And the winner is…

… by less than a game! In an exciting photo finish!…

Wait, wait, we have to do this properly.

In ninth place: 

 

Portland ended the season losing 5 – 7.  No Rosebud pitchers appeared. The team batter .214, .283, .405 for a quiet departure.  Dee Gordon went 3 for 4, ending the season at a stellar .333, .359, .418 line and 205 total hits. Kole Calhoun led the team with 26 homers, although rookie Mookie Betts led the team in slugging (among qualifying hitters) with a .470 mark fueled by 42 doubles. Debutant Chris Heston led the team in innings pitcher (177.7) and, among qualifiers, in ERA (3.95) although Chris Young in 123.3 innings produced a sparkling 3.06 ERA.

The Rosebuds sort of fumbled their first round pick, letting the Phillies, Rockies and Braves sneak in front of them — the Braves by less than 0.1 games.  However, given that we need to delete every 3.3333rd MBA team from the list (to pare it from 39 to 30 teams), I don’t think the Braves’ sneaky move will hurt the Rosebuds.  I’ll confirm this when I get a chance to run the draft pick spreadsheet.

 

In eighth place:  

Kaline lost its last game, 4 – 5.  BP reports no pitchers for the Drive, either. Drive hitters went 6 for 25 for a .240, .269, .400 line.   Yoenis Cespedes Drove the offense, going .291, .328, .542 with 35 homers, 105 RBI and 101 runs.  Justin Turner might have hit even better in his 385 at bats:  .294, .370, .491.  Tom Koehler led the team in innings with 187.3, although Jason Hammel was slightly more valuable with his 3.74 ERA (compared to Koehler’s 4.08). A crew of impressive relievers brought the Drive team ERA down to the 3.90 region.

 

In seventh place:

 

Kangaroos won their last game, 5 – (-1).  Daniel Norris turned in 5 scoreless innings to key the team’s 14 ip, 5 er final effort from the mound.  Only four Kangaroo hitters appeared, for a total of only 12 plate appearances, but they managed a junior-sized Edgar Martinez Day (congratulations!) at .364, .417, .545.   Jason Kipnis (.823 OPS) and Jose Abreu  (.850 OPS) vied for the position of Most Valuable Hitter, Mere Mortal Division.  Bryce Harper ended up at .330 .460, .649 with 42 homers and a 1.109 OPS.

The ‘Roos had pitchers, too, only two of which accumulated more than 100 innings: Rick Porcello (172 ip, 4.92 ERA) and Taijuan Walker (160.7 ip, 4.56 ERA).  Well, I guess Replacement also got 152 innings or so, for a nice 7.50 ERA.

 

In sixth place

 

Cottage ended the season on a double downer, losing a both ends of a twin bill by a combined score of 9 – 16.  Cheese hitters went out with a bang (.286, .423, .429) albeit a small one (only 26 plate appearances).   Cheese pitchers went out with a thud (13.50 ERA on the day) albeit also a small one (2.7 ip, 4 er).  Debutant Kris Bryant ended his Cheese career (most likely) by leading the team at the plate (.275, .369, .488) with 26 homers, 99 RBI, and 87 runs.  Sonny Gray was anything but drab as the ace, completing 208 innings with a tiny 2.73 ERA.

The Head Cheese and I were commiserating Sunday about our dismal results.  The W’s went into the season expected to finish 1st but ended up 3rd.  The Cheese were expected to finish second, but ended up in 6th.  There were even some rankings that had the Rosebuds 3rd, which doomed them to finishing 9th.  Note that all these teams were three times worse than expected.

Probably if we had the proper multidimensional view of the universe, the Wolverines and Cheese really did finish one-two this year. Those of you who finished above us must have all wrapped around through other dimensions two or three times from your original projections.

However we seem to have agreed to play in the conventional three or four dimensions, which doesn’t allow us to show you how much better we were than all of you, pandimensionally. So we’ll shrug (out in the seventh dimension where you can’t see us) and move on cheerfully ( in the 23rd dimension where even we can’t see us).

 

In fifth place:

 

Peshastin goes out on a 3 – 3 win (really 3.4 t0 2.8). The Pears batted at a .219, .297, .344 clip on the final day, rather mediocre (although Welington Castillo managed to bat 1.000, 1.000, 1.000 — of course he did). But Matt Wisler’s 8.7 shutout innings led the Pear pitching staff to a pretty 21.7 ip, 4 er perfomance.  On the season, the only batters with OPSes over .800 were part-timers Devon Travis (.859) and Khris Davis (.828). Yunel Escobar led qualifying hitters at .314, .375, .415.  I bet you’d never guess that the top Pear pitcher is Max Scherzer, of the two no-hitters, 228.7 ip. 276 strikeouts, and 2.79 ERA.

 

In fourth place:

 

When you think of a team doing unprecedented things this year, you have to think of the Tornados. Typically for their dynamic final six weeks or so, Flint Hill goes out on a huge 13 – 4 win.  They batted .302, .362, .651, led by the real Chris Davis’ monster .750, .800, .2.500 day (2 homers, a double and a walk in five trips to the plate).  The 5.3 ip, 2 er pitching they got is almost irrelevant in the face of such offensive prowess.

Davis’ hot second half helped him storm to the top of the thundercap offensively — .262, .3561, .562 for a .923 OPS — although four other hitters also exceeded the .800 OPS mark. Collin McHugh led the team in innings (203.7 ip, to a 3.89 ERA), although Tyson Ross’s 3.26 ERA in 196 ip might have been at least as valuable.

 

In third place:

… oh, rats, I have to go run a lecture, take the lecturer out to dinner, then run another lecture.  We’ll finish up the top three places later this evening.