It comes with age, right? Things start to sag, it gets harder to get out of the armchair, you can’t keep up anymore. The ground also gets farther away, but you spend more time stuck to it. Leaps and bounds nor longer abound.
The Wolverines have their name back on the trophy, and started the season as if they were going to sweep to another championships. But today they’ve already fallen to third place, and it seems as if decline is all there is to see as we peer into the clouded future. A new team, with a younger owner, sits atop the standings for the second day in a row:
The Balk notched their fourth straight win to open the second week. They’ve gained a total of 2.5 games on the Wolverines already, leaving them 1.5 games back in the dust. They boast a powerful offense this week, going .279, .363, .501 over 208 plate appearances. Plus they have only shipped 0.4 replacement innings so far this week. Zach Thompson kept the replacements away with 4 innings, but they cost 6 earned runs or the Balk would be even further ahead.
The Dragons have matched the Balk almost step for step, slipping only 0.1 games as they have also notched 4 wins. They are doing this, still, with replacement level hitting (without any replacement players) and pitching from 9 hurlers, only one of whom has surrendered any earned runs — and he only 1 of those. It should be pointed out: the Dragons’ owner is older than the Wolverines’ owner, and has as many EFL championships since 2011 as the Old Wolverine does … so maybe we should hold off a bit on the “Old Guard sags” notion.
(I have featured Joe Ryan to illustrate this post, so you can spot him in a crowd and give him what he’s due for ruining the Dragons’ chance at a perfect 6 – 0, 1.000 winning percentage week.)
The Wolverines, who were 6 – 0 after Week 1, have sagged all the way to 7-3, due to mediocre pitching (5.16 ERA) backed by ok hitting (5.2 rc/g) compounded by the Padres on a hot streak (22 rs, only 13 ra).
Salem (also owned by someone superannuated from the Wolverine perspective) is just behind Old Detroit, creeping closer to the top. I doubt they’ll catch the W’s this week, but they are in range to do so next week.
Portland has gone into a mysterious funk this week, running a surprising .227 raw winning percentage, subpassed only by the Tornados (.188) and the Pears (.175). All three are facing MLB teams doing better than they are, so their recorded winning percentages are .178 for Portland, .152 for Peshastin, and a horrific .027 for the Tornados (who are being badly abused by the Mariners and their raw .892 winning percentage, third highest in MLB).
Right now, for Week 2, we are being outscored in our games 190.8 – 230.5. if we were on the old system, our predicted league winning percentage for the week would be .406. Our recorded winning percentage after interacting with our MLB foes is .405.