The Bugeater Legacy

EFL Standings for 2016

I was pretty happy when I saw the Wolverine batting line yesterday: 25 PA, .304 , .360 , . 565.  Pretty good!  I couldn’t wait to see how much ground the W’s gained on the other leaders. Well:

Haviland: .385, .429, 1.077 (14 PA)

Pittsburgh: .381, .391, .857 (22 PA)

Portland: .556, .619, .722 (21 PA)

So much for that.

I’m sure there was lots of good stuff here in the middle-reaches of the league.  Wonderful performances, inspiring heroics, tragic tragedies.  I just don’t have time to recounts these stories today.  Surely some literary-minded mid-EFL owner will feel inspiration to tell us the stories buried in these sparse numbers!

DC:  L, 4 – 6.  (.077, .025, .077;  1.3 ip, 0 er).  This wasn’t a good day, adding a game to the total with only 13 AB and 1.3 IP to work with. You’d think it was Friday the 13th (or the 1.3th, whichever) the way the Balk numbers went down.  So, what’s left for the Balk to aspire for this year?

*  Avoiding 100 losses?  They’d have to go 13 – 9 the rest of the way, a .591 winning percentage, which is an awfully tall order.

*  Catching the Braves?  The Braves’ magic number to finish ahead of the Balk is just under 18.  The Balk’s magic number to finish ahead of the Braves is 29. Also daunting.

*  Being less bad than the first place EFL team is good? This would make it clear that the Balk are within the range of performance possible for a normal EFL team, that they belong, already, even as an expansion team. (They might belong anyway, but being within the same distance of .500 as the first place team proves it.)  Right now the Balk are 1/2 game less bad than the Dragons are good. They just need to win as many games as the Dragons lose to prove they already belong in the same league.

* Not set the record for losses for an EFL team?   The worst records in EFL history are as follows:

2009 Nebraska Cubs            48 – 114    .295

2007 Newberg Samoahs      49 – 113    .301

2007 Peshastin Pears           49 – 113    .302

2007 Kaline Drive                 59 – 103   .366

The Pears are safe as the existing EFL team with the most losses in a single season. Right now the Balk are on pace for  the fourth-most losses, something like 104.

Here’s something to think about: Those 2009 Cubs renamed themselves the Bugeaters the following offseason (still my favorite EFL name) and finished 2011 at 99 – 63, 0.9 games out of first, falling out of the top spot only because of a furious last-minute rally by the Wolverines.  So there’s hope!