“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” — Charles Dickens, The Tale of Two Cities
Other than the fact we are talking about 10 cities, at least one of which is fictitious, and another which had been completely destroyed and partially rebuilt gradually over the last 125 years — or maybe about 30 cities, still including the fictitious and the completely replaced ones — we could say, with Dickens before he had finished his opening sentence, “in short, the period was so far like the present period” that we might as well have saved all these words and started with “as has happened so many times, yesterday was the best of times for some and the worst of times for others.”
And if you were, like me, in northern Indiana trying to listen to the Mariners – Yankees game to its end, it wasn’t even yesterday.
I turned on the M’s game when everyone else went to bed last night, about 11 pm EDT. So I got to listen to most of the game, but when the ninth inning expired with the game still tied 0 – 0, and the clock here striking 12:34 AM, I gave up and went to bed. I had a 9:30 AM appointment with former student Phil Waite, who is pastor of the College Mennonite Church here in the land of Goshen, Indiana.
Phil, fortunately, is a Mariners fan from his high school days in Seattle. He woke up in the bottom of the 9th and couldn’t get back to sleep, so he watched the rest of the game with the sound either off or very low, so as not to wake his wife. So he got to tell me about that game’s wild four-extra-inning conclusion, with its two amazing twin-killings allowing the M’s to twice put three Yankees out while facing only two Yankee batters. And with the M’s walking off on a base hit by the last man on its bench (backup backup catcher Luis Torrens).
Mariners manager Scott Servais say it was perhaps the best game he had every personally witnessed. I didn’t read what the Yankees manager said, after his team twice ran itself into outs on the base paths. But I don’t think he would have said it was the best game ever.
Pity the poor Yankees, for whom the loss was the worst of times, tumbling them all the way down to a 71-40 record, a paltry .640 winning percentage, on pace for a mere 104 wins. That leaves them tied with the pariah Astros, and (worse) a game behind the cross-town Mets and (even worse?) 6 games behind the Dodgers, who are on pace to win 113 games this season.
It also leaves them about 0.6 games behind the DC Balk, who are without much fanfare riding atop the EFL, sporting a .643 adjusted winning percentage and a 73-40 record.
Here’s how the top 8 teams in the EFL/MLB standings would look if you read them in the papers (or on the internet, yes, yes, of course):
- LA Dodgers 76 – 33 .697 —
- NY Mets 72 – 39 .649 5
- DC Balk 73 – 40 .643 5.4
- NY Yankees 71 – 40 .640 6.0
- HOU Astros 71 – 40 .640 6.0
- OD Wolverines 71 – 42 .631 6.7
- CK Kangaroos 71 – 42 .625 7.4
- SA Seraphim 71 – 42 .624 7.5
That’s right, the 2d through 4th EFL teams all have the same top-level W/L record but spread out over 0.8 games in the standings.
DC slowed a bit, its adjusted weekly winning percentage slipping to .870, mostly thanks to Martin Perez’ 5 ip, 7 er outing. That left the door open for pursuing teams catch up a little. But only three teams took advantage of the Balk’s generosity.
Old Detroit barely qualified as a gainer against the Balk, recovering 0.1 games of the 3.4 they lost earlier in the week. You noticed maybe that the Wolverines somehow clung to second place in the EFL standings, despite going into Tuesday’s game having the worst week of its season. It looked to be more of the same Tuesday when Marcus Stroman struggled (5 ip, 4 er). But 7 Wolverine hitters OPSed 1.000 or more, led by Austin Riley (3 for 6 with a triple and a homer). Meanwhile, Wolverine opponent Portlamd let its raw winning percentage slip from .910 to a mere .727 (thank you Rosebud hitters, five of whom went 0 for 4, plus one (MJ Melendez) who went 0 for 7 with a walk, and another one who went 1 for 10 (Nick Senzel) ! )
The Alleghenys also eked out a 0.1 gain in the standings, part of their ongoing surge through the standings. Max Muncy made the biggest contribution, continuing his own personal resurrection from a season-long slump with a homer and a double in 5 plate appearances (1.600 OPS). Their opponents, the Dragons, actually improved their weekly raw winning percentage by hitting .274, .370, .475 as a team, with EIGHT players OPSing 1.000 or better, led by Brandon Rodgers (4 for 5 with a walk) and JT Realmuto (2 for 4 with a homer and a walk.
But the BIG winner v. the Balk were the Flint Hill Tornados, who gained 1.5 games in a single day! The key: Luis Castillo threw 8 shutout innings, backed up by Blake Snell’s 7 ip, 1 er. But this wasn’t merely a good day — it was the best of days!! of the 8 hitters sent to the plate in Flint Hill, 5 OPSed 1.000 or more, including Juan Soto (homer, double, walk in 4 PA, 2.750 OPS), Bo Bichette (2 homers in 4 PA, 2.500 OPS) and Ronald Acuna (3 for 5 with a walk).