NOTICE: WEEK 22 Allocations are due at noon on Friday August 26.
Week 21 started with the Seraphim barely ahead of a tight pennant race, the fourth-place Kangaroos only 1.3 games out. Like this:
That race was even hotter on Saturday morning, with all four of the top teams jammed into a single game’s depth in the standings. Like this:
I am unaware of any other EFL season in which the top four teams were that close after the All-Star Break. We were all on the edges of our seats!
Until the Seraphim pulled our chairs out from under us.
The balloons are all popped. The party has been postponed, but you get the feeling it is not going to be rescheduled. Only the dazed Wolverines still linger on the front walk, even though the Seraphim have gone back inside to celebrate their upcoming victory.
And if it weren’t for Matt Manning, the W’s would be groggily wandering away down the block like everyone else.
…
I’ll tell you about Matt in a minute. First let’s look at the band of Seraphim who’ve taken over the reigns. It’s not like there is some mighty Seraph upon whose winged back the team rode during this charge to the top. Johnny Cueto pitched 8.7 scoreless innings, the biggest single contributor to Salem’s 2.48 weekly ERA — but not really much bigger than Aaron Ashby’s 5 ip, 6 er bust… while 100% allocated to the Corvallis Cherubs farm team. Had the Arch Seraphist allocated Ashby at 100%, the Wolverines would today be (juuuuust barely) within 1 game of first place.
On the offensive side, Trayce Thompson had the best numbers ( .417, .462, .833) but only played about half the time for his MLB team. Three other hitters had a bigger impact, also OPSing over 1.000 but playing full time.
The inescapable conclusion: the Seraphim did this as a team — including the savviness of their Arch-Seraphic leader.
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By contrast, the Wolverines are hanging in the race, sort of, because of luck and/or the grace of God. Their leading hitter — Keston Hiura — played only about half the time in Milwaukee, but still led the Wolverines (and the Brewers, I suspect) with 3 homers and a 1.168 OPS. But the Wolverines only got a sliver of that goodness because W management allocated Hiura at only 33%. The other two W’s to OPS over 1.000 — Eloy Jimenez and Gavin Lux — also played only half the time, but that was not Old Detroit management’s fault. They were allocated 100%, they just didn’t play 100% for some reason. Josh Bell played 100% and but was allocated only 66%, because of his unremitting slump since moving to the Padres. But then, of course, he remitted his slump in the last half of the week, OPSing .970 since Sunday — 1/3 of that goodness pouring into the dirt, wasted.
There was one lucky stroke that kept the Wolverines sort of in the hunt: Matt Manning got off the IL about the first of August (with no help from the Wolverines), worked out his kinks, and this week made two starts: 7 ip, 1 er, and then yesterday 6 ip, 0 er . That’s an ERA of 0.69 over 13 crucial innings.
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It’s not like DC and Canberra, two teams with longtime ties to our nation’s capital, are not in a race. They ARE, but mostly with each other: they have been seesawing amongst themselves for the last few days, and are now only 0.2 games apart. For the third-place Balk, Martin Perez was most Manning-like: 12 ip, 2 er , 1.50 ERA. The Kangaroos didn’t get an outstanding pair of starts from any pitchers, but they did get a pass performance from ex-Wolverine Nathanael Lowe: 12 for 31 with 4 homers, a triple, 3 walks and a hbp: a nice 1.280 OPS. Another former Wolverine, Willson Contreras, matched the OPS (1.282) but in about half the plate appearances.
I can see the Kangaroos matching the Seraphim offense (don’t overlook Kangaroo superstars Vlad Guerrero or Julio Rodriguez). .. but the pitching? Cueto is probably the Seraphim’s 5th starter.
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The Seraphim were not the only team to dominate their head-to-head opponents this week. Salem put up an .877 weekly raw winning percentage, only slightly lower than the .9002 mark they’d recorded earlier in the week. The Dragons flew a similar route: a little above .900 mid-week, subsiding only slightly to .846 by week’s end. The Rosebuds (.564 raw winning percentage) put up a valiant resistance to the Seraphim, managing to dent Salem’s dominance a little. But the Dragons had to face the Kangaroos, who had a .724 raw winning percentage of their own. So even Haviland lost ground to the Seraphim, although not as much (nor as dramatically) as the Kangaroos.
The Tornados were kinder to the Wolverines than anyone was to any of the other leading teams. Flint Hill only mustered a .378 raw winning percentage this week. Tornado hurlers did ok — 3.67 ERA — but their hitting was anemic, only about 10% above replacement level. Sean Murphy was about the only exception, OPSing .907. But Juan Soto has Bellitis, apparently, that syndrome where suddenly being transported to a new team knocks your hitting for a loop. Soto’s case isn’t as serious as Bell’s: Soto is OPSing .947 since August 1, but only .697 in Week 22. Bell is OPSing .536 since Aug 1, but picked up the pace in Week 22 to .823.
Kaline also belongs in the top group of team performers this week. Their raw .841 winning percentage, third best in the league behind Salem and Haviland, contributed mightily to the Balk’s woes. Max Fried’s 15 ip, 3 earned runs is in the same class with Manning and Perez, but no one is in the same class with Albert Pujols: .478, .520, 1.087 for a 1.607 OPS on the week, including 4 hr, 2 doubles, and 2 HBP. One more week like that and Pujols passes A-Rod. Another one like that and he passes 700 homers. But you should also notice this: one more week like that, and the Drive pass the Tornados, who are only 1.0 game ahead of Kaline!
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The hottest race in the league is not atop the standings, as we’ve seen. It’s not even for the mid-point position, which is the object of the Kaline-Flint Hill competition. It’s for 8th place between the Portland Rosebuds and the Pittsburgh Alleghenys. Those two have traded spots twice this week. Right now Portland leads by .0012 percentage points, and 0.15 games in the standings. Despite their .564 raw winning percentage in Week 22, the Rosebuds feel like they’re in a funk right now. Dylan Bundy made two starts, and his 10.3 ip, 3 er is quite good, but “saving the day” good like Manning, Perez, and Fried. Michael Harris II stands head and shoulder above the rest of the team’s hitters, but that only gets him to a .936 OPS, a great but not a towering number.
The Alleghenys had a better raw winning percentage in Week 22: .624. They also had a more compliant opponent. (Bellingham’s raw winning percentage was an impressive .597, but not in the same class as the Seraphim’s .877.) The often inconsistent Jose Berrios avoided his demons this week, starting twice and compiling a nice 10.7 ip, 3 er performance. But two of his colleagues did not escape those demons! Frankie Montas went 11.7 ip, giving up 8 earned runs, and Logan Webb went 9.3 innings, giving up 9 earned runs. Fortunately the A’s can always console themselves with Adley (Rutschman, 1.033 OPS this week)… at least for 6 more weeks.
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Ok, now we’re down to teams 10 and 11 in the standings. I am happy to report good news for both of them.
For Bellingham, it was a winning week in raw winning percentage terms: .597. The results were not more wins than losses only because they had to face the Alleghenys who were on an upswing. The Cascades were led by young hitters Rafael Ortega (1.371 OPS) and Randy Arozarena (1.169).
The Pears did not put up a raw winning percentage above .500, despite getting good pitching overall (esp. from VIL escapee Dustin May’s 5 ip, 0 er debut performance). They didn’t get enough of that good pitching, so their ERA was marred by 18.2 innings of replacements, transforming that beautiful 2.81 into a plainer 3.67. Pear hitting, on the other hand, was painfully plain all by itself: a team OPS of .578, another team hitting at only 10% above replacement. In Peshastin’s case, the hitting issues were compounded by carrying 26 replacement at bats. But there was still grace sufficient for the Pears, in the form of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who finished off their losing week with a 2 – 14 shellacking at the hands of the Braves, dropping the Pirates raw winning percentage to .279 and lifting the Pears’ adjusted winning percentage all the way to .601.