s internal wars. But it’s hard not to notice that only one of the two teams left in the race looked like an EFL champion team yesterday. Jose Abreu’s rare 4.750 OPS led the way, reflecting how his two plate appearances produced a home run and a sacrifice fly. Debs Aaron Civale and Tony Gonsolin combined for 9 ip, 2 er to key the defense.
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Old Detroit: “W”, 3 – 6. (59 PA, .220, .339, .380; 16 ip, 9 er, 5.06 ERA)
My team looked so much like the Rosebuds yesterday, the W’s only lost 0.1 games in the standings. See all the hitters? 16 of them. See all the pitchers? 4 of them. The only thing missing was actual hitting and pitching. Actually, the W’s have been clogged all summer, lots of spinning and grinding and nothing happening to their place in the standings. I tried to unclog them this morning by asking the Commissioner to please sack Plesac, and reward Austin Hedges with an early offseason… but these moves did not unclog the drain, so the Wolverine sink is full of floating gruck. (And yes, the Commissioner’s Office has declared the Wolverines out of the pennant race. A week into September having made not even a tiny dent in an 8+ game deficit costs your team a place on the debate stage.)
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Pittsburgh: W, 4 – (-2). (32 PA, .233, .281, .433; 9 ip, 0 er)
9 ip, 0 er? Who does this anymore? In Pittsburgh they did it with a committee: Alex Young for 8 innings, Derek Holland for 0 innings (issuing a walk) and Shaun Anderson to strike out the last two hitters and keep Holland from ruining everything. It’s amazing in this day and age! But it was not Saturday’s most amazing team pitching performance.
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Peshastin: “L”, 4 – 3. (35 PA, .172, .314, .379; 2 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA)
No, this isn’t the more amazing pitching performance, either. But it must be nice to get even 2 scoreless innings — I wouldn’t know anything about that. But as nice as it was, it wasn’t quite enough with the batters hitting like Wolverines.
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Haviland: W 2, L (-1); 9 – 0. (34 PA, .345, .441, .586; 6.7 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA)
What is going on here!? Three teams in a row with 0 earned runs allowed. Even Yu Darvish (termed a “disaster” by his owner just a week or two ago) got into the act with 5 spotless innings, striking out 7 and walking only 1. Is this contagious? Where can I go to get infected? But this STILL is not the most amazing pitching performance in the EFL. Although it was VERY nice for Haviland, especially in conjunction with hitting like Edgar Martinez on a good day, with six batters OPSing between 1.000 and 1.800 (Bader 1.350, Laureano 1.667, Nimmo 1.000 [a pinch hit walk], Puig 1.500, G. Sanchez 1.800, and Wong 1.000). All this with no Dragon homers (nor homers allowed). It’s nice to see in this homer-besotted season. It’s also interesting to see two out of three Johnson-owned teams look like champions for a day.
Canberra: W, 9 – 0. (51 PA, .279, .392, .581; 11 ip, 0 er).
Here is the most amazing, most stunning team pitching performance of the day — and maybe the season. Joey Lucchesi pitched 6 strong innings, 0 earned runs. After him came a string of 5 pitchers, in alphabetic order according to BP: May, Poche, Puk, Yates, and Zamora. Every one of them pitched 1 inning and allowed 0 earned runs. On my BP chart it looks like this:
| Joey Lucchesi | 6.0 | 0 | 0.00 | 3.02 | |||||||||||||
| Dustin May | 1.0 | 0 | 0.00 | 1.19 | |||||||||||||
| Colin Poche | 1.0 | 0 | 0.00 | 4.22 | |||||||||||||
| A.J. Puk | 1.0 | 0 | 0.00 | -0.78 | |||||||||||||
| Kirby Yates | 1.0 | 0 | 0.00 | -0.81 | |||||||||||||
| Daniel Zamora | 1.0 | 0 | 0.00 | 3.19 |
I emptied the distracting irrelevant cells, except for the last column which is for Baseball Prospectus’ FIP stat. As you can see, BP was much less impressed with Colin Poche, seeing him as about as a good as a Wolverine ace, as they were with Puk and Yates, both of whom (according to BP) would suck runs away like Count Rugen’s torture machine. Negative runs is, of course, a patented EFL invention, so we should be awash in royalties any day now.
With all this goodness, you might think this was a Johnson team. It isn’t — unless Ryan has defected seeking greener competitive pastures.
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Kaline: L, 1 – 2. (54 PA, .163, . 241, .184; 8 ip, 1 er, 1.12 ERA)
So close! Adam Wainwright let someone score an earned run, or the Drive would have been the fifth EFL team in a row to shut out their opponents. Omar Narvaez homered and walked in four plate appearances to be the highlight of the Wizard’s “offense”.
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Cottage: W 2, L (-1); 5 – (-3). (31 PA, .286, .355, .464; 13 ip, 1 er, 0.69 ERA)
Inconceivable! We’ve gone six teams down the list since the last pitching staff (Old Detroit) that allowed more than one earned run. The Cheese got almost two games worth of EFL pitching (we only require 7 ip per game to avoid replacements). Drew Smyly covered an entire game with no earned runs, and Danny Duffy came within an inning and a run of duplicating the performance. Drew Smyly and Danny Duffy! These names do not feature prominently in Cy Young conversations this year. I have at least 5 starters with more hype than them. The Cheese have several themselves. This is hard to take.
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Bellingham: L, 2 – 4. (3o PA, .160, .300, .200; 6.7 ip, 1 er, 1.35 ERA)
Ok, Ok, this is a joke, right? You all got together and sent BP some money and they sent me this bogus set of updates in which every team except mine (and the Johnson Bros) get miraculously good pitching. This time it was Gio Gonzales (who USED to be a Wolverine) giving up a solo homer in 5 innings, and the mighty Caleb Ferguson and Craig Stammen cleaning up afterward. I do appreciate, Andre, you having Cascade hitters hit like Wolverines so I can still feel like my team is sort of in this league. (Oh, and my condolences. It must not have been all that pleasant to have Dave go blasting back in front of you all at once like that.)
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Brookland: L, 2 – 7. (16 PA, .200, .250, .467; 1 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA)
Et tu, Brooks, eh? But I can see what you did here — you got your one sparkling inning from Nick Anderson and then shut things down. It doesn’t really help. You didn’t have a stable of paid professional pitchers leaving a cesspool of earned runs in your kitchen sink.
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DC: L, 3 – 7. (39 PA, .179, .273, .359; 2.3 ip, 1 er, 3.86 ERA)
I give up. All the way to the bottom of the league, counting all NINE teams behind the Wolverines, five of them got shutout pitching Saturday, and the other 4 only allowed 1 run each. In total: 59.7 ip, 4 earned runs, for an ERA of 0.60. Josh James gave me a scoreless inning, and Yusei Kikuchi did 5 innings with 1 earned run, earning him a hasty call-up to the “big league” Wolverine squad. But really what I should do is liberate those two so they can run free in the meadows and glens of the lower 3/4 of the league where they would be among their own kind, and wouldn’t have to wade through fantasy messes like the real-life one I have to go clean up now.
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Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2014
| AL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| New York Yankees | 93 | 50 | .650 | — |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 90 | 53 | .628 | 3.2 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 85 | 58 | .591 | 8.5 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 85 | 59 | .590 | 8.5 |
| Boston Red Sox | 76 | 66 | .535 | 16.5 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 55 | 88 | .385 | 38 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 46 | 96 | .324 | 46.5 |
| NL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Atlanta Braves | 89 | 54 | .622 | — |
| Washington Nationals | 78 | 63 | .553 | 10 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 73 | 68 | .518 | 15 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 73 | 70 | .512 | 15.7 |
| New York Mets | 72 | 69 | .511 | 16 |
| D.C. Balk | 57 | 86 | .398 | 32.2 |
| Miami Marlins | 50 | 91 | .355 | 38 |
| AL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Minnesota Twins | 88 | 54 | .620 | — |
| Cleveland Indians | 82 | 61 | .573 | 6.5 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 79 | 63 | .556 | 9 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 62 | 80 | .438 | 25.9 |
| Chicago White Sox | 62 | 80 | .437 | 26 |
| Kansas City Royals | 53 | 90 | .371 | 35.5 |
| Detroit Tigers | 42 | 99 | .298 | 45.5 |
| NL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 80 | 62 | .563 | — |
| Chicago Cubs | 76 | 65 | .539 | 3.5 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 73 | 68 | .518 | 6.5 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 66 | 77 | .462 | 14.5 |
| Cottage Cheese | 63 | 79 | .442 | 17.3 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 62 | 80 | .437 | 18 |
| Brookland Outs | 60 | 82 | .426 | 19.6 |
| AL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Houston Astros | 93 | 50 | .650 | — |
| Oakland A’s | 83 | 59 | .585 | 9.5 |
| Haviland Dragons | 74 | 69 | .516 | 19.2 |
| Texas Rangers | 71 | 73 | .493 | 22.5 |
| Kaline Drive | 68 | 75 | .479 | 24.5 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 67 | 76 | .469 | 26 |
| Seattle Mariners | 58 | 85 | .406 | 35 |
| NL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Portland Rosebuds | 93 | 51 | .648 | — |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 92 | 52 | .639 | 1.3 |
| Peshastin Pears | 76 | 68 | .531 | 16.8 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 75 | 67 | .528 | 17.3 |
| San Francisco Giants | 69 | 73 | .486 | 23.3 |
| San Diego Padres | 65 | 76 | .461 | 26.8 |
| Colorado Rockies | 60 | 83 | .420 | 32.8 |
The Wolverines have been stuck 8.1 or 8.2 games behind the last update in August. So to