EFL Staggers Into All-Star Break

Sunday evening I turned to the MLB site to see how my players had done.  I got ambitious and decided to track all the EFL teams with hashmarks on a piece of scratch paper.  Two years ago this was one of the ways I assembled stats on how each team did for daily updates, a terribly error prone process since I keep forgetting where players are (who is Keirmaier playing for these days?). I don’t know how we survived.

Anyway — when I started all the games were done except the Cardinals and Pirates, which must have had a rain delay or something.  I was interested in that game since Liriano had started for the Pirates, and Wong and Polanco were playing for St. Louis and Pittsburgh, respectively. Since the game wasn’t over, tied 3 – 3 going into the ninth, I tabulated all the other games first. (Noting by the way how many of our teams are struggling to generate offense these days.)

When I came back to the Pirate/Cardinal game, St. Louis had scored 2 in the top of the 10th, off Archimedes Caminaro of the Cheese. “Yes!” I thought.  Two earned runs in a single inning, a nice little chulk to slow the Cheese.”

(Archmides discovered that when you lower a two-earned-run inning into a bath that had previous contained only 4 er in 21 innings, your team’s daily ERA rises from 1.71 to 2.45.)

I checked the Pirates batting order for the bottom of the inning. Polanco was scheduled to bat eighth.  OK, let’s say the players in front of him make two outs, score two runs, and load the bases.  If all that happened, then Polanco would either send the game into the 11th with an out, or win the game. Trevor Rosenthal was pitching, the ace Haviland closer, so the odds of all that happening were infinitesimal.  But, hey, if I can spend eight hours this weekend watching cricket, I can watch this half inning unfold on my cell phone MLB gameday stats feed.

So here’s how it went:

Jody Mercer singled on a 2 ball 2 strike count.

Neil Walker (a Dragon!) flied out on a 1-0 pitch. (Yay!)

Andrew McCutchen grounded out on a 3-2 pitch.  Mercer to 2d. (Oops.  Inning’s nearly over. Rosenthal has added another 2/3 of a scoreless inning the Dragons already had Sunday.)

Starling Marte singled to right on a 1 – 0 pitch, Mercer scores. (Yay! An earned run for the Dragons! It helps the Rosebuds, Marte’s team, but no one begrudges the Rosebuds a little good fortune. Good for them!)

Jung Ho Kang singled to center on a 1-1 pitch. (Helps the Alleghenys, which I’m generally not ok with, but I’ll make an exception this time.)

Coaching visit to the mound. (Let’s see, Cervelli’s up next. There is still a long way to go to Polanco, so maybe I’d better not be greedy — see yesterday’s post — and just hope Cervelli blasts a homer and pins more runs on Rosenthal.)

Cervelli, on a 2-2 pitch, singled to right, scoring Marte, Kang to 3rd. (We’ll take that gladly. Now Rosenthal will at least chulk!)

Travis Ishikawa, batting 0.070, pinch hit for Sean Rodriguez, batting .220.  (Why??? Oh, well, since I’m hoping for a lightning strike anyway, what difference does it really make?)

Ishikawa walked on four pitches.

Whoa, baby!  It really happened.  The eighth and perforce last possible batter for the Pirates in the 10th was Polanco!  He’d probably make an out, but it was amazing just to get this far.

Polanco swung on the first pitch — a line drive to right.  A single. Kang scored.  Polanco raised my team’s batting line all the way to .200, .280, .200  – wretched, but slightly less so. But more importantly, he helped transform the Haviland pitching line from 3.7 ip, 0 er to 4.3 ip, 3 er, raising the daily Dragon era from 0.00 to 6.23.

Would it save the Wolverine’s place atop the EFL standings?  That’s a question that had to wait until this morning.

Old Detroit:  L, 1 – 3.  .200, .280, .200;  37.7 ip, 17 er, 4.06 ERA Fortunately Wade Miley (5.3 ip, 6 er) is at 0% activation this month, so the W’s actual daily ERA for EFL purposes was only 3.06.

Haviland:  W (-2), L 0;  (-10) – (-5).  .192, .300, .423;  4.3 ip, 3 er.  It’s hard to tell if Polanco saved the W’s hide or Rosenthal cost the Dragons theirs,  because Haviland chose yesterday to shed two entire games from its record by having the Angels pass the Astros in the AL West.  Shedding games is fun, like getting a do-over, but it makes causal analysis really hard.  Too hard for this commissioner.

Peshastin: L, 1 – 8.  .167, .216, .292;  16.7 ip,  10 er. I mentioned already how hard it was yesterday for EFL teams to score runs.  I am oddly consoled that it was also hard for us to keep our foes from scoring.  At least someone is still scoring runs.  We haven’t slipped into some kind of baseball ice age in which every stadium would turn into a pitcher’s paradise of glacial offense.  We were probably just unlucky that so many of us had an Alex Wood (5.7 ip, 7 er) on the same day.

Cottage:  “L”, 2 – (-2).   .250, .268, .300.  22 ip, 6 er. Speaking of analytical puzzles, here’s one: the Cheese got good pitching and pitcher-friendly hitting (including Sonny Gray’s complete game shutout), outscoring their opponents in large part by taking runs away from them, and still “lost.”  Part of this is that Dan Haren (6 ip, 1 er) was not 100% active, but will be tomorrow per a transaction posted last night that I didn’t see this morning until after I’d updated the stats.

Flint Hill: W, 2 – 2. .205, .239, .250;  9 ip, 2 er.  Tyson Ross’s 6.7 shutout innings led the way for the Tornados.  The hitting star was, of course, Johnny Giavotella with his 2 for 5 with a double. Hey! I found Kevin Kiermaier! Although it was an embarrassing moment to catch him:  0 for 3 on the day.

Pittsburgh:  L, 0 – 7.  .194,  .256, .278;  5 ip, 4 er.   You saw Kang help the Pirates win their second straight extra-inning come-from-behind game against the Cardinals. That was part of a 1 for 3 day with two walks.  The real hitting star for Pittsburgh was Dexter Fowler: 3 for 4. Oh, and Altuve homered — but as part of a 1 for 5 day.  Whatever good the hitters did was undone by Robby De La Rosa’s 3.7 ip, 4 stinker of a day.

Kaline: W 0, L 2;  (-9) – (-11).  .184, .225 .237;  3.3 ip, 1er.   Justin Turner might be the ex-Wolverine I miss the most. He plays everywhere, and he’s having another monster season. Yesterday he went 3 for 4 with a double to raise his season line to .308, .377, .538.

Canberra: L,   (-1) – 14.  .087,  .087,  .130;  10.7 ip, 13 er.  This is one of the rock-bottom worst daily stats I’ve ever seen in the EFL that only produced 1 loss.  Bryce Harper led the offense, as usual, but this time by going 1 for 4 with a double — a dismal line of .250, .250, .500.  Taijuan Walker tanked (5 ip, 6 er) but Shane Greene tanked worse (4.7 ip, 7 er).   Only 1 loss in the record, but 1.5 games lost in their tango with the Drive.

Portland:  L, 0 – 2.  .162, .205, .189;  6.7 ip, 1 er.  The Rosebuds pretty much kept pace with the Wolverines — and with the league as a whole — with their weak offense.  They did get some devent pitching from Chris Heston:  6.7 ip, 1 er.

 

FINAL NOTES:

1.  Don’t look too closely at the overall EFL performance Sunday.  It’s not pretty. We entered the all-star-break on a down note.  Not one of us got a clear real win — the best being Flint Hill’s tie that got credited as a win and Cottage’s “L” in which it outscored its competition.

2.  My computer will be in the IT shop at GF the next couple of days — cleverly timed for the All-Star Break.  I will be able to handle any EFL-related emergencies via my cell phone.