Below is a chart tracking our standings from Opening Day until today. Make your screen wider and/or zoom in to see it better. Run your curser over the team names to the right to highlight that team’s history.
You may notice some things:
- Teams have been in first in the following order (days are only the recorded days — there are some gaps): Brookland (3 days), Old Detroit (3), Canberra (2 ), Old Detroit (1), Pittsburgh (1) tied with Canberra (1), Canberra (9), Kaline (4), Canberra (1), Cottage (1), Canberra (2), Kaline (1), Cottage (9, plus the early May hiatus without updates), Canberra (4), Brookland (the famous Seven Days in May), Portland (3), Canberra (2), Portland(1), Canberra 3, June hiatus with no one clearly in first, Old Detroit (1), Portland (37+ — 23 in June + July hiatus + 11 + All-Star hiatus + 3), Old Detroit (1 day, barely peeking out above Portland), Portland (6), Old Detroit (11: 1 day in July, the August tunnel, and 10 days in August, so far.)
- Portland has led for 47 documented days, followed by Canberra (24), Old Detroit (17), Brookland and Cottage (both 10), Kaline (5), and Pittsburgh (1).
- Canberra has had 7 terms in first place, followed by Old Detroit (5), Portland (4), Brookland, Cottage, and Kaline (2 each), and Pittsburgh (1).
- Since Cottage scared us so badly at the end of April/beginning of May, peaking at a .691 winning percentage, three different teams have reached the .630 winning percentage mark: Brookland, .630 on May 19; Portland (.631 on July 7, 9, and 10; .632 on July 11); and Old Detroit (.630 on August 14, followed by .633, .634, .633, and .636 — which was their percentage at the end of play yesterday).
- Every time so far a team has reached that level, it has fallen back, not only from that exalted altitude, but out of first place. The Rosebuds dipped to .599 on August 1 and 9, but are now back up to .619. Canberra is down to .540.
- The W’s, even at their highest level in at least two years, and possessing the second best record in baseball, are still 8.7 games behind the Red Sox. The Sox are on pace to win 114.5 games this season — Allegheny-like numbers. The Wolverines are on pace to win 103 games.
- DC went from second on March 30 (.960 winning percentage) to last on May 7 (.381). Between then and June 23, DC and Peshastin traded back and forth their prime spot in the Rookie Draft. On June 24, Peshastin ceded that spot to DC and never looked back.
- DC hasn’t been under .400 since May 25, except for July 25 and 26 when the Balk dipped as far as .395. DC’s .423 winning percentage (51 – 70) today puts the Balk about a game ahead of Detroit, 4 games ahead of Miami, 4.5 ahead of San Diego, 6.5 ahead of the White Sox, 14 ahead of Kansas City, and 15 ahead of Baltimore — and only 1 game behind the Reds, 1.5 behind the Mets, and 4 games behind Toronto.
- At their current pace, the Balk will end their final season well under the 100-loss mark — at about 68.5 – 93.5.
- Finally: right now the EFL as a whole is about 75 games over .500. The season is about 75% over. This puts our projected final record as a league at about 100 games over .500. If we exceed 88 games over .5oo we will average over 90 wins as a league, and we would be required by our new rules to run an expansion draft next winter. If we don’t have an expansion team to do the draft for us, we would each protect 15 players, and lose to a dummy expansion team the unprotected player the rest of the league voted to take from us.
| EFL | ||||||
| Team | Wins | Losses | Pct. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 78 | 45 | .636 | — | 597.8 | 441.1 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 76 | 47 | .619 | 2.1 | 649.1 | 500.2 |
| Brookland Outs | 70 | 51 | .578 | 7.3 | 636.4 | 545.9 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 65 | 56 | .541 | 11.8 | 631.0 | 589.4 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 65 | 56 | .540 | 11.9 | 553.9 | 514.6 |
| Cottage Cheese | 62 | 59 | .515 | 14.9 | 608.7 | 591.3 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 63 | 60 | .511 | 15.4 | 563.1 | 548.5 |
| Kaline Drive | 61 | 61 | .500 | 16.8 | 541.4 | 538.8 |
| Haviland Dragons | 61 | 61 | .498 | 17 | 564.4 | 562.8 |
| Peshastin Pears | 56 | 67 | .454 | 22.5 | 517.2 | 569.9 |
| D.C. Balk | 51 | 70 | .423 | 26.1 | 513.2 | 600.7 |
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Old Detroit: W, 6 – 0. (45 PA, .205, .311, .410; 21.7 ip, 2 er, 0.83 ERA). Wolverine hitters wilted, but Old Detroit pitchers picked them up (Buehler: 6 ip, 1 er; DeSclafani: 7.7 ip, 1 er; R. Iglesias: 2 ip, 0 er; Scherzer: 6 ip, 0 er). Fat lot of good it did…
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Portland: W, 12 – 4. (46 PA, .400, .522, .686; 7.3 ip, 3 er, 3.68 ERA). … because the Rosebuds reverted to their old ways to keep pace exactly. Robbie Ray was disappointing (4.3 ip, 3 er), although three relievers did a pretty good job of cleaning up after him. Speaking of cleaning up: Paul Goldschmidt … has six vowels in a row in the middle of his name!! I just did a quick scan of our rosters. I don’t think anyone else even has 4 in a row. The “w” in “Schwarber” functions as a vowel.
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But I got distracted there. I meant to describe how Paul Go-sixconsonants-idt went 2 for 2 with a homer an three walks. And people copied him! Anthony Rendon with 2 for 2 with a HBP. Eduardo Escobar went 2 for three with a homer and two walks.
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Brookland: W, 4 – 3. (50 PA, .233, .340, .419; 13.7 ip, 4 er, 2.63 ERA). The Outs took a middle rOute: hitting a little better than the Wolverines, pitching a little better than the Rosebuds. But the Outcome might not be what Out scOuts were thinking abOut: the Outs Out abOut 0.4 games further in the standings. At least the Outs weren’t rOuted.
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Pittsburgh: “L”, 7 – 4. (37 PA, .267, .405, .433; 1 ip, 1 er, 9.00 ERA). Tyler Austin led the Allegheny attack: 2 for 3 with a homer. Three others OPSed 1.167 or better (Brantley, Piscotty and Swanson). Even without any pitching to speak of, that solid hitting was enough to squeeze past the Kangaroos into fourth place.
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Canberra: L, 9 – 11. (41 PA, .306, .390, .583; 9.7 ip, 10 er, 9.31 ERA) The Kangaroos excelled at the plate. Tim Anderson even went 3 for 3 with a double, a triple and a walk — sort of a Junior Cycle. But both of the Kangaroos over-achieving pitchers (Wade LeBlanc and Joey Lucchesi) regressed and then some, each giving up 5 earned runs in about 4 innings pitched.
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Cottage: L, 6 – 8. (33 PA, .250, .364, .607; 6.3 ip, 5 er, 7.11 ERA). The thinnish hitting did some thickset slugging yesterday, earning that team OPS of almost 1.000. But the thinnish pitching undid that slugging, especially Yonny Chirinos and his 5 er in 6 ip.
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Flint Hill: W, 6 – 4. (20 PA, .313 .450, .438 1 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). Sixteen plate appearances — about half the minimum needed. One inning pitched: about 1/7th of the pitching needed. The Tornados have learned to quit worrying and love their replacements.
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Kaline: L, 4 – 6. (42 PA, .231, .262, .436; 16.7 ip, 9 er, 4.86 ERA). Trevor Williams was the hottest Drive in my article on that topic a day or two ago. He’s still the hottest Drive: 7 ip, 1 earned run. Alas — Brian Johnson and Marcus Stroman pitched 9.7 innings between them, permitting a generous 8 earned runs, and the hitting wasn’t good enough to overcome that.
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Haviland: L, 3 – 11. (26 PA, .269, .269, .385; 8.7 ip, 9 er, 9.35 ERA) Dragon hitters refused to embarrass opposing pitchers by taking walks. Dragon pitchers refused to embarrass opposing hitters by denying them at least a run an inning (0n average). These are not the Dragons of old — merciless, implacable, devastating. I wonder if these kinder, gentler Friendly Dragons draw as many fans to games as the former version did.
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Peshastin: L, 1 – 4. (37 PA, .243, .243, 270; 14 ip, 5 er, 3.21 ERA). The Pears deigned to draw no walks, either! Two straight teams without a walk. Maybe it’s something in the water. In fact the Pears only took one extra base (Joey Gallo settled for a double rather than a homer) , and got caught in both of their “attempts” to steal — so, in essence, they paid back Gallo’s extra base, with interest! Such kindness to opposing pitchers is unusual in the EFL. Pear pitchers had compiled 8 scoreless innings (esp. thanks to Jack Flaherty for 6 of those) when Dan Straily took the mound. He turned out to be another convert to this “turn-the-other-cheek” cult, completing 6 more innings, but permitted 5 earned runs.
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DC: L, 3 – 4. (52 PA, .224, .269, .245; 10 ip, 4 er, 3.60 ERA). One might suspect the Balk would go all “charity” on us, too, but they not only took one extra base (Scooter Gennett’s double to go with his two singles), they actually stole (and kept) two more! I suppose this would be scandalous among the brethren down there at the foundations of the league. Balk pitchers weren’t all that sacrificial, either. Only Jarlin Garcia’s little sextuple chulk (0.3 ip, 2 er) and Jordan Lyles 10.80 ERA in 1.7 ip shows any sign of that. Carlos Carrasco cruelly crushed his opponents, allowing 0 er in 7 whopping innings!