Adieu Août

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	90	42	.683	—	748.0	507.6
Flint Hill Tornadoes	87	47	.648	4.3	690.6	508.5
Haviland Dragons	86	47	.648	4.4	790.0	581.2
Cottage Cheese	84	49	.630	6.9	720.5	548.4
Portland Rosebuds	80	52	.604	10.4	765.2	609.9
Kaline Drive	76	57	.569	15	668.6	580.0
Peshastin Pears	74	58	.563	15.9	655.3	584.7
Old Detroit Wolverines	71	63	.530	20.1	671.6	619.3
Canberra Kangaroos	65	68	.490	25.4	641.7	655.8
D.C. Balk	53	80	.400	37.4	663.6	817.9

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Pittsburgh: DNP, (-4) – 1. (.129, .250, .258; 1.7 ip, 1 er). Yes!  That’s right. You deserved a break yesterday.  You deserve a break today, too. An tomorrow… In fact, just put your feet up for the whole month. I’ll bring you a root beer float. Here’s a good book. You have done a season’s worth already.   Let me know if you need anything.

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Flint Hill: “W”, 4 – 6. (.190, .292, .333; 2 ip, 1 er).  Not you, Tornadoes.  YOU can’t take a break. You’ve got 4.3 games of work to do if you want to be the hero that breaks the power of the Old Guard. They didn’t become the Old Guard by being easy to beat. You think a .625 OPS and a 4.50 ERA is good enough?  Criminies, people, Old Detroit has better numbers than that. You can’t even finish in 8th place playing like that. Yes, I know it’s  cruel, comparing you to the Woeverines. If you don’t like it, get off your duff.

Haviland: L, 4 – 4. (.222, .276, .481; 0 ip, 0 er). Who needs pitching? When you’ve got cute little second basemen like Scooter Gennett spraying homers like he did yesterday, or great hulking catchers like Gary Sanchez clouting them like he did yesterday, too.

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Cottage: “W”, 5 – 6. (.267, .371, .433; 1 ip, 0 er). Travis Sawchik wrote an article for Fangraphs entitled “Greg Bird Is Back and Might Save the Day“.  I didn’t read it because a) Greg Bird is a Yankee and I try to be very careful to arrange my life so I never have to root for a Yankee, especially now that Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera are retired; and b) Greg Bird is a Cheese and I don’t know if I can stand the poignancy of the Cheese story: all those years scheming, the scheme coming off like a dream, the dream wilting in the heat of the summer, and then, on the verge of dying, rallying just because Greg Bird was coming back, Bird being weighted down with the desperation of Cheese fans seeing their one chance at heroism slipping away, a burden no one could bear least of all some kind of Bird with their delicate bones.  I can’t stand to watch. It’s all so heartbreaking.

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Portland: W, 8 – 4. (.333, .481, .571; 5 ip, 2 er).  There’s almost a full good day’s work here: 27 excellent plate appearances, only 3 short of the minimum; and 5 respectable innings, only 2 short of the minimum.  Not bad considering the short schedule last night. Manny Machado was only a Rosebud for a month, but it was a good month (.341, .348, .690 — a nice 1.039 OPS) and it ended on a strong note with a a 2 for 4 night.

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Kaline: W, 7 – 1. (.308, .471, .615; 6.7 ip, 0 er). Only four batters showed up, but they carried more than their share of water. Meanwhile Kaline’s Scotsmen Collin McHugh and TJ McFarland combined to completely stifle opposing batters.  Kaline has been surging this week, ending the month on a strong note.

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Peshastin: L, 4 – 6. (.240, .296, .320; 2.7 ip, 3 er.) Ten days ago the Wolverines were about to snack on the Pears. But the Pears are in their prime season now, and the W’s couldn’t keep up.  Instead, the Drive need to be worrying about the Pears rolling over them.  Although not yesterday, not with these unimpressive numbers.

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Old Detroit: W 9 – 6.  (.360, .385, .640; 1 ip, 0 er.)  Not a complete day (only 26 plate appearances and not much pitching), but nevertheless enough to stem the Wolverines’ recent slide back toward .500, where they started the month.

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Canberra: “L”, 8 – 7. (.483, .483, .793; 1 ip, 0 er). If only there’d been some pitching. The Kangaroos bounced almost all the way back to .500 in August. If they’d had some decent pitching with all that hitting, maybe they would have made it yesterday.

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DC: L, 6 – 10. (.313, .476, .313; 6 ip, 7 er). Maybe not having any pitching is a good thing!  Jeremy Hellickson got beat up yesterday (4.7 ip, 7 er) and the Balk suffered an August-ending loss for it. Still, it was a decent DC month: 16 – 13.

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Did we accomplish anything in August?  Here are the standings as of the end of July (and, in reverse, our draft order for tomorrow):

EFL END OF JULY 2017
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	69	35	.665	—	597.7	420.1
Cottage Cheese	68	36	.649	1.7	567.1	412.2
Flint Hill Tornadoes	67	37	.640	2.7	544.2	407.0
Haviland Dragons	67	38	.637	2.8	629.5	473.5
Portland Rosebuds	63	42	.604	6.3	616.1	488.6
Kaline Drive	61	44	.585	8.3	527.8	441.9
Peshastin Pears	58	47	.550	12	515.5	473.5
Old Detroit Wolverines	51	53	.492	18.1	495.2	493.2
Canberra Kangaroos	47	57	.457	21.7	479.2	526.1
D.C. Balk	36	68	.351	32.7	493.5	672.1

Notes:

1. Pittsburgh stretched its lead by 2.6 games: discouraging, but not quite decisive.

2. Cottage sagged 5.2 games into fourth place. Probably decisive, unless Greg Bird…

3. Everyone else stayed in order.

4. The top seven teams’ winning percentages didn’t move much. Pittsburgh surged by 0.018,  Cottage sagged by 0.019, and all the other top teams changed by a smaller degree.

5.  The bottom three teams all improved by much larger margins:  Old Detroit by 0.038, Canberra by 0.033, and DC by a whopping 0.049.

6.  We all lost ground to Pittsburgh.

So, no, we didn’t accomplish much. We might learn some lessons, though:

1. Be careful with those nukes!  Corey Kluber pitched 46 innings in August to a 1.96 ERA, leading the Alleghenys to a fine 3.59  team ERA.  Without him that team ERA would have been at least 3.87.  At 0.28 runs per game, plus 10% for unearned runs making it .31, over the 28 games of August, Kluber saved 8.68 runs, or close to  two wins. The Alleghenys would likely have been only about 2.4 or 2.5 games up, if Corey “Loose Nuke” Kluber hadn’t fallen into Allegheny hands.

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2.

AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Flint Hill Tornadoes	87	47	.648	—
Boston Red Sox	76	58	.567	10.8
New York Yankees	71	62	.534	15.3
Old Detroit Wolverines	71	63	.530	15.8
Baltimore Orioles	68	66	.507	18.8
Tampa Bay Rays	67	68	.496	20.3
Toronto Blue Jays	62	72	.463	24.8

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Washington Nationals	81	52	.609	—
Miami Marlins	66	67	.496	15
Canberra Kangaroos	65	68	.490	15.8
Atlanta Braves	59	73	.447	21.5
New York Mets	58	75	.436	23
D.C. Balk	53	80	.400	27.8
Philadelphia Phillies	50	83	.376	31

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	90	42	.683	—
Cleveland Indians	76	56	.576	14.1
Minnesota Twins	70	63	.526	20.6
Kansas City Royals	65	67	.492	25.1
Detroit Tigers	58	74	.439	32.1
Chicago White Sox	52	80	.394	38.1

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cottage Cheese	84	49	.630	—
Chicago Cubs	73	60	.549	10.7
Milwaukee Brewers	70	64	.522	14.2
St. Louis Cardinals	67	66	.504	16.7
Pittsburgh Pirates	63	71	.470	21.2
Cincinnati Reds	57	77	.425	27.2

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Haviland Dragons	86	47	.648	—
Houston Astros	80	53	.602	6.2
Kaline Drive	76	57	.569	10.6
Los Angeles Angels	69	65	.515	17.7
Texas Rangers	66	67	.496	20.2
Seattle Mariners	66	68	.493	20.7
Oakland A’s	58	75	.436	28.2

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Los Angeles Dodgers	91	41	.689	—
Portland Rosebuds	80	52	.604	11.3
Arizona Diamondbacks	76	58	.567	16
Peshastin Pears	74	58	.563	16.7
Colorado Rockies	72	61	.541	19.5
San Diego Padres	59	74	.444	32.5
San Francisco Giants	53	83	.390	40