Today my grandson Enzo complained that the Hobbit book doesn’t have enough action to hold his interest. “There are too many long pauses” he said. That kid (9 years old) needs to work on his attention span to join this league.
Especially this year, with the drama mostly leaking out of the pennant race, presenting a challenge even to our attention-span standout members.
Today the EFL standings universe neither expanded nor contracted. The Wolverines’ lead over the second place team got slightly bigger, and teams within the standings moved closer or further from each other, but the distance from top to bottom did not change and no teams swapped places.
Order is supposed to serve the interests of the dominant privileged classes. I don’t find this to be entirely true. A stable cushion between first and second place is great, but the races among the rest of the league should be as hot as possible, for their sake and the league’s. The year the Alleghenys almost won by 20 games, things got pretty dull. I suspect people stopped reading the updates. At the very end of the season, was anyone even watching the Alleghenys’ triumph? (Well, besides me, but it was my job.)
I hereby declare it to be in the Wolverines’ interest for the pennant race not to get boring. If the Tornados want to creep a little closer, that fine with me. Or if they are disinclined, I invite the Balk, the Pears, or even the Drive to make a drive toward the top. (I think the Balk and maybe the Pears aren’t waiting for an invitation. Good for them!)
EFL Standings for 2021
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 87 | 36 | .707 | — | 704.9 | 453.9 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 79 | 44 | .643 | 7.8 | 652.3 | 487.1 |
| D.C. Balk | 78 | 44 | .640 | 8.3 | 706.4 | 528.0 |
| Peshastin Pears | 77 | 45 | .632 | 9.3 | 613.0 | 470.5 |
| Kaline Drive | 74 | 48 | .606 | 12.4 | 655.2 | 529.1 |
| Haviland Dragons | 69 | 53 | .568 | 17.2 | 634.9 | 571.1 |
| Cottage Cheese | 69 | 54 | .558 | 18.3 | 696.5 | 635.9 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 68 | 55 | .551 | 19.1 | 628.2 | 565.5 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 66 | 56 | .537 | 20.8 | 621.6 | 590.7 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 64 | 59 | .524 | 22.5 | 535.0 | 509.7 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 57 | 65 | .470 | 29.1 | 646.0 | 689.4 |
Old Detroit: “L”, 3 – 2 (3.2 – 1.9). (49 PA, .195, .327, .268; 10.4 ip 4 er, 3.46 ERA). Walker Buehler came through again, pitching 7.7 innings with 2 earned runs. The last 2/3 of an inning erased replacement innings, as did the 2 innings of bumbling relief pitching provided by the K brothers (Craig and Andrew). This kept the runs scored to just under 2. In the meantime, Carlos Correa tormented the Mariners with a triple, a singe and and a walk in four plate appearances. Tommy Edman added two singles and a walk.
Flint Hill: L,, 2 – 5. (49 PA. .167, .286, .429; 4 ip, 1 er, 2.25 ERA). The Tornados are in the doldrums. Conditions for mighty wind storms have deteriorated. It certainly looks that way from where I am sitting, in my daughter’s unheated house at 7:00 AM, wrapped in three blankets.
Consider Flinty pitching: 3 nearly indistinguishable 1-inning shutout performances from 3 relievers. Then Jake Cousins pitched another very distinguished inning, walking 3 and allowing a run for a 9.00 ERA for the inning. This left 3 innings in the hands of replacements, pitched at an ERA of 7.50. The average ERA for those 7 innings was 4.50; add 10% for unearned runs and you come to the 4.9 runs the T’s allowed.
Consider Flinty hitting: Tim Anderson and Tyler Naquin led the team, each swatting a homer , with Naquin adding a triple and Anderson 2 more hits. Both are allocated to OH, where a little over 25% of their PA are being suppressed. Remove 2.5 AB, 1.25 hits, 0.25 of a triple, and half a homer from the team’s slash line cuts it to .146, .274, .297.
I do not know all about storm cells. Perhaps they regenerate after resting a few days. Or maybe Tornado season is over already? Climate change has many surprising effects…
DC: W, 14 – 3. (45 PA, .366 .422, .732; 6 ip, 1 er, 1.50 ERA). Here’s a team raring to go! I mean, they’re still the Balk… but they DOMINATED yesterday. Xander Bogaerts, Bryce Harper, and Jorge Alfaro homered. Sam Hilliard tripled, there were four doubles… that’s what it takes to slug .732. James Kaprelian, one of the future-oriented players the Balk picked up in sly dealings with the Tornados, went 5 innings with 1 earned run.
I don’t want to rile up the Tornados — well, maybe a little bit, but not too much — but the Balk look scarier at the moment. They slashed 0.6 games off their distance from first place.
Peshastin: “L”, 3 – 2 (2.6 – 2.3). (42 PA. .189, .268, .351; 11 ip, 5 er, 4.09 ERA). Jazz Chisholm and Yoan Moncada each homered to give the modest offense some heft — not MUCH heft, they only scored 2.6 runs. (They got a slice of heft also by eliminating a couple of replacement plate appearances at 1b and ss.) Blake Snell and Alex Wood both pitched 5 innings, Snell permitting 2 earned runs and Wood 3. With an inning of scoreless relief, and 4 replacement innings erased, the Pears held their foes to 2.3 runs. It was all enough to be a technical win, but not enough to quite keep up with the Wolverines.
Kaline: W 2, L(-1), 5 – (-9). (41 PA, .243, .317, .459; 17 ip, 2 er, 1.06 ERA). Speaking of scary teams, the supposedly mild-mannered Drive bared their grilles and ran right over their foes yesterday. The hitting wasn’t that dominant, with homers from Aaron Judge and Yuli Gurriel.
But the pitching was stunning. Nester Cortes’ 7 ip 2 er might have been his best outing of the year. But there’s no doubt about Max Fried’s perfomance: a veritable Maddux! He tossed a 9-inning shutout with only 90 pitches, the fewest pitches in a complete game since Greg Maddux finished a shutout with 89 pitches in 21 years ago. I’m just glad the Kaline dynamo is still 12.4 games out after hacking a complete game off it’s deficit.
Haviland: L, 3 – 7. ( 41 PA, .216, .293, .397; 1 ip, 0 er , 0.00 ERA). Insufficient pitching cost the Dragons another 6 replacement innings, making it impossible for a light day of hitting to result in a win. Amed Rosario and Brendan Rodgers tried anyway, each reaching safely 3 times out of 5 plate appearances. Kyle Schwarber tried even harder: a double, a single and two walks in 4 plate appearances.
Cottage: W, 1 – 0. (45 PA, .171, .244, .244; 13 ip, 1 er, 0.69 ERA). This is an interesting case. Mitch Keller had a GREAT game: 5 ip 0 er. That’s amazing enough, but then add Robbie Ray’s 8 ip, 1 er, and you see how well Cottage is doing at making valuable players out of recent Wolverine rejects.
But all that wonderful pitching didn’t bear a LOT of immediate fruit, because the hitting wasn’t there. Half the hitters went hitless. 5 had one hit, 3 of them singles. Only Trea Turner — unworthy of mention in the recent Lament — got two hits, including one of the three Cheese doubles. I have no idea how Cottage is going to keep Trea happy with all this neglect. The Cheese had reason to hope for more than just keeping up with the Wolverines, but that’s all they accomplished — that and enjoying the view of the Dragons backing up toward them.
Pittsburgh: W, 3 – 1. (39 PA, .200, .282, .371; 8 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA) Garret Hampson homered, and Luis Robert added one of the three Allegheny doubles to a single, to lead the Allegheny offense. Sonny Gray pitched 7 shutout innings, and got another shutout inning of relief from golf great Lou Trivino. It was enough to sneak a tenth of game up the standings.
Canberra: W, 5 – 3. (39 PA, .212, .333, .364; 9.7 ip, 5 er, 4.64 ERA) Dane Dunning and Miles Mikolas did the pitching, which erased 2.7 replacement innings. The K’s put a respectable on base percentage with a dash of power and maybe a pinch of replacing replacement at bats to get close to 5 runs scored. The result was matching the Wolverines’ “pace.”
Bellingham: L, 2- 7. (23 PA, .150, .217, .300; 11 ip, 7 er, 5.73 ERA). There wasn’t enough hitting in MLB to go around yesterday, apparently, judging by the short supply available to EFL teams. DJ LeMahieu found a stray homer, but the entire rest of the Cascade offense was 2 singles (one by LeMahieu) and 2 walks (one by LeMahieu). Unless there’s some competition from a Cascade player, you can probably tell who should get the Player of the Game award for yesterday.
Three Cascade pitchers took the mound. Trevor Richards triple chulked (2/3 of an inning, 2 earned runs). Brett Anderson sort of survived (5.3 ip, 3 er). Michael Wacha pitched reasonably well (5 ip, 2 er).
Portland: “L”, 2 – 1. (25 PA, .240, .240, .320; 8 ip, 1 er, 1.13 ERA). The Rosebuds matched the Wolverine pace AGAIN, but took a completely different route. They approximated the Wolverine OPS, but did it without any walks. They allowed 4 runs in 8 innings, but bettered the Wolverine ERA by arranging for four of those runs to be unearned. I think it would be fun if the Rosebuds kept pace with the W’s for the rest of the season…
Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021
| AL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 87 | 36 | .707 | — |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 79 | 44 | .643 | 7.8 |
| Tampa Bay Rays | 75 | 48 | .610 | 11.9 |
| New York Yankees | 71 | 52 | .577 | 15.9 |
| Boston Red Sox | 70 | 54 | .565 | 17.4 |
| Toronto Blue Jays | 63 | 57 | .525 | 22.4 |
| Baltimore Orioles | 38 | 83 | .314 | 47.9 |
| NL East | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| D.C. Balk | 78 | 44 | .640 | — |
| Atlanta Braves | 66 | 56 | .541 | 12.1 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 66 | 56 | .537 | 12.5 |
| Philadelphia Phillies | 62 | 60 | .508 | 16.1 |
| New York Mets | 60 | 62 | .492 | 18.1 |
| Washington Nationals | 53 | 68 | .438 | 24.6 |
| Miami Marlins | 51 | 72 | .415 | 27.6 |
| AL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Chicago White Sox | 72 | 51 | .585 | — |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 68 | 55 | .551 | 4.2 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 64 | 59 | .524 | 7.6 |
| Cleveland Indians | 59 | 61 | .492 | 11.5 |
| Detroit Tigers | 59 | 65 | .476 | 13.5 |
| Minnesota Twins | 54 | 69 | .439 | 18 |
| Kansas City Royals | 53 | 68 | .438 | 18 |
| NL Central | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Milwaukee Brewers | 74 | 49 | .602 | — |
| Cottage Cheese | 69 | 54 | .558 | 5.4 |
| Cincinnati Reds | 67 | 57 | .540 | 7.5 |
| St. Louis Cardinals | 62 | 59 | .512 | 11 |
| Chicago Cubs | 54 | 70 | .435 | 20.5 |
| Pittsburgh Pirates | 43 | 79 | .352 | 30.5 |
| AL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| Kaline Drive | 74 | 48 | .606 | — |
| Houston Astros | 72 | 50 | .590 | 2 |
| Oakland A’s | 70 | 53 | .569 | 4.5 |
| Haviland Dragons | 69 | 53 | .568 | 4.7 |
| Seattle Mariners | 66 | 57 | .537 | 8.5 |
| Los Angeles Angels | 62 | 62 | .500 | 13 |
| Texas Rangers | 42 | 80 | .344 | 32 |
| NL West | ||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB |
| San Francisco Giants | 78 | 44 | .639 | — |
| Peshastin Pears | 77 | 45 | .632 | 0.8 |
| Los Angeles Dodgers | 77 | 46 | .626 | 1.5 |
| San Diego Padres | 67 | 57 | .540 | 12 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 57 | 65 | .470 | 20.7 |
| Colorado Rockies | 56 | 66 | .459 | 22 |
| Arizona Diamondbacks | 41 | 82 | .333 | 37.5 |