If you wanted to get to the top of the EFL standings today, you had to run a gantlet of volcanic outbursts to grab the gauntlet.
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 10 | 4 | .713 | — | 70.2 | 44.6 |
| Haviland Dragons | 10 | 4 | .680 | 0.5 | 67.1 | 46.1 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 8 | 5 | .589 | 1.8 | 63.0 | 52.6 |
| Cottage Cheese | 7 | 5 | .563 | 2.2 | 57.7 | 50.8 |
| Peshastin Pears | 7 | 6 | .554 | 2.3 | 52.9 | 47.4 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 6 | 8 | .436 | 3.9 | 58.8 | 66.9 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 6 | 8 | .419 | 4.1 | 62.6 | 73.7 |
| Kaline Drive | 5 | 9 | .383 | 4.6 | 53.8 | 68.3 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 5 | 9 | .366 | 4.9 | 52.2 | 68.8 |
Old Detroit: W, 11 – 2. .372, .417, .651; 11.3 ip, 3 er. The best day of the year for the W’s was marred only by Francisco Liriano running into the Cub band saw (5 ip, 3 er) and even that wasn’t too bad. Wade Miley stuck to the “no earned runs allowed” plane (5.7 ip, 0 er) to turn the pitching around.
Haviland Dragons: W 2, L (-1); 5 – (-4). .282, .364, .308; 10.7 ip, 1 er. The Wolverines did not break away to a big lead because the Dragons had an even better day. The numbers aren’t quite as good, but the Dragon pitchers were replacing a thin layer of replacement innings, so the effect was a 0.2 gain on the Wolverines despite the W’s having their best day of the season. The gauntlet has been thrown and picked up. The race is on.
Portland: W 2, L (-1); 11 – 2. .500, .541, .794; 7 ip, 3 er. What a huge day offensively! Corky Kalhoun went 4 for 5 with a homer. Dalton Pompey put on a Vesuvian display: 3 for 4 with two doubles and a walk. Starling Marte produces a startling 2 for 3 with a homer and a walk. And those were just the batters with a daily OPS over 2.000. The Rosebuds also gained on the W’s on Old Detroit’s best day of the season. They’re a little further behind but they’ve sent the same message as the Dragons (and buried two other teams in the process).
Cottage: W, 5 – 4. .324, .342, .459; 18.3 ip, 9 er. Dan Haren (6 ip, 4 er) and Drew Pomeranz (5 ip, 4 er) struggled on the mound. The Cheese still won, but lost an entire game in the standings to the Dragons and Rosebuds, so it probably doesn’t feel like much of a win.
Peshastin: L, 6 – 8. .273, .351, .545; 1 ip, 4 er. Neil Cotts nonuple chulked (0.1 ip, 3 er) to torpedo the Pears’ chances of keeping up with the pyrotechnics atop the league. Too bad — Cotts buried Zach Cozarts 3 for 5 with 2 homers and a stolen base, and Jake Marisnick’s Mariners-sinking 2 for 2 with a walk and a hit by pitch.
Flint Hill: L, 4 – 12. .256, .360, .302; 9 ip, 11 er. RJ Alvarez’ nasty sextuple chulk (1 ip, 6 er) was the centerpiece of this little stinker of a game. The thing about earned runs: once you’ve recorded them, you can’t erase them. You can only dilute them with tons of scoreless innings.
Canberra: W, 4 – (-1); .273, .349, .409; 11 ip, 4 er. Taijuan Walker righted his ship, sort of: 8 k in 5.3 ip, 4 bb, 1 er. Daniel Hudson triple chulked (1ip, 3 er) but the other five relievers Canberra sent to the mound did their jobs to protect the victory. (Of course, the M’s threw away Walker’s MLB win for him after he left the game, but that’s a different matter.) Recently resuscitated Denard Span let the offense with 2 for 5 hitting, and the ‘Roos put a buffer between themselves and the cellar.
Kaline: L, 4 – 5. .317, .326, .415; 13 ip, 7 er. There hasn’t been any particularly dramatic collapse in Kaline, but the Drive have driven away their early hot start. Tommy Milone meandered his way through 5.7 ip, 4 er. While Tyler Matzek braved the wilds of Colorado for 5 ip, 2 er, it wasn’t enough to keep the Drive from sliding into 8th place. Mitch Moreland doubled in his his only plate appearance to achieve an Edgarian batting line for the season (.300, .405, .500) and humiliate the Wolverines for treating him so disposably. The other Edgar-class hitter on the Drive? Former Wolverine Travis Snider, on whom the W’s were the last losing bidder, whose .500, .500, .750 day brought his season line to .325, .413, .500, which is even closer than Moreland to Edgar’s .312, .415, .518 career numbers.
Pittsburgh: W, 4 – 3; .200, .347, .250; 14.3 ip, 4 er. Lance Lynn (6.3 ip, 1 er) and Jerome Williams (6 ip, 2 er) aren’t the kind of volcanic menaces that strike fear into too many hearts — but then, that’s supposed to be true of all the Alleghenys, even though they’ve been violating this norm for most of the last 11 years. Anyway, Lynn and Williams paved the path to a pretty good day of Pittsburgh pitching.
Sigh… I talked to my staff about the pitching strategy recommended in yesterday’s post (runs: just say no). The Cheeses sat attentively on the shelf, pledged to cooperate, and then went right out there and gave up runs just like they always do. What’s an owner to do?
And another thing: what is this “gantlet” of which you speak? Words selected by an author of your level should not be assumed to be wrong, even if I’ve never heard them. So I looked it up on the Internet which of course is authoritative. Here’s what it it said:
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The phrase throw down the gauntlet, meaning to issue or accept a challenge, uses gauntlet in its glove-related sense. It derives from the practice among medieval knights of challenging each other to duels by throwing down their gauntlets. So gantlet does not work as an alternative spelling here.
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I rest my case.
A gantlet is the kind you run to get a gauntlet or some other prize. They are often spelled interchangeably.