Yay for Yates!

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	76	36	.675	—	631.9	437.0
Cottage Cheese	73	40	.645	3.2	614.7	450.9
Haviland Dragons	73	41	.644	3.2	670.7	499.2
Flint Hill Tornadoes	73	41	.636	4.1	588.4	443.1
Portland Rosebuds	69	45	.602	8	655.6	522.6
Kaline Drive	65	49	.568	11.8	561.7	485.3
Peshastin Pears	63	51	.551	13.9	560.7	513.5
Old Detroit Wolverines	59	55	.522	17.1	561.4	522.7
Canberra Kangaroos	51	62	.451	25.2	519.6	577.1
D.C. Balk	43	70	.382	32.9	557.1	710.7

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Pittsburgh: W, 3 – 3. (.214, .241, .500; 20.7 ip, 7 er). If the rest of  the league is going to have hope of catching the Alleghenys, we need more Pittsburgh performances like  Kirby Yates’: 0.3 ip, 0 hits, 1 walk, 2 earned runs. There’s a mysterious sextuple chulk! How did he surrender 2 earned runs with no hits and one walk?  Easy. He came in to start the 7th inning. He got Kangaroo Billy Hamilton to fly out.  He walked Dragon Jesse Winker and then hit Dragon Zack Cozart. Then he took a shower while Brad Hand walked ex-Pear Joey Votto and then served up a grand slam to Dragon Scooter Gennett.  See? If that could happen every day, the Alleghenys could be eroded. (Of course, the Dragons would soar, so I’m not sure how much of an improvement that would be.)

Cottage:  DNP, 2 – (-1).  (.237, .286, .356; 6 ip, 2 er).  Sonny Gray pitched a nice six innings for the Yankees (boooo!). He didn’t get a win in MLB, nor did he in the EFL. This wasn’t because of the crummy hitting.  There just wasn’t a game scheduled for the Cheese.

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Haviland: “L”, 8 – 5.  (.324, .395, .588; 7.3 ip, 7 er.) Just in case the Dragons are inclined to gloat a little about how they almost single-handedly oppressed poor Kirby Yates, I am going to reveal a little secret: I just noticed that I had forgotten to move Vincent Velasquez back to the active BP roster from the “watched” roster where I put him last month when he was sent down to the AAA Greensburg Gila Monsters.  That means today’s results don’t include Velasquez’ 1 ip,  3 er triple chulk start last night.  On the other hand, it also doesn’t include his earlier 5 ip, 2 er start.   All six of Velasquez’ August innings WILL be in tomorrow’s update.

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(I just double checked everyone’s rosters.  The only other player who got left behind on the watched list was Cottage’ Grant Dayton, who has not appeared in August.)

Flint Hill: W 1, L (-1), , 4 – (-2). (.290, .371, .516;   14.3 ip, 10 er). Brad Hand, it turns out, is a Tornado.  He allowed 3 earned runs in only 0.7 ip, coughing up not only Scooter Gennett’s grand slam, but another homer to Eugenio Suarez two pitches later.  Even so — the Tornados took advantage of their off day to eliminate 10.3 replacement starter innings and 3 replacement relief innings, so they ended up erasing a couple of runs allowed.

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Portland: W, 4 – 4. (.206, .308, .382;  0.7 ip, 0 er). The Rosebud pitching staff got their calendars wrong and went golfing yesterday.  Blake Parker only showed up because he had left his clubs in the stadium locker room. The kindly Rosebud management limited him to 0.7 innings so he could make his tee time.

Kaline: L, 1 – 5. (.156, .206, .219;   13.3 ip 6 er). The Drive had two hitters OPS 1.000 or better:  a Yankee (Judge, 1 for 3 with a double and a walk) and a Met (C4psedes, 2 for 5 with a double).  Astro Yulieski Gurriel went 2 for 5, too.  Everyone else went 0 for 18, including 4 Mariners (0 for 10). Meanwhile, the Drive brass await news on James Paxton’s injury.

Peshastin:  W, 5 – 2. (.143, .250, .476; 7 ip, 1 er).  The Rotoballer headline says “Danny Salazar Can’t Escape the Sixth Inning”.  So I thought some disaster had transpired.  Nah.  He went 5.3 ip, 1 er.  That’s not a bad deal at all.  And all three Pear relievers pitched well, too. On the offensive side, Trey Mancini went three for 4 with a double and two homers.  In their 20 plate appearances all the other Pears combined for 3 walks and…  nope, that’s all — just three walks.

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Old Detroit:  DNP, 8 – (-5). (.500 .567, .773; 7.3 ip, 0 er). The W’s followed the Tornados’ strategy for the day off:  repeal and replace replacement innings! The W’s replaced 3 1/6 replacement starting innings (Tyler Skaggs is currently only 50% active) and 1 replacement relief inning with scoreless innings. And they had a great (and nearly complete with 28 plate appearances) day at the plate. The 13-run margin, with 5 of them erased runs allowed, is the largest winning margin I’ve ever seen not to result in an official EFL win.  But the W’s gains 1.4 games on the Yankees (who lost), so they moved 0.9 games from just barely rounding up to 59 wins to now just barely rounding down to 59

Canberra: W, 3 – 3. (.200, .273, .400;  8.3 ip, 3 er).  The K’s pitched plenty well enough for a win, thanks primarily to a nice outing from Blake Snell (6.3 ip. 1 er).  They didn’t hit enough, though, to make it an obvious win, despite great days by Michael Conforto (a homer and two walks in 5 plate appearances) and Tim Beckham (2 for 5 with a double and a triple).

DC: L, 7 – 7.  (.400, .538, .500; 0 ip, 0 er).  The Balk tried the minimalist approach yesterday.  They sent no pitchers to the mound, and only 3 hitters for a total of 13 plate appearances.  All the hitters did very well — Kole Calhoun’s 1 for 3 with a walk being the weakest of the three. I guess you could say the same for the pitchers: all the Balk pitchers who appeared did very well. So the Balk earned 7 runs on their 13 great plate appearances.  But they also allowed 7 runs by leaving the day’s pitching to replacements.

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AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Flint Hill Tornadoes	73	41	.636	—
Boston Red Sox	65	49	.570	7.5
New York Yankees	60	53	.531	12
Old Detroit Wolverines	59	55	.522	13
Tampa Bay Rays	59	57	.509	14.5
Baltimore Orioles	57	58	.496	16
Toronto Blue Jays	54	60	.474	18.5

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Washington Nationals	68	45	.602	—
Miami Marlins	53	60	.469	15
Atlanta Braves	51	61	.455	16.5
New York Mets	51	61	.455	16.5
Canberra Kangaroos	51	62	.451	17.1
D.C. Balk	43	70	.382	24.8
Philadelphia Phillies	42	70	.375	25.5

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	76	36	.675	—
Cleveland Indians	60	52	.536	15.6
Minnesota Twins	57	56	.504	19.1
Kansas City Royals	57	57	.500	19.6
Detroit Tigers	52	62	.456	24.6
Chicago White Sox	44	68	.393	31.6

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cottage Cheese	73	40	.645	—
Chicago Cubs	59	54	.522	13.9
St. Louis Cardinals	59	56	.513	14.9
Milwaukee Brewers	59	58	.504	15.9
Pittsburgh Pirates	57	58	.496	16.9
Cincinnati Reds	48	67	.417	25.9

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Haviland Dragons	73	41	.644	—
Houston Astros	71	43	.623	2.4
Kaline Drive	65	49	.568	8.6
Seattle Mariners	59	57	.509	15.4
Los Angeles Angels	58	58	.500	16.4
Texas Rangers	54	59	.478	18.9
Oakland A’s	50	65	.435	23.9

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Los Angeles Dodgers	81	33	.711	—
Portland Rosebuds	69	45	.602	12.4
Colorado Rockies	65	49	.570	16
Arizona Diamondbacks	64	50	.561	17
Peshastin Pears	63	51	.551	18.2
San Diego Padres	50	64	.439	31
San Francisco Giants	46	70	.397	36