I’m puzzled. There’s a certain lethargy in the standings these days. It’s only June — way too early for the dog days of summer. It makes one wonder if all those other teams are a little bit afraid of walking through the forest to see Grandma in the stands at the World Series.
EFL | ||||||
Team | Wins | Losses | Pct. | GB | RS | RA |
Old Detroit Wolverines | 48 | 26 | .650 | — | 382.8 | 279.8 |
Haviland Dragons | 46 | 27 | .624 | 2.1 | 354.3 | 275.9 |
Cottage Cheese | 41 | 29 | .579 | 5.6 | 318.5 | 266.7 |
Peshastin Pears | 40 | 32 | .562 | 6.7 | 309.2 | 271.8 |
Flint Hill Tornadoes | 40 | 34 | .544 | 7.9 | 359.2 | 328.5 |
Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 36 | 32 | .525 | 9.4 | 316.8 | 301.6 |
Kaline Drive | 34 | 39 | .473 | 13.1 | 291.6 | 310.0 |
Canberra Kangaroos | 33 | 38 | .467 | 13.5 | 387.7 | 412.8 |
Portland Rosebuds | 26 | 46 | .359 | 21.3 | 299.0 | 402.7 |
Old Detroit: W 1, L 1; 8 – 8. .244, .314, .378; 7.3 ip, 2 er. The W’s keep fading. Now the Dragons are only 2.1 games back. We may not last out the month!
Haviland: W, 3 – 3. .219, .286, .281; 24.7 ip, 8 er. Not that the Dragons seem to be in any hurry to resume their position in first place. Odd.
Cottage: W, 5 – 3. .294, .342, .471; 4.7 ip, 1 er. The Cheese seems to smell. I mean, the Cheese seem to smell an opportunity. They nailed down a nice win and edged forward a grand total of… 0.2 games?!? Shouldn’t they be leaping and bounding up the standings?
Peshastin: “L”, 7 – 5. .295, .354, .500; 12.7 ip 9 er. The Pears also gained 0.2 games. Does anyone really want this league championship? Where’s the drive? Or the Drive? Where’s the passion? All these puny little 0.2-game gains while the Wolverines are burning. Well, there is this: Welington Castillo hit a home run!? What did you do to that guy? On the other hand, Danny Salazar almost pulled a Bauerian chulk: 4.3 ip, 6 er.
Flint Hill: W 1, L 1; 11 – 5. .231, .263, .442; 11.3 ip, 3 er. Has Colin McHugh been on the DL or something? I haven’t noticed him for a while. I noticed him today because he had a fine 8 ip, 2 er outing yesterday. I notice Kevin Kiermaier most days, because you offered him to me in trade a couple of times and I turned you down and now he’s hitting .358, .386, .567 in June. This gave the Tornados the biggest standings boost of the day in the EFL: a whole half a game. Whoopee.
Pittsburgh: L, 3 – 12. .192, .300, .423; 6 ip, 4 er. Ooooo. Pittsburgh only allocated Strasburg at 33% so didn’t get much value from his 5 scoreless innings. They did, however, get every speck of the impact generated by Dellin Betances’ quadruple chulk! That’s right: Betances allowed 4 runs in 1 ip. That’s 80% of the runs he’s allowed so far in 36 relief innings. As a result, the Alleghenys were the only EFL team not to gain on the Wolverines yesterday. We are grateful.
Kaline: “L”, 5 – 2. .241, .389, .345. 14.7 ip, 4 er. What’s the deal here? Mike Zunino is coming to life, too: 1 for 3 with a walk. He apparently thinks he’s Welington Castillo. He led the Drive to a 0.4 game improvement in the standings, much better than any of the top three pursuers could manage.
Canberra: W, 13 – 9. .500, .513, .639 ! 1.7 ip, 2 er. Wow. Bryce Harper went 0 for 4, but everyone else got at least one hit, and Jose Abreu and Jason Kipnis each got four hits. This gave the ‘Roos an above-average 0.3 game boost in the standings.
Portland: W, 10 – 9. .367, .457, .733 (!!); 3.7 ip 5 er. Maikel Franco is going bonzo: another homer plus a double a walk and a hbp in 5 plate appearancesore offensive fireworks from the bottom of the league. If the Dragons had done this they’d be at least a half-game closer to first. Instead it was left to our Little Red Riding Hood of a team, the Rosebuds, to show some spunk. Too bad they left their good pitching behind, though.
I must confess – I enjoyed this headline from NJ.com:
Yankees’ Dellin Betances: ‘I sucked’