Here is an update for games through Friday evening, plus the early Braves/Marlins game this morning. I still count all this as one game out of the six for our week. I didn’t copy your allocations onto the data entry sheet until 1:00 PM, so I hope they are all correct. Please let me know if there are errors.
Notes:
- Brandon Drury is carrying the Balk so far this week. Without his stats, the second, third, and fourth place teams would be 0.4, 0.7, and 1.0 games out of first, obviously with rounding errors hidden from view. The Balk offense would have produced 3.1 runs in the first game of the week. But WITH Drury in the lineup, the offense bloats — or balloons, depending on your perspective — to 7.4 runs, and three worthy competitors stagger backward about half a game in the standings. (The rest of the league does, too, except the Pears, who stagger backward about twice as far, since their outcome is affected directly opposite to the Balk’s outcome.).
- This isn’t … well, I was going to say it isn’t fair, but it’s the rules and we all could have had this benefit had we gotten Drury. But I had him years ago, and he was disappointing, and was ever since then, too, until this year. Why should the Balk not have to be disappointed with Drury like all the rest of us were? It may be fair, but it doesn’t feel right.
- Furthermore, a pennant race going 0.0, 0.4, 0.7, and 1.0 for the top four teams would be incandescent! 0.0, 0.9, 1.1, 1.4 is just blazing hot. It would be fine, if we hadn’t had a glimpse of the incandescent!
- So this week we are all rooting for the Pears! Go Pears! Beat D.C.!
- Last week the Pirates outscored their opponents, 26 – 25. It’s not much, but it might be the only week all season they did that. Oh, well, I might as well look it up..
Look what I just found at Baseball Reference:
First, I was surprised the Pirates were over .500 for their existence. Recency bias got me, I guess.
Second — look at the record for the old Pittsburgh Alleghenys! The EFL version of the Alleghenys is way above .500. They’d only have to average 10 games over .500 per year for the 17 years they’ve been in the league to make the Alleghenys a winning team all-time. I bet they’ve done that!
… NO! I am NOT going to look that up, I’m researching something else right now.
What was it? Oh, yes — had the Pirates won a week before Week 19? And the answer is, yes, they won three of our weeks earlier in the season: Weeks 8, 9, and 12. But they weren’t playing any EFL teams. So take a moment to think kindly of the Tornados, who had the misfortune of facing the Pirates in only the fourth week (out of 19) they outscored their opponents.
By the way, those of us who haven’t yet played the Pirates might enjoy knowing this: they have lost games this year by the following scores:
- Opening Day: 0 – 9.
- April 23: 0 – 21
- May 10: 1 – 11
- May 16: 0 – 9
- May 22: 4 – 18
- June 22: 5 – 14
- July 1: 2 – 19
- July 6: 0 – 16
- July 15: 2 – 13
They have not gone more than a month without losing by at least 9 runs, the standard they set Opening Day. So, lick your chops, ye Dragons: the Pirates are due for another embarrassing blowout, either today, tomorrow, or Monday!
In the month between their May 22 and June 22 blowout losses, the Pirates had a stretch of 9 games in a row they lost by a total score of 21 – 49. So they can bless you gradually for an entire week, too!
The Pirates win games sometimes, too. That April 23 0-21 loss at the hands of the Cubs did not go unavenged. On June 20 (during our Week 12) the Pirates beat the Cubs 12 – 1, the only game the Pirates have won all year by more than 7 runs. They beat the Cubs again on June 21, 7 – 1. So they had their biggest and third-biggest margins of victory on consecutive days against the Cubs.
Then on June 22, they lost to the Cubs 5 – 14. So, yeah, I am looking forward to playing the Pirates in Week 23.