League Updates

Like a brick

Someone sacrificed for the greater good.  Like a brick. 

EFL Standings for 2021
EFL
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB RS RA
Old Detroit Wolverines 61 27 .699 512.6 337.7
D.C. Balk 55 28 .666 3.7 477.3 339.2
Flint Hill Tornadoes 58 30 .654 3.9 438.3 318.6
Kaline Drive 55 32 .627 6.4 456.9 354.1
Peshastin Pears 54 32 .627 6.6 410.7 320.7
Canberra Kangaroos 51 32 .611 8.3 426.3 344.4
Haviland Dragons 52 35 .597 9 429.3 361.9
Cottage Cheese 46 41 .529 15 493.1 478.5
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 44 42 .513 16.4 429.6 416.2
Bellingham Cascades 44 42 .506 16.9 355.4 352.3
Portland Rosebuds 36 50 .418 24.6 425.7 510.5
 
 
Old Detroit:  W (-1), L 2;  1 – 15.  (46 PA, .195, .283, .268;  4 ip, 8 er, 18.00 ERA) The high-flying Wolverines’ engines flamed out badly, turning their sleek rocket ship into a $100,000,000 brick. 
 
A dozen Wolverines came to bat last night. Four got hits:  Josh Bell (two singles and a double), Austin Riley (a single, a double, and two walks),  Ke’Bryan Hayes (a single, a double, a walk) and James McCann ( a single and a walk).  The rest of the team went 0 for 24. 
 
I know how compassionate you all are, so you no doubt worry that the Woeverines might have had the worst batting performance of  the day.  Relax. According to Baseball Reference, there were 343 batters yesterday.  The worst Wolverine (Tommy Edman) was only 326th with his 0 for 4.  The second worst (Rafael Devers) was 325th.  And the third worst (JP Crawford) was 324th.  Actually, their 0 for 4 with 1 strikeout stats were shared by 12 batters, who happened to be ranked anywhere from 321 to 332.  So we could say these three W’s were all tied for 321st.  But it feels more like they were tied for 332nd, or 12th worst in all of baseball.  
 
The next worst Wolverine was Gavin Lux (0 for 3 with 3 Ks), who was tied for 320th with Mike Zunino. 
 
There is no solace to be found in the pitching.  Of yesterday’s 34 starters, the 33rd best (Matt Harvey) had a game score of 21.  The 34th best was Oldie Chris Paddock, with a game score of 5.  He quadruple chulked: 2 ip, 8 earned runs. 
 
Thus in one day the Woeverines tossed away 1/3 of their 5.5- game lead in the pennant race, and collapsed to a winning percentage under .700 for the first time since sometime in May (I think).   
 
 
DC:  W 1, L 1; 17 – 8. (47 PA, .364, .404, .614;  2.7 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA).  The Mets played two yesterday, so the Balk did, too.   Officially they only won one of them, but in reality they went more like 1.8  – 0.2, going from 53.5 to 55.3 wins, erasing 1.8 games of their deficit to the Wolverines in a single day.  That leap in the standings was ominous, like a brick through a window. 
 
How did they do it?  They had nice pitching but very little of it, so we have to lay this laurel on the shoulders of the offense.  Joey Gallo supplied the highlights:  a pair of home runs.  Xander Bogaerts and Ryan McMahon each went 3 for 4. Of their 12 hitters, 10 reached base safely at least once.  This lifted the Balk’s rc/g mark in July to 6.66 (!), taking over first place from the fallen W’s (6.51). 
 
 
Flint Hill: 11 – 3. (56 PA, .400 , .464, .600;  10.4 ip, 4 er, 3.46 ERA).  The Tornados also executed a huge leap, gaining 1.7 games on the W’s, and losing only 0.1 game to the Balk.  They made their gains in a more balanced way, getting a reasonable effort from Sean Manaea (6.7 ip, 3 er) and an outstanding day from three relievers (3.4 ip, 0 er).  
 
On the hitting side, Tim Anderson spent 0 outs, going 4 for 4 with a double and a walk. John Nogowski almost matched that (4 for 5) on his final day in the Tornado organization, but did his work under an assumed name for AAA Rock City.  The T’s didn’t miss him because (a) they had kind of forgotten about him (having left him on the VIL even though he recovered some time ago) and (b) Teoscar Hernandez and Bo Bichette each went 3 for 5, with 5 extra bases spread between them. 
 
 
Kaline:  L, 1 – 7.   (71 PA !!,  .194, .239, .328;  2 ip, 1 er, 4.50 ERA).  The Drive only gained 0.6 games on the Wolverines, failing to take much advantage of the Oldies’ fiery descent.  Kaline had some good performances, like Aaron Judge’s homer and single, two-hit days from Akil Baddoo and Wilmer Flores, and a homer apiece from their starting middle infielders Willy Adames and Jose Altuve.  But with 16 hitters starting the game for the Drive, those good performances got watered way down by 6 0-fers, no other extra base hits, and 17 total strikeouts, five of them by Willy Adames!  (Wasn’t there a minor to-do a few days ago about someone striking out 5 times and then homering?  It’s a rare event — but I suppose less newsworthy here because Adames did it during a doubleheader.)
 
Add in the dearth of pitching, and you get a big loss.  Fortunately, the Wolverine loss was far bigger, so the Drive still gained 0.6 games on first place. 
 
 
Peshastin: W, 6 – 2. ( 33 PA, .296, .406, .593;  7.7 ip, 2 er, 2.34 ERA).  Baseball is a classic zero-sum game.  Every win is balanced by a loss; everything that helps a hitter hurts a pitcher, etc.  A Christian rooting for a team — say, the Diamondbacks — takes solace knowing their team’s 25 – 63 record has opened vast opportunities for other people’s teams to be above .500.  They can see rooting for the pathetic D-backs as making a sacrifice for the benefit of others.  
 
The EFL isn’t zero-sum. We can all win, in theory, and (as we shall see below) we can even do it in practice.  But we are not purely positive-sum, either.  We can all lose, in theory, too.  And even if we are all managerial geniuses, we can only use the resources MLB provides us.  If I use Chris Paddock’s miserable start, you can’t. If you use, say, Alex Wood’s best game-score start of the day (as the Pears did yesterday, basking in his 7 ip, 1 er day), no one else can.  Even with only 11 EFL teams, the resources MLB provides us are not inexhaustible.
 
So when a team implodes like the W’s did, it not only creates good stuff for those who got to bat against Paddock or pitch against the miserable Old Detritus hitters, it consumes almost none of the good stuff MLB produces.  MLB HAS to produce good stuff every day — but can only produce a limited amount — so one EFL team not using good stuff leaves everyone else more good stuff to consume. 
 
Which is why DC and FH had such good days — and, maybe, why the Pears recovered from their recent slump, especially  Juan Soto’s part in it.  Soto homered, as he was supposed to be doing all along but kind of quit doing for a while, and so did Tom Murphy. They each added a single and at least one 1 walk (Soto walked twice). In two days Soto lifted his July OPS from .504 to .853.  That’s exciting!  And consoling to the W’s, who can tell themselves they helped make it possible by soaking up almost none of the good stuff produced by MLB on Wednesday. 
 
 
Canberra: W 1, L 1;  7 – 10.  (29 PA, .214, .241, .321;  4 ip, 2 er, 4.50 ERA).  The Kangaroos got caught short by another Mets double-header.  They barely produced one day’s worth of offense, at about replacement level or a little worse.  They produced less than a game’s worth of pitching, at a quintessential mediocre level.  Vlad Guerrero Jr. was the hitting star ( 3 for 4) even though he only hit singles. Kyle Tucker’s homer was all the extra bases the team produced.  
 
And yet — the ‘Roos still gained 0.8 games on the Wolverines.   Now at 8.3 games back, their zig-zag path toward the top has brought them back to a place where hope can flare up again, at least a little. 
 
 
 
Haviland:  W, 4 – 2.   (50 PA, .245, .260, .327;  5 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA).   Domingo German only lasted three innings, surrendering three runs, which should have pushed yesterday’s game into loss territory.  But all three runs scored after an error, meaning they were all unearned (even though there was a home run involved).  So the Dragons coud still grab a win with weak offense — especially weakened by only earning one walk in 50 plate appearances. Brandon Lowe’s homer was the highlight of the day, other than the timely error — by Gio Urshela.  Of the Haviland Dragons.  
 
With the win the Dragons soared 1.1 games closer to the Wolverines, settling for the moment at 9 games out of first place.  
 
 
 
Cottage:  W, 10 – 3. (46 PA, .385, .578, .615;  10 ip, 9 er, 8.10 ERA).  How did the Cheese allow only 3 runs with an 8.10 ERA on the day?  Well, JD Mejia is 100% allocated to the Corvallis Curds, so his 2.7 ip, 6 er chulk did not count against the Cheese.  Andrew Heaney’s 5.3 ip, 3 er wasn’t anything special, but Collin McHugh’s 2 hitless, walkless, and scoreless innings were.  So that’s how the Cheese limited their runs allowed to 3.
 
Now, about the hitting:  a lot of EFL teams sent 12 men to the plate yesterday, and the Cheese did, too.  11 of them got hits. 7 reached base safely at least twice, and three of them (McNeil, Arozarena, and Bohm) were safe 3 times.  Shohei Ohtani homered, again, and so did Zach McKinstry.  
 
The Cheese thus obliterated 1.6 games of their deficit to the Wolverines, about 10% of a rather big gap in a single day.  I am not sure that brings them to a place of real hope of competing, but it’s certainly within range of justified wistfulness. 
 
 
 
Pittsburgh:  “L”, 3- 3. (39 PA, .229, .308, .343;  13.4 ip, 5 er, 3.36 ERA)  That’s an enviable pile of good pitching.   Wil Crow wasn’t special (4.7 ip, 2 er), but Sonny Gray was good (7 ip, 2 er) so the pitching worked out well.  The hitting was more along the “not special” lines, except for Dansby Swanson’s 3 for 5 with a double, a walk, and a stolen base.  The 3 the Alleghenys scored was a little bigger than the 3 they allowed, so this was really a win, and the cause of gaining an entire game on the Wolverines.  
 
It may seem like it doesn’t matter much if you gain on 1st place when you are in 9th place and 16.4 games out, but it turns out this was a very good time to avoid a real loss because…
 
 
Bellingham:  W 2, L (-1);  7 – (-4). (43 PA, .278, .395, .417;  11.6 ip, 1 er, 0.78 ERA)... the Cascades vaulted over the .500 mark with the day’s best day for an EFL team.  Bellingham won 2, lost a loss, and gained a whopping 2.4 games on the Wolverines in a single day!!  They ended up only a half-game behind the Alleghenys, and moved into first place for the month of July with a 6 – 1 record and an .813 winning percentage.  If the Wolverines and the Cascades keep up the paces they’ve set this month, the Cascades will overtake the Oldies sometime in early September. 
 
What accounts for this huge Cascadian uplift? The pitching stands out, by far the best in the league yesterday.  Brett Anderson pitched 4 sterling innings (0 er) and Michael Wacha followed suit (6 ip, 1 er).  Then three relievers finished off the day with scoreless outings.   
 
On the hitting side, Jonathan India (3 for 4 with a double and a walk) and Ronald Acuna Jr. (3 for 5 with a homer and a walk) were the stars.  
 
 
Portland:  “W”, 7 – 8.  (38 PA, .273, .368,  .455;  6.7 ip, 7 er, 9.40 ERA).  If only the pitching had been better… but it wasn’t: Matt Harvey, the 33rd best starting pitcher I mentioned way back atop this post, is a Portly pitcher.  His fellow Matt, Peacock, pitched 3 strong innings (1 er) but it wasn’t enough to salvage the pitching.  The hitting  should have been plenty for a win, led by ex-Wolverine infielder extraordinaire (EWIE) Luis Urias  going 4 for 7 (sigh) with two homers (sigh) and a walk.  
 
Yes, that’s right. Luis Urias got 4 hits all by himself.  Twelve Wolverines only managed 8.  Urias produced 10 total bases.  The entire Wolverine team produced 11.  Urias could never be a Wolverine. The W’s are a team full of bricks — you know, guys who can be counted on to be thoughtful of others.  Instead, Urias spent yesterday hogging the finite offensive resources to himself like that.  Good riddance. (Sigh).
 
 
 
Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2021
AL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Old Detroit Wolverines 61 27 .699
Flint Hill Tornadoes 58 30 .654 3.9
Boston Red Sox 54 34 .614 7.5
Tampa Bay Rays 51 36 .586 10
Toronto Blue Jays 44 40 .524 15.5
New York Yankees 44 41 .518 16
Baltimore Orioles 28 58 .326 32.5
NL East
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
D.C. Balk 55 28 .666
Canberra Kangaroos 51 32 .611 4.6
New York Mets 45 38 .542 10.3
Washington Nationals 42 43 .494 14.3
Atlanta Braves 42 44 .488 14.8
Philadelphia Phillies 41 43 .488 14.8
Miami Marlins 38 47 .447 18.3
 
AL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Chicago White Sox 51 35 .593
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 44 42 .513 6.9
Bellingham Cascades 44 42 .506 7.5
Cleveland Indians 42 42 .500 8
Detroit Tigers 40 47 .460 11.5
Kansas City Royals 36 50 .419 15
Minnesota Twins 35 50 .412 15.5
NL Central
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Milwaukee Brewers 52 35 .598
Cottage Cheese 46 41 .529 6
Cincinnati Reds 45 41 .523 6.5
Chicago Cubs 43 44 .494 9
St. Louis Cardinals 43 45 .489 9.5
Pittsburgh Pirates 32 54 .372 19.5
 
AL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
Kaline Drive 55 32 .627
Houston Astros 54 33 .621 0.5
Haviland Dragons 52 35 .597 2.6
Oakland A’s 49 39 .557 6
Seattle Mariners 45 42 .517 9.5
Los Angeles Angels 44 42 .512 10
Texas Rangers 34 53 .391 20.5
NL West
TEAM WINS LOSSES PCT. GB
San Francisco Giants 54 32 .628
Peshastin Pears 54 32 .627 0.1
Los Angeles Dodgers 53 34 .609 1.5
San Diego Padres 51 38 .573 4.5
Colorado Rockies 37 50 .425 17.5
Portland Rosebuds 36 50 .418 18.1
Arizona Diamondbacks 25 63 .284 30