For my second time in a row, this update comes absurdly late. This time it is not my fault. Baseball Reference didn’t update until sometime this evening, perhaps due to being out of kilter because the Nats/Reds game got suspended by rain in the 4th inning on Wednesday evening, and didn’t finish until early this afternoon.
You will be encouraged to know that Jamie and I were on top of this all day. I tried to update first about 6:45 this morning. When 9:00 A.M. arrived and I needed to go into a zoomed meeting, Jamie agreed to do the update if BR got its act together. I took the update duty back after my meeting was over, but when my evening meeting started with no update, Jamie still was monitoring the situation.
I was a little bit extra eager to do today’s update, for reasons which a) do not reflect particularly well on me, and b) you may be able to discern on your own.
EFL Standings for 2021
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 36 | 15 | .709 | — | 304.5 | 195.2 |
| Peshastin Pears | 35 | 15 | .696 | 0.8 | 233.0 | 153.8 |
| Haviland Dragons | 35 | 16 | .683 | 1.3 | 247.7 | 169.9 |
| Kaline Drive | 33 | 18 | .644 | 3.3 | 247.0 | 183.6 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 33 | 18 | .640 | 3.5 | 230.5 | 174.4 |
| D.C. Balk | 28 | 14 | .666 | 3.7 | 211.9 | 150.0 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 23 | 19 | .557 | 8.2 | 233.1 | 208.7 |
| Cottage Cheese | 26 | 23 | .522 | 9.5 | 279.1 | 274.1 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 23 | 25 | .482 | 11.5 | 239.0 | 245.7 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 24 | 26 | .474 | 11.9 | 245.9 | 259.2 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 22 | 26 | .449 | 13.1 | 191.7 | 215.2 |
Old Detroit: W, 13 – 0. (40 PA, .333, .400, .917; 15.7 ip, 2 er, 1.15 ERA). We often note how the EFL is not a zero-sum league. It’s clear in the above standings, where we have 8 teams over .500, including some hovering around .700, and only 3 teams under .500, the lowest at about .450. The average EFL team is well above average, with 29 wins and 20 losses (rounding off) and a .597 winning percentage, on pace to end up at 97 – 65.
Here’s an amazing thing: last year was the first since the first EFL season in which the average EFL team was under .500. To go from the worst season for the league to the best in its history is an amazing feat. You should all arrange for your team to give you some kind of award for excellent management.
I have had an epiphany this evening. While we are not directly constrained by zero-sum limits, we are indirectly affected by them. We draw our results from the pool of outcomes available in MLB. Those outcomes are absolutely bound, hard and fast, by zero-sum dynamics. There are a strictly limited number of happy outcomes. When they run out, only unhappy ones are left.
We usually don’t feel these constraints because we are only 11 teams mining the outcomes of 30. But if one EFL team hogs more than its share of good outcomes, it gets harder for the other teams to find similar luck.
For example, BR somewhat accurately ranks all the hitters each day for quality. If one EFL team has the #1, 3, and 4 top hitters (say, for example, Tommy Edman, Rafael Devers, and Nate Lowe), and the #2 hitter (Taylor Ward) is not on any EFL team, suddenly there is a shortage of extremely positive hitting outcomes for every other team. And it gets worse if that one team also has the #8 (Carlos Correa) and #18 hitter (Austin Riley) (and profligately stashes the #34 and #50 hitters, Luis Garcia and Josh Bell, on its bench); and if the #16 hitter is a mere pitcher earlier cast aside by that same team (Eric Lauer), now there are only 41 top-50 hitters left for the other 10 teams.
If twenty-eight of the remaining 41 top-50 hitters are unowned in the EFL that leaves only 13 to be distributed among 10 teams. One team hogging 7 top-50 hitters has imposed negative-sum outcomes on the other 10 teams.
Or to put it another way, of the 24 homers hit yesterday, six were hit by Wolverine hitters. One more was hit by said Eric Lauer, and eleven by non-EFL hitters. That leaves only 6 for the other 10 EFL teams.
For which I apologize. And hasten to point out that the W’s only used the # 9 (Chris Paddack) and #11 (Mike Minor) top pitchers of the day, out of the 26 total. They just happened to go relatively short innings (6 and 5, respectively) with only 1 run allowed.
I assure you: today the Wolverine have not been nearly so piggish. Better days have already come, and Jamie will tell you all about the first of them tomorrow.
Peshastin: W, 8 – 2. (24 PA, .353, .542, .588; 3.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA.) Sensing the shortage in homers, the Pears declined consuming any of them. They found an under-consumed vein of offensive resources and built a very successful offense on outstanding on-base percentage, even though their best hitter on the day (Willie Calhoun: 2 for 4 with a double and a walk) ranked only #23 for BR. Mitch Haniger did the same, except he struck out instead of walking, which was enough to sink him to #36 on the BR rankings.
Every one of the Pears’ 7 hitters either reached base safely in at least half their plate appearances, or took at least as many bases as they had plate appearances. (Ozzie Albies went 1 for 4, but the 1 was a triple, and he also stole a base.)
Tbe average EFL team lost over a game to the Wolverines Wednesday, but the Pears lost only 0.4 games even though they only sent three relievers to the mound, because they each soaked up at least 1 of the available scoreless innings. Someone other than me will have to resent their hoarding of scoreless innings.
Haviland: W, 1 – (-2). (32 PA, .111, .250, .148; 11.3 ip, 2 er, 1.59 ERA). Haviland also found a vein of winning resources not mined out by the Wolverines. The Dragon’s Tyler Glasnow had BR’s best start as a pitcher (8 ip, 0 er), which was so good it compensated for an almost invisible offense.
“Almost” invisible, because Ramon Laureano had a rather showy day (1 for 4 with two walks), which BR rated as the 40th best on the day. If BR noticed it, I guess it wasn’t invisible.
Glasnow and Laureano held the Haviland slide in the standings to only 0.6 tames.
Kaline: W, 7 – 3. (36 PA, .353, .389, .500; 1 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). Kaline also lost less than a game to the Wolverines (0.7 games) by putting together a fine offensive day. Hunter Renfroe (#6 on BR) hit a double and a homer. Jesse Winker stuck to singles, but got 4 of them in 5 plate appearances (somehow only #13 on BR, which really digs the long ball). This was enough to vault the Drive over the listless Tornados into 4th place
Flint Hill: W, 2 – 2. (36 PA, .133, .278, .167; 14 ip, 1 er, 0.64 ERA). The Tornados tried to corner the market on pitching, with Carlos Rodon (6 ip, 1 er, 10 so) and James Kaprielian (7 ip, 0 er, 4 so) taking the #2 and #3 BR slots. Unfortunately, Kaprielian doesn’t show up as being allocated for the Tornadoes at the moment, having been benched on May 21. Which might both please other EFL owners (some of us enjoy watching other teams suffer way more than Jesus would) and annoy them (“Why can’t I have Kaprielian if the Flinties aren’t even using him.”)
Flint Hill’s descent into 5th place continues the convection in the elite tier, wherein at least four teams have been in first place in May (and DC came oh-so-close), and maybe all six teams have been in 5th place. The Wolverines have been in all five of the top positions this month. I am (provisionally) in favor of convection among the league leaders, for as long as possible into the season.
DC: DNP, 0 – (-2). (25 PA, .200, .292, .350; 5 ip, 0 er, 0.00 era). I was startled to see Triston McKenzie having started for the Balk (and getting the 8th best start rating for 5 ip, 0 er, 1 hit — and 3 walks). I thought I read in mlbtraderumors that he had been optioned to AAA by the Cleveland ball club. In fact, I just checked: I DID read he had been optioned to Columbus on May 22, for having a 6.89 ERA this season and “extreme control problems” — walking more than 20% of the hitters he faced. But somehow he came back to life in only 4 days, in time to twirl 5 dominant innings in which he walked “only” 16.7% of the hitters he faced.
The Balk fell 1 entire game further behind the Wolverines. Or maybe we should think of it this way: the Balk expanded to range of the elite tier by 1 entire game.
Canberra: W (-1), L 1; (-3) – 5. (25 PA, .136, .240, .136; 4 ip, 7 er, 14.75 ERA). The Kangaroos, like the Balk, had the day off due to heavy rains along the east coast, but unlike the Balk used the day to lose a win and win a loss. This was partly the fault of the absent offense (other than Manuel Margot’s 2 for 5 day, and Kyle Tucker’s 2 walks). But it was also the fault of Dane Dunning’s 4 ip, 7 er stinker of a start — the 26th best out of 26 total Wednesday starts, according to Baseball Reference. Canberra is still in 7th place, but lost 1.8 games to the Wolverines on Wednesday alone.
Cottage: “W”, 5 – 7. (25 PA, .158, .360, .158; 1 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA) Here is yet another team with an emaciated offense and a tiny morsel of good pitching, reflecting the state of the league’s resources after the Wolverine gluttony. Super-studs Shohei Ohtani and Trea Turner each found a leftover single somewhere, as did up-and-coming Alex Verdugo. But the Diaz boys (Isan and Yandy) and Randy Arozarena fasted from hitting. Clearly the Cheese were living on stored up offense and the six walks left lying around by the nearly walkless Wolverines locusts. The Cheese lost 1.3 games in the standings.
Pittsburgh: L, 4 – 8. ( 24 PA, .227, .250, .409; 1.3 ip, 3 er, 20.77 ERA). Jose Altuve throve Wednesday going 2 for 4 with a homer (#5 on BR’s list, apparently boosted so high by not striking out). But that was the only luster in the Allegheny offense. Baseball Reference rated Wil Crowe’s 1.3 ip, 3 er start as #24. Apparently going an additional 2.7 innings while coughing up 4 more earned runs is worse than getting yanked with one out in the second, but limiting the runs allowed to 3. (In case you were wondering, the #25 start wedged between Crowe and Dunning was Seattle’s Robert Dugger, for 3.1 ip, 5 er. Crowe’s game score was 31, Dugger’s was 28, and Dunning’s was 21.)
The Alleghenys slid 1.5 games further behind the Wolverines.
Portland: “W”, 1 – 2. (33 PA, .125, .152, .281; 8 ip, 1 er , 0.00 ERA) Another case of famine in the lineup. Andrew Benintendi homered for his only hit, and Nick Solack tripled for his only hit, and Max Kepler and Willians Astudillo singled for THEIR only hits, and Alex Avila walked instead of getting any hits That leaves three 0 for 4’s and an 0 for 1 to round out the sad Allegheny offense.
The Alleghenys sure could have used Eric Lauer’s 1 for 1 with a homer (# 16 among hitters). But instead they had to settle for Eric Lauer’s 6 innings pitched, 1 earned run (10th among pitchers, wedged between former teammates Paddock and Minor). Even with that, though, the Rosebuds slid 1.3 games further behind Old Detroit.
Bellingham: “W”, 5 – 6. (25 PA, .333 .400 , .381; 2 ip, 0 er , 0.00 ERA) The Cascades knocked 6 singles and a double, and had 2 walks and a HBP, to avoid offensive starvation. They also produced two scoreless innings without any baserunners allowed. This limited their slide in the standings to 1.2 games. Which also happens to be the distance by which they now trail the Rosebuds. In other words, the C’s are only a day’s march from catching the R’s.
Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021
| AL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 36 | 15 | .709 | — |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 33 | 18 | .640 | 3.5 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 31 | 20 | .608 | 5.1 |
| Boston Red Sox | 30 | 20 | .600 | 5.6 |
| New York Yankees | 28 | 20 | .583 | 6.6 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 24 | 23 | .511 | 10.1 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 17 | 32 | .347 | 18.1 |
| NL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| D.C. Balk | 28 | 14 | .666 | — |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 23 | 19 | .557 | 4.6 |
| New York Mets | 22 | 20 | .524 | 6 |
| Miami Marlins | 24 | 25 | .490 | 7.5 |
| Atlanta Braves | 24 | 25 | .490 | 7.5 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 24 | 26 | .480 | 8 |
| Washington Nationals | 20 | 24 | .455 | 9 |
| AL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Chicago White Sox | 28 | 20 | .583 | — |
| Cleveland Indians | 26 | 21 | .553 | 1.5 |
| Kansas City Royals | 23 | 24 | .489 | 4.5 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 23 | 25 | .482 | 4.9 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 22 | 26 | .449 | 6.5 |
| Minnesota Twins | 20 | 29 | .408 | 8.5 |
| Detroit Tigers | 19 | 30 | .388 | 9.5 |
| NL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 27 | 22 | .551 | — |
| Chicago Cubs | 26 | 22 | .542 | 0.5 |
| Cottage Cheese | 26 | 23 | .522 | 1.4 |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 24 | 25 | .490 | 3 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 21 | 25 | .457 | 4.5 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 18 | 30 | .375 | 8.5 |
| AL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Haviland Dragons | 35 | 16 | .683 | — |
| Kaline Drive | 33 | 18 | .644 | 2 |
| Oakland A’s | 29 | 22 | .569 | 5.8 |
| Houston Astros | 27 | 22 | .551 | 6.8 |
| Seattle Mariners | 23 | 27 | .460 | 11.3 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 22 | 27 | .449 | 11.8 |
| Texas Rangers | 22 | 29 | .431 | 12.8 |
| NL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Peshastin Pears | 35 | 15 | .696 | — |
| San Diego Padres | 32 | 18 | .640 | 2.8 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 30 | 19 | .612 | 4.3 |
| San Francisco Giants | 30 | 19 | .612 | 4.3 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 24 | 26 | .474 | 11.1 |
| Colorado Rockies | 19 | 30 | .388 | 15.3 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 18 | 32 | .360 | 16.8 |