Today’s update brings us to 81 games played, exactly (and simultaneously) at the half-way mark through the 2022 season.
Wow. That was fast!
It’s not an illusion. Our schedule puts us all at 81 games, but the rest of MLB is still anywhere from 2 (several teams) to 8 (Cleveland) games short of the half-way mark. This is good news! It means from now on we will be playing fewer games than the MLB teams, which will ease just a little the tendency to take on replacement innings and/or plate appearances. Our teams should do a little better in the second half than they have in the first.
I’ll post a few notes below these tables showing how we stand as of this morning:
NOTES:
- Four teams have been especially unlucky so far this week. Well — three teams, actually. Getting the Dodgers while they are scoring 16 – 6 isn’t all that unlucky for the Balk. It’s what a lot of us have had to deal with while playing LAD. But playing the Cubs while they’re scoring 29 – 15, the Brewers at 31 – 13, and the Royals at 5 – 2: those are most unpleasant surprises.
- They can’t all three be “most unpleasant.” The Royals’ imbalance, with so few total runs scores, can be (and is very likely to be) corrected by one more typical Royals score, so the Seraphim will probably be OK. The Cubs, on the other hand, have almost guaranteed themselves a winning record for the week — and the Kangaroos another weight tied to their ankles in the pennant race. And even worse for the Tornados, the Brewers were being outscored until Friday night’s game against the Pirates. When I turned the game on (to watch Wolverines Ke’Bryan Hayes and Keston Hiura), Milwaukee was ahead 9 – 1 going into the top of the 8th inning. That half-inning was super dispiriting from a Pirates fan’s point of view. Before the inning started, the Pirates swapped out their two stars, Bryan Reynolds and Hayes, to avoid injuries in an already-lost cause. They also inserted a rookie pitcher, Cam Vieaux. The inning went like this:
- Luis Urias: double
- Omar Narvaez: walk.
- Keston Hiura: “single” to shortstop Oneil Cruz. I missed seeing this the play, but from what the Pirates’ announcers were saying it apparently was actually a missed play, maybe even a missed double play.
- Passed Ball to score Urias.
- Jonathan Davis: walk.
- Christian Yelich: “single” to 1b — another missed play, pitcher didn’t cover first in time — to score Narvaez
- Willy Adames: grand slam home run.
- Rowdy Tellez: safe on an error by Oneil Cruz — didn’t catch a wind-blown pop fly, should have been easy. At this point the Pirates’ TV play-by-play man (he’s really good, but I can’t remember his name) went silent for at least 20 seconds, apparently speechless with disgust. His color man (also very good, but I can’t remember his name, either) filled some of that air time explaining how the wind made the play hard, but the play-by-play man was too busy counting up the botched plays. When he spoke again he was in no mood to find excuses. He recited the litany of botched plays, then reminded the viewers there were still no outs. The Pirates on the field slumped, totally discouraged and/or embarrassed. The TV cameras started spending every spare moment showing cute, happy little children wearing Pirates swag, tightly focused to leave out the glum and/or angry grown ups in the background.
- Andrew McCutchen: single. The announcers speculated when the manager would pull the poor pitcher, who had amassed a lot of pitches without getting anyone out.
- Pinch-hitter Mike Brosseau: double, scoring 2 more runs, making 8 in all, still no out.
- Urias: walk. Rosebuds management successfully resisted an impulse to rub Wolverines management nose in Urias’ box score to this point (2 for 3 with a homer, a double and two walks), probably recognizing Wolverine management would already be doing that to itself.
- Narvaez: line out for the first out.
- Hiura: strike out.
- Davis: fly out. Vieaux septuple chulked (one run was unearned) in a 56-pitch inning. Going from memory from my second-year French course, completed in the spring of 1975, “Vieaux” means “old people” in French, and probably describes how he felt.
- Anyway — the Tornados took the brunt of what ended up being a 19 – 2 win by the Brewers (Urias made the last out of the top of the ninth, dropping him to 2 for 4, so there), lifting their weekly total scoring from 12 – 11 to 31 – 13. That cost the T’s an entire game in the standings, dropping them behind the Kangaroos.
- On the other hand, the ‘Roos luck in catching the Cubs on a 29-15 run is probably worse than the Tornados catching the much better Brewers on a 31 – 13 run. They both can complain against the cosmos, but neither team has a beef against their closest EFL competitor.