League Updates Uncategorized

Fate is fickle, even in the EF… Dogpile!

There is, in the Allegheny comment, an epiphany here about our “”W” and “L” results.  Also, there’s a dogpile atop our league.  And dread in Canberra. 

 
EFL Standings for 2021
EFL
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB RS RA
Haviland Dragons 33 14 .699 231.0 151.7
Peshastin Pears 32 14 .700 0.1 214.3 140.1
Flint Hill Tornadoes 32 15 .688 0.5 216.6 144.5
Old Detroit Wolverines 32 15 .681 0.8 272.6 185.9
Kaline Drive 31 16 .653 2.2 230.9 167.8
D.C. Balk 26 13 .665 2.9 201.0 143.2
Canberra Kangaroos 22 17 .558 7.1 215.8 192.9
Cottage Cheese 24 21 .527 8.1 259.5 253.0
Portland Rosebuds 23 23 .494 9.6 233.0 236.1
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 22 22 .493 9.6 219.0 219.5
Bellingham Cascades 18 26 .419 12.9 174.8 214.2
 
 
Haviland:  W 1, L (-1); 2- (-5).  (47 PA, .237, .383, .316;  13.7 ip, 2 er,  1.31 ERA).    The Dragons’ weird record anomaly from yesterday corrected itself today, as Haviland replayed its 47th game.  But I don’t think I like the correction any better than I liked the anomaly: it allowed the Dragons to gain 0.8 games on the formerly first-place Pears and 1.2 games on the formerly second place Tornados.   How does this happen when the offensive highlight of the Haviland day is having as many free passes (hbp and walks) as hits (9 each)?  But then, the system says the team scored 2 runs yesterday — the pitchers did the winning work, especially starter Pablo Lopez with his 7 scoreless innings (for a game score of 76, best in MLB yesterday according to Baseball Reference).   
 
 
 
Peshastin: “L”, 7 – 6.  (40 PA, .222, .300, .639;  7.3 ip.. 5 er, 6.16 ERA).  The Pears took a different approach to the day than did the Dragons.  The Pears neglected on base percentage, adding only 4 walks to their 8 hits.  Nor did they insist on sterling pitching, even going so far as to start a Mariners pitcher (who got shelled for 5 earned runs in 5 innings).  But they did emphasize power hitting, with 4 homers and three doubles among their 8 hits.  Ozzie Albies exemplified this approach with his two-homer day, which Baseball Reference treated as the best hitting performance of the day.
 
The crown sits lightly on the Chiefest of Calamities’ head.  The Pears are 0.1 games behind, but have a better winning percentage, and have one more game to play.  Viewing the standings probablistically (neither I nor Word Press knows how to spell that word), the Pears are still ahead, with their slightly better ratio of runs scored to runs allowed.  
 
 
 
Flint Hill: L, 0 – 5. (27 PA, .114, .148, .192;  3 ip, 6 er, 18.00 ERA).  On one hand the Tornados had a catastrophic day.  They didn’t do on base percentage (1 walk).  They didn’t do power (2 extra bases).  They didn’t do pitching (both Adam Plutko and Tanner Scott chulked).  They didn’t do pure hitting (only 3 for 26 at the plate).  They didn’t steal bases.  All six of starting position players struck out at least once. Two of the three pinch hitters also struck out — so I guess you could say the did do the strikeouts (9 of them, 33.3% of their plate appearances).  
 
And yet…
 
And yet the Dragons are still in third place, still only a half-game out of first, still very much in the middle of the  writhing dogpile atop the league.  If you see the Tornados’ thunder head moping around today, remind him of these facts.  He could survive a bad day of cyclonic proportions and remain right in the thick of the race. 
 
 
 
Old Detroit:  W, 4 – 1.  (37 PA, .278, .297, .333;  8 ip, 1 er, 1.13 ERA).  The Wolverines didn’t have the luxury of indulging in a being obliterated by a whirlwind of misfortune, not if they wanted to be in on the dogpile.  They hit yesterday in an unmemorable, undistinguished fashion, mediocre in every dimension, although Austin Riley continued his career breakthrough with a 2 for 4 performance featuring a double.  But Walker Buehler had a great game: 7 ip, 1 er.  Although BR rated it as only the 6th best starting performance of the day, it was good enough to get the W’s within 0.8 games of the top, certainly  close enough to qualify as being in the dogpile.  Which, you would think, would give the Oldies an advantage, since Wolverines are the closest thing to dogs in our league. 
 
 
 
Kaline:  W, 5 – 2. (43 PA, .216, .302, .324;  4.4 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA).  Another unremarkable hitting performance, with Jesse Winker being held down to only one home run and everyone else hitting about like they did Friday.  Dinelson Lamet returned to the mound as a reliever, luckily for him facing the Mariners, and allowing no earned runs in 3 innings pitched, striking out 5 of the 11 batters he faced.  The Drive, not wont to thrust themselves forward, stood a little way outside the dogpile, watching with concerned interest lest anyone gets hurt (or, I suspect despite the Wizard’s kindly mein,  a way opens to seize the lead). 
 
 
 
 
DC:  L, 3 – 6.  (31 PA, .125, .258, .292;  6.3 ip, 5 er, 7.14 ERA).  Ditto.  I mean, we’ve got the crummy hitting:  the 7 hitters hit one homer (by Xander Bogaerts), struck out almost 30% of the time (9 times in 31 PA), and got more walks (5, once by Bogaerts) than hits (3).  And we have a pitching problem:  Dylan Cease getting tagged for 5 earned runs in 4 innings.  And yet, despite all this, the Balk linger well within the top tier, only 2.9 games out.  If they work out their kinks, the Balk are still in the thick of the race, although not in the undignified top-dog dogpile itself. 
 
 
 
Canberra:  W, 5 – 1.  (33 PA, .259, .394, .259; 11 ip, 1 er, .082 ERA.) The Kangaroos revealed their aspirations unmistakably Saturday, copying their game after top dog dogpilers.  You have the mediocre hitting, spiced with a an on-base-percentage more than 100 points higher than their batting average.  And then they copied the Wolverines’ great pitching, with 8 inning of one-run ball spread across two pitchers (Miles Mikolas and Joey Lucchesi) — and then added 3 more scoreless innings as a delicious topping.  As a result, the Cannies sliced 0.3 games off their distance to first place, continuing their project of joining the elite tier in the EFL. 
 
The Captain Kangaroo particularly enjoyed Miles Mikolas’ return to the mound for the first time since 2019.  Unfortunately, Mikolas only lasted 4 innings before leaving with dreaded tightness in his pitching arm.  Canberra awaits a report from an MRI scheduled for this evening.  
 
Baseball Reference liked Joey Lucchesi’s 4 ip, 0 er performance better than Walker Buehler’s 7 ip, 1 er job, rating Lucchesi #5 on the day.  Mikolas, on the other hand, rated only #13.  That might be because of the one earned run, or it might be because of the one MRI — I’m not sure of BR’s reasoning on a lot of these.
 
 
 
Cottage:  L,  5 – 8. (33 PA, .194, .242, .323;  9 ip, 6 er, 6.00 ERA).  I really appreciate it when teams use their pitchers for exactly 9 innings, so I can do the ERA calculation confidently in my head. It’s also a lot neater.  Peshastin arranged this thoughtful gift Friday, with 5 earned runs in 9 innings, and was rewarded with another day in first place.  Perhaps the Cheese thought that was the deal when they cut their last pitcher off at the team’s 9 inning mark.  Unfortunately, there were some details the Head Cheese overlooked: 
 
1.  Peshastin started the day Friday in first place.  They were allowed to stay in first place yesterday only because they got to the full 9 innings.  Even 8.7 would have been too few to meet the Commissioner’s Office standards.  So while a team recording 9 full innings can be rewarded with first place, they usually will have to start in first place to be eligible. 
 
2.  Peshastin allowed 5 runs. Cottage allowed six. The results, in fairness, should not be the same. 
 
Nevertheless, just this once I am going to make an exception and allow the Cheese to remain where they were when they started play:  8th place.  Punishment for puny hitting while allowing that extra run will be limited to extending the Kangaroos’ margin over the Cheese by 0.8 games to 1 full game in the standings. 
 
                
 
Portland:  W 2, L (-1);  8 – (-1).  (29 PA, .292, .414, .583;  14.7 ip, 3 er, 184 ERA)  Portland has struggled the last few weeks, but did not on Saturday.  Luis Urias, the day after the Brewers traded for Willy Adames to usurp his shortstop starting role, blasted a defiant home run, and Bryse Wilson (6.7 ip, 1 er) and Adbert Alzolay (7 ip, 2 er)  turned in the 8th and 7th best starts of the day (per BR, which somehow liked Alzolay’s 2 earned runs better than Wilson’s 1) to tuck in right behind Walker Buehler on the BR list, giving the EFL #5 through 8 on the day (plus #1, #13, and no doubt some lesser rankings).  
 
 
 
Pittsburgh:  “W”, 3 – 4 .  (32 PA, .226, .250, .355;  11.3 ip 5 er, 3.98 ERA).  Slightly better-than-average pitching, when combined with crummy hitting, usually leads to a loss.  Sometimes, though, in real MLB play, the hitting , while crummy looked at on the scale of nine innings, all gets bunched into one inning, and the crummy-hitting team wins.  (Note: this option is apparently not available to the Mariners, who apparently bought the super-economy package.)   So our “Wins” and our “Losses” are our way of reflecting the effects of random luck in our standings.  
 
The Alleghenys got lucky yesterday.  Nathan Eovaldi and Sonny Gray weren’t fooling to  many people, but they kept their ERA’s under 4.50.  The hitters weren’t helpless, but they weren’t fearsome either, with the exception of Max Muncy whose three hits included a homer into San Francisco Bay.   The EFL database liked it all well enough to award the A’s a win even though their barely sub-.500 winnings percentage got a little more sub-.500. 
 
 
 
Bellingham:  “L”, 5 – 4. (39 PA, .219, .289, .469;  6.3 ip, 2 er, 2.86 ERA).   Brett Anderson  (5 ip, 2 er) did just a little better than the Allegheny starters, and was supported by 1.3 scoreless innings of relief.  Cascade hitters struggled at the plate, but Ronald Acuna and Rhys Hoskins homered, and the only guy with two hits (Brad Miller) made one of them into a triple.  This slugging allowed the the Cascades to rack up 5 runs. 
 
The Cascades outscored their opponents Saturday… but still lost.  Luck evens out over time.  Here it evened out over space instead.  In this snapshot, randomness awarded the East Coast Alleghenys with a merciful win, but saddled the West Coast Cascades with a merciless loss, when neither team deserved its fate. 
 
 
 
 
Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021
AL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Flint Hill Tornadoes 32 15 .688
Old Detroit Wolverines 32 15 .681 0.3
Boston Red Sox 29 18 .617 3.3
Tampa Bay Rays 28 19 .596 4.3
New York Yankees 27 19 .587 4.8
Toronto Blue Jays 23 21 .523 7.8
Baltimore Orioles 17 28 .378 14.3
NL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
D.C. Balk 26 13 .665
Canberra Kangaroos 22 17 .558 4.2
New York Mets 21 18 .538 4.9
Atlanta Braves 22 24 .478 7.4
Philadelphia Phillies 22 24 .478 7.4
Miami Marlins 21 24 .467 7.9
Washington Nationals 19 23 .452 8.4
 
AL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Chicago White Sox 26 18 .591
Cleveland Indians 24 19 .558 1.5
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 22 22 .493 4.3
Kansas City Royals 21 23 .477 5
Bellingham Cascades 18 26 .419 7.6
Detroit Tigers 18 27 .400 8.5
Minnesota Twins 16 29 .356 10.5
NL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
St. Louis Cardinals 26 19 .578
Cottage Cheese 24 21 .527 2.3
Chicago Cubs 23 22 .511 3
Milwaukee Brewers 22 23 .489 4
Cincinnati Reds 20 24 .455 5.5
Pittsburgh Pirates 18 27 .400 8
 
AL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Haviland Dragons 33 14 .699
Kaline Drive 31 16 .653 2.2
Oakland A’s 28 19 .596 4.8
Houston Astros 26 20 .565 6.3
Seattle Mariners 21 25 .457 11.3
Texas Rangers 21 27 .438 12.3
Los Angeles Angels 19 27 .413 13.3
NL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Peshastin Pears 32 14 .700
San Diego Padres 29 17 .630 3.2
Los Angeles Dodgers 28 18 .609 4.2
San Francisco Giants 28 18 .609 4.2
Portland Rosebuds 23 23 .494 9.5
Arizona Diamondbacks 18 29 .383 14.7
Colorado Rockies 17 29 .370 15.2