As you wish…(maybe)

Me: “It’s time for a good, old-fashioned EFL update.”

Ryan: “An update?”

Me: “That’s right. When Jamie was your age, we had updates. And this is a special update.”

Ryan: “Has it got any sports in it?”

Me: “Are you kidding? Baseball, torture, revenge, Giants, Dragons, pennant chases, escapades, Tornados, miracles.”

Ryan: “Doesn’t sound too bad. I’ll try to stay awake.” 

Me: “Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.”

 

 

 

DC: L (DC: 9 – 6, SEA: 4 – 1) (73 PA, .403, .411, .583; 15.3 ip, 10 er, 5.87 ERA)

Inigo: You are sure nobody’s follow us?

Rob: As I told you, it would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways inconceivable…  Out of curiosity, why do you ask?

Inigo: No reason. It’s only… I just happened to look behind us and something is there.

Rob: What? Probably some local Mariner, out for a pleasure cruise, at night… in… eel-infested waters… 

 

Worries about extreme results in the EFL subsided a little Thursday and Friday, as the Balk were inconceivably waylaid by the Mariners. Seven Balks OPSed over 1.000, led by Xander Bogaert’s 1.750 (6 for 8, 2 2b) and Sean Murphy’s 1.625 (4 for 7, 2 2b, 1 hr), but much of the effect was negated by return fire, especially against Bryse Wilson’s (3 ip 3 er) and Dylan Cease (5.3 ip, 4).  DC’s lead was 2.9 games Thursday morning.  This morning it’s down to 2.2 over the…

 

HD: W (HD: 4 – 0; LAD: 6 – 1) (62 PA, .236, .323, .418;  21 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA) 

… miracle-working Dragons!  

Last week I marvelled at how the Dragons had held their opponents scoreless over their first 3 games, and allowed only 1 earned run in the fourth game of the week.  They slipped a little toward the end of the week, scoring only 6.5 runs while allowing 7.   Those who hoped for the Dragons to slink back into their lair, never to trouble us more, are now dismayed. 

Last week the Dragons were slaying the Giants. Life did not get easier in Haviland Thursday — the Dodgers came to town, and put up a daunting 6 – 1 score, promising a stratospheric 0.973 winning percentage.   

The actual Dodger winning percentage against the Dragons so far?  0.000.  And those 0’s go all the way down.

This year’s Dragons are competent hitters, but not offensive juggernauts in the same class as the Dodgers.  Both teams have played 13 games. The Dragons have scored 49 runs, only 3.77 per game. The Dodgers have scored 70 runs, leading the majors at 5.38 runs per game.   

But from the mound Haviland is repeating the unrepeatable: 21 innings without an earned run allowed this week!  This is not a crew of Scherzers, Verlanders, or de Grom’s.  It’s  Pablo Lopez (7 ip), Joe Ryan (6 ip), Michael Kopech (5 ip), Dylan Coleman, Louis Head, and Dauri Moreta (1 ip each). 

Since April 14, Coleman and Head have combined for 9.7 earned-run-free innings. Lopez (17.3 ip) and Kopech (14.0 ip) have each coughed up a single earned run.  Joe Ryan (16 ip) has only allowed 3 earned runs. Moreta has been the worst of these dazzling 6, allowing 3 scandalous earned runs in 7.3 ip.  

That other (non)household name (Spencer Strider) added 9 ip, 1 er last week; he’s still awaiting his turn to pitch this week.  JT Chargois is injured, but before he got hurt he surrendered 0 er in his 0.7 ip.

What’s happening in Haviland?  Is this some kind of eucatastrophic virus?  If so, expect to see other non-household names like Jesus Luzardo (9.3 ip, 5 er through last week),  Roansey Contreras (7.7 ip,, 3 er), Tarik Skubal (9.7 ip 4 er) and Spencer Howard (the only Dragon hurler who is really struggling at 3 ip, 6 er)  licking doorknobs and fishing half-eaten apples out of the garbage this week. 

Valerie: Do you think it will work?

Mr. EFL Answer Man: It would take a miracle.

 

Salem Seraphim: L (SS: 2 – 5; COL: 0 – 0). (60 PA, .193, .233, .228;  7.3 ip, 4 er, 4.91 ERA). 

The Rockies did not play Thursday and were rained out Friday, so I had to give them a  0.0000001 – 0.0000001 score to avoid the dreaded “YOU IDIOT YOU CAN’T DIVIDE BY 0, WHICH IS HOW MUCH ATTENTION YOU MUST HAVE PAID IN YOUR 5th GRADE MATH CLASS” error message. 

However, even with their opponents reduced to the humiliation of begging for millionths of runs scored and runs allowed, the Seraphim lost their first game of the week. These angelic beings couldn’t hit a lick — they scored 1.8 runs, almost an entire run less than replacements would have scored.  Put that with the 5.2 runs they allowed, and their expected winning percentage comes out to a neat  0.111, or one-sixth of an antichrist.  

Dragons are commonly magical, they say, so discovering OUR Dragons have the power to shut out Giants and Dodgers isn’t maybe so surprising.  But Seraphim are supposed to be connected to the miraculous.  So either the Seraphim are fraudulently named, or we can expect some positive, dramatic, inconceivable improvement in their fortunes. None of their starting pitchers are starting today, so if the miracle is today, expect it to be among the Seraphic sluggers.  

Which, you know, might not be so inconceivable, considering Shohei Ohtani is a Seraph.

 

Old Detroit Wolverines: L (OD: 3 – 7; BOS: 4 – 3) (74 PA, .190, .311, .270; 5.7 ip, 5 er, 7.94 ERA)

(Ryan: Hold it! Hold it!  You read that wrong! The Wolverines can’t lose. I’m just sure of it! After all they did to get so many star players, if they don’t win, it wouldn’t be fair!

Me: Well who says life is fair? Where is that written?)

The Woeverines have fallen hard since their 6 – 0, .961  first week.  Old Detroit fans were pretty smug two weeks ago, confident their team was going to skate from week 1 through week 27 in first place, to a repeat championship. Sure, the Balk and the Seraphim looked scary on paper, and the league is crammed full of brilliant minds who could adapt quickly to the new format.  But against the Wolverine juggernaut?

Juggernot.  That’s the correct spelling for this Wolverine team. The W’s stopped hitting, and W pitchers started pitching poorly and the team has gone 1 – 6.  There is a certain segment of the Wolverine fanbase who wants to blame the new system for our team’s woes. And they do have a point:  the Wolverine’s still lead the league in offense, somehow, and only trail the Seraphim (barely) in raw winning percentage (.702 – .687).  But whereas the average EFL team is being hurt 0.023 in winning percentage by facing MLB teams head-to-head, the Wolverines’ official winning percentage (.510, .451 points down in only 7 games from week 1) is .177 lower than their raw winning percentage (.687). 

But Wolverine management has learned long ago not to listen to the rabid rabble portion of Wolverine fandom.  While Wolverine management rues daily its decision to leave JP Crawford unprotected in the Competitive Balance Expansion Draft (Correa 2022 OPS: .573; Crawford 2022 OPS: .967), it is clear-eyed about the W’s problems, which have nothing to do with the system:  Correa stinks so far, Buxton’s fragility actually exceeds his reputation, Eloy Jimenez will probably never live up to his hype (which is what will happen to Julio Rodriguez if we are cruel enough to draft him), Oliver Perez is washed up, Marcus Stroman is collapsing in the friendly confines of Wrigley Field… the list goes on.  The W’s are destined, apparently, to go from nearly last in 2020 to first in 2021 and then back again in 2022.  Sigh.

Unless… did you notice, the W’s accumulated 11 walks in their first game this week.  That’s a lot of walks…

 

Portland: W (PR: 2 – 1; SFG: 7 – 1).  (62 PA, .172, .245, .263;  14 ip, 2 er, 1.29 ERA)

As of the end of Week 2, the Rosebuds were the EFL’s second-greatest beneficiary of our head-to-head system.  Only the Balk (+ 0.257 winning percentage) got a bigger boost in the standing than the Rosebuds (0.180).  At the end of Week 2, the Rosebuds were listed as having a 5 – 7 record, but it was really 5.48 – 6.52.

So far this week, a little of the winning percentage magical boost has worn off.  The Giants stomped the Rosebuds in game on, putting up a 7 – 1 runs scored/runs against ratio, while the ‘Buds were winning only 1.7 – 1.4 — sub-replacement hitting rescued by outstanding pitching, especially Kevin Gausman’s 8 ip, 1 er performance.  Still, those two scores left the ‘Buds with a miniscule 0.032 adjusted winning percentage for the week’s first game.

But that was enough!  That 5.48 – 6.52 real record shot all the way up to 5.51 – 7.49.  Which rounds off to 6 – 7, making a win magically appear on the board, composed entirely of vacuum, plus 3 molecules of win that somehow escaped being sucked up into the Giant maw.

I know it’s only the tiniest thread of comfort to Rosebud fans the world over, but here’s another thread to add to the potential comforter: head-to-head charity is now only .131 in Portland’s favor. Instead of consuming the second most head-to-head luck in the league, the Rosebuds now consume the … let me see… uh-oh, this is unexpected:

The Rosebuds now LEAD THE LEAGUE in head-to-head luck/charity.  Because — as I had more-or-less confidently been predicting — over time the luck factor will even out as we pile weekly random results atop one another.  So even though day one of Week 3 cut the Rosebud’s charity budget almost in half, it cut others’ even more. DC is down from 0.257 to only 0.097, and no one else is above 0.082 (Kaline). 

 

Kaline: W (KD: 4 – 2; CWS: 1 – 2) (57 PA, ,180, .271, .320; 4.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 era)

I suspect the Drive were watching their alphabetical neighbors, the Dragons, last week and decided to steal their approach.  So this week Kaline pitchers have allowed zero earned runs.  

But there is an element missing in the Kaline approach so far: innings. The Dragon miracle depends on having enough innings to avoid replacements.  Kaline is short on innings. This is going to be a struggle for the Drive.  True, in 13 games they have a total of 107.7 ip, more than the minimum of 91 a team needs to avoid replacement innings. But not a lot more, and with John Means and Alex Cobb on the IL, the team will be hard-pressed to put up enough innings to keep the replacements at bay.  

The Drive need Jesse Winker to wake up. His season OPS is a mere .464; his weekly OPS this week is an even merer .111 — that dreaded 1/6 of an antichrist again.  Fortunately, Andy Ibanez (1.232 OPS) and Daulton Varsho (1.200 OPS) are off to good starts this week, each including a home run.  If they can share their secrets with their teammates… 

 

BELLINGHAM: L (BC: 0 – 9;  KC: 1 – 4) (52 PA, .098, .113, .118;  7 ip, 5 er, 6.43 ERA).  

• Dukedrezini: You were supposed to be this Colossus. You were this great legendary thing, and yet the Alleghenys gain!

  Corey Seager : Well I’m carrying twenty-nine people…

  Dukedrezini : I will not accept excuses. I’m just going to have to find myself a new Superstar, that’s all.

  Seager: Don’t say that, Dukedrezini, please. 

 

Bellingham management has a right to be exasperated with its players.  The Cascades are spending $96,000,000 and got sub-replacement performances from their hitters AND their pitchers Thursday and Friday.  In fairness, three players played like major leaguers:  DJ LeMahieu went 2 for 7 with a walk to post a fin .375 OBP and a fair .661 OPS. Reese McGuire’s one hit in four plate appearances was a double, giving him a .750 OPS a replacement player would envy.  And Trent Thornton posted 2 scoreless innings. 

But the other 8 Cascade batters went 2 for 40. That’s a 0.050, 0.050, 0.050, and a remarkable 0.100 OPS. That’s better than I could do, and it’s also better than my 90-year-old mother could do, but it’s still not something Corey Seager,  etc., want to take to the bank.  

One  element of compassion — Anthony DeSclafani also was sub-replacement in his 5 ip, 5 er outing, but then he immediately went on the IL, so he can blame his injury. 

At least the head-to-head format isn’t making things worse for Bellingham.  In terms of raw rs/ra, the Cascades are 9th in the league at a predicted .305 winning percentage.  In reality, they are 7th in the league with a .365 winning percentage. The downside is they have some really good MLB teams yet to face.  The upside is they may have time to get things in better order before those teams come to Bellingham.

 

PITTSBURGH:  L   (PA: 8 – 5; DET 3 – 0, 1.000) (40 PA, .361, .425, .556; 3 ip, 1 er 3.00 ERA)

Those Allegheny rate stats look pretty good — a .981 OPS, a 3.00 ERA.  Max Muncy is showing Carlos Correa how to break out of an early-season slump, going 2 for 3 with a homer and two walks yesterday. Gavin Sheets collected 4 singles in 7 PA, part of his plan to single his way to the MVP award. Wil Crowe — we know his real name is Will Crow, and the misspellings are deliberate to try to stave off some teasing — is warming up to crow about his season, adding another 2.3 scoreless innings to his season-long 12 scoreless innings!! (I didn’t know it was going to turn into 12 scoreless innings — so those exclamation points record my actual immediate reaction on looking it up.) 

But any chance that the Tigers would be defeated by the team from Pittsburgh…

(Ryan: Murdered by Pirates would have been good.

Me: Wrong Pittsburgh team, kid.)

… went a glimmering when the Tigers were caught imitating Dragons by shutting out their opponents. 

 

PESHASTIN: W (PP: 5 – 2;  TEX: 8 – 1) (63 PA, .222, .354, .370; 12.7 ip, 3 er, 2.13 ERA)

The Pears copied the Rosebud trick of claiming a win despite being sharply outplayed by their opponent. At the end of week two, that Pear 3 – 9 record was really 3.49 – 8.51.  After getting thrashed by the Rangers, the Pear record today stands at 3.57 – 9.43.  They won 0.08 of a game and lost 0.92, but unless their fans are especially sharp-eyed, they’ll think their favorite team beat the Rangers somehow.   

Pear ownership is going through some transitions right now.  They held a retirement celebration for Phil yesterday — it was a real celebration, with cake and lemonade and other treats, and emotional testimonials, and all… but when the topic of his fantasy team came up, Phil revealed his inner pain at the performance of his players. So many injuries, especially among his pitchers…   And somehow it came out that the Pears had never won an EFL championship.

Some of you will suspect I revealed this embarrassing fact.  I did not.  In fact, what I said was “Phil and I have competed in two fantasy baseball leagues, the one Don Powers started in the early 90s, and the one we’re in now, entering its 19th season.  Out of our 11-member league, Phil is currently tied for 6th place in the number of championships won…” at which point Phil interrupted me. 

“Zero.” 

Phil is sometimes tempted to despair — to moan “We’ll never win the championship!”   To which the properly encouraging response is, of course:  “Nonsense. You’re only saying that because you never have.”  

 

CANBERRA: W (CK: 5 -2; MIL: 2 – 4) (64 PA, .263, .338, .386; 15 ip, 3 er, 1.80 ERA)

Sort of by way of confirming the above quote from Princess Bride,  the Kangaroos (who are also tied for 6th place in EFL championships) came alive this week.  Entering the week dragging a 2 – 10 record, and clearly the team worst affected by our head-to-head format, the Kangaroos leapt to their feet with very strong (if not quite Dragonic) pitching, and solid hitting to score a big win against a generally solid Brewers team.   

Chris Flexen turned in 7 shiny innings, only 1 earned run allowed, to lead the pitching staff.  Vlad Guerrero did his thing (.429, .375, .571) like he has been all season (his season OPS is 1.057), but this time he was outshone by under-appreciated first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, who upped his season OPS to .984 by going 5 for 8 with a double, a homer and a walk. At one point last offseason we discussed a trade of Louis Garcia the Nationals infielder for Nathaniel Lowe (I was weak at 1b). I didn’t pursue it.  Other than letting JP Crawford go, that may have been my biggest offseason mistake. 

Ah well.  I guess I have no gift for strategy. 

 

FLINT HILL: W (FH: 5 – 2; SDP: 1 – 6).  (59 PA, .245, .358, .681;  6.7 ip, 1 er , 1.35 ERA) 

Other than the special case of the Dragons and their 0.00000000 ERA, the Tornados may have had the best start of any EFL team to Week 3. And unlike the Dragons, who are fending off a mega-threat in the Dodgers, the Tornados are only facing the Padres — who were pretty fierce last week against the Wolverines, but who have definite weaknesses, esp. in their pitching staff.  So a big week is a definite possibility for the Tornados. 

Mookie Betts is a major factor in that positive possibility, and he demonstrated it again by kicking off Week 3 with a 2 for 3 with two homers, two walks, and even a stolen base — so his .667, .800, 2.667 line, and his 3.467 OPS, may have understated his impact, since a stolen base doesn’t show up on any of those stats.  It’s true that there was little else outstanding in the Tornado offensive box score, but Jameson Taillon’s 5 ip, 1 er added plenty of value, too. 

Flint Hill’s head-to-head disadvantage shrank from .251 to .170, beating Canberra’s .248 to .212 disadvantage reduction.  Note that the league as a whole has a 0.028 net disadvantage to the MLB teams we’ve played so far — the same as we did after last week.  So the significant shrinkage in the worst disadvantages testifies to the dampening of the volatility of results as time passes. 

And the best news is this: early in the season It turns out our friends the Tornados have been only mostly dead.  Mostly dead is still slightly alive.

Max and Valerie:  Have fun storming the castle!