Ok, it only took me 20 years to figure this out: if I do complete league updates I suppress everyone else’s incentive to update things from their own perspective. I have unwittingly * stumbled into this revelation. It only took two blows from the 2×4: a super busy April for me, and our league-wide adjustment to the new system.

( * “Ron, for a guy who constantly rags on students to write efficiently, you sure are fond of redundancies. Isn’t ‘”‘unwittingly’ redundant to ‘stumbled’?“

“It’s worse than that. Unwittingness is a constant. I don’t say “I stumbled while breathing” because everyone knew that already.”)

So today I am going to focus on my own story, although I’ll publish some league standings. How is that different than the previous two decades? I am doing it this time explicitly inviting everyone who feels their team has noteworthy news to publish the news here, as a league update (AND, if you wish, a team update — by creating a team category and posting to both).

If journalism isn’t your thing — if you spent decades teaching math to escape writing like I spent decades avoiding math — you are under no obligation to write

In this post I am going to

A. Preserve the end-of-Week 3 standings for posterity.

2. Point out some storylines someone could write about.

3. Write about a couple of Wolverine storylines.

1. Standings as of the end of Week 3 (preserved here for posterity)

Team	Wins	Losses	WPct	GB
Haviland Dragons	12.26	5.74	.681	0.0
Flint Hill Tornadoes	11.93	6.07	.663	0.3
Peshastin Pears	11.13	6.87	.618	1.1
D.C. Balk	11.05	6.95	.614	1.2
Old Detroit Wolverines	10.91	7.09	.606	1.4
Canberra Kangaroos	10.79	7.21	.599	1.5
Portland Rosebuds	8.85	9.15	.492	3.4
Kaline Drive	8.40	9.60	.467	3.9
Bellingham Cascades	8.06	9.94	.448	4.2
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	7.90	10.10	.439	4.4
Salem Seraphim	7.20	10.80	.400	5.1

2. Possible story lines

A. The first Father/Son head-to-head series wrapped up Wednesday as the Haviland Dragons (38 rs / 23 ra, .740 raw win %) ruined the Portland Rosebuds’ good week (27.0 rs/ 21 ra, .628) to win their series almost 4 games to 2.

B. The Tornados set up an even more thrilling Father/Son matchup for this week by beating the Kaline Drive in Week 3 (FH: 33 rs / 21 ra v. KD 24 rs / 21 ra). Haviland started Week 4 only 0.3 games behind the Dragons for first place. .

C. The Peshastin Pears sent the once-mighty Seraphim down another notch by also winning nearly 4 games to 2. (PP: 30 rs / 37 ra v. SS: 29 ra / 48 rs). That .264 raw Seraphim winning percentage was the lowest of any EFL team, and paves Peshastin’s path to a producing a peachy .645 adjusted percentage out of a paltry .394 raw percentage.

D. The Balk almost matched the Pears’ wizardry to secure its fourth-place position in the standings: DC won almost 4 and lost a little more than 2 to the Cascades. (DC: 23 rs/ 30 ra, .372 v. BC: 20.5 rs / 33.4 ra).

E. Canberra racked up a huge 30 rs/ 15 ra week, with a raw winning percentage over 800, to clobber the Alleghenys (22.5 rs / 23.6 ra) by almost 5 games to 1.

3. Wolverine pitching delivers the best EFL result of Week 3

Facing .500- level MLB competition, Old Detroit pitching racked up a slightly better than 5 – 1 record driven by shockingly good pitching.

Wolverine hurlers allowed only 11 runs over the six games, for a team ERA of 1.77. Of those 11 runs, about 10.5 were earned runs. Even though star catcher Will Smith was out all week with a concussion, and back-up Luke Maile only got 3 plate appearances (leaving 15.6 PA for replacement catchers), the Wolverines produced a 38.65 team defense, limiting their unearned runs to just 0.5.

That’s how the W’s ran up an .841 raw winning percentage despite a mediocre .229, .301, .438 batting line

Wolverine Weekly Hitting Heroes: Ke’Bryan Hayes and Josh Bell both broke out of their season-starting slumps to go 8 for 22. Hayes included 2 doubles, a triple, a homer and 4 walks for a .364, .444, .682 line totaling 1.126 OPS. Hayes got caught stealing twice, however, to cut his rc/g to 9.66. Bell didn’t do any risky running, so his 5 doubles, one homer, and two walks were good for 13.06 rc/g on a .364, .417, .727 batting line (1.144 OPS).

4. Watch Out for the Wolverines in Week 4!

We don’t have a week 4 update yet, and Wolverine pitching has been so-so (an ERA of about 4.41 so far, with replacements beginning to build up), but Baseball Prospectus and yesterday’s results give the W’s confidence in their head-to-head matchup with the Cascades. Will Smith is still out deconcussing, and Luke Maile is just a wisp (1 game, 0 PA), so there will be replacement catchers to bear. But the batters who can bat have batted,

especially last night…

and ESPECIALLY Adolis Garcia !!

Here’s Adolis’ line from Saturday evening: 5 AB, 5 H, 2 2b, 3 HR, 1 HBP. That’s a 1.000, 1.000, 3.200 batting line for a 4.200 OPS and an infinite number of runs created per game!! Sure, a guy walking in one PA has an infinite rc/g, but Adolis’ infinite RC/G is WAAAAAY bigger than your one-PA-walker. (Yes, one infinity can be bigger than another. Ask John *)

Adolis’ big day is SUPER big, not only because it turned a very fine .355, .444, .500 team daily batting line into .450, .522, 1.028…

… and a .318, .370, .647 WEEKLY team batting line so far…

… and represents what I believe is the best individual batting day in Wolverine history…

… it might help cure me from the Connor Joe-envy I’ve been suffering from all season so far. Joe is batting .357, .446, .643 so far, an AMAZING line for a guy who didn’t really break in to the majors until he was 28 and is 30 now. I wanted Joe for his defense, but someone with more money than me (the heartless Dragons) outbid me. Connor Joe hasn’t done 1.000, 1.000, 3.200 yet.

Plus there is my Alex Verdugo envy (.328, .389, .500 so far). And my Victor Robles envy (.305, .388, .390). Adolis Garcia, going into yesterday’s game, was batting only .208, .253, .389. I’m paying $6,500,000 for that … for four years? But now Adolis is batting .260, .306, .571. Not Connor Joe territory. Not even Alex Verdugo territory. But maybe Adolis has passed Robles. And maybe a guy who can do 1.000, 1.000, 3.200 in a single game can end up being worth that $6.5 million.

4. One Wolverine Woe Remains…

So that .318, .370, .647 batting line the W’s have produced so far this week? The W’s have been beating that line all season!

In AAA.

In the person of Nolan Jones, our lone minor-league hitter. Jones’ season line so far for AAA Albuquerque: .350, .444, .750. That’s a 1.094 OPS. In AAA.

To the Rockies’ credit, they did bring him up for a week last week. Only to commit an atrocity: he got 0 PA. And then got sent back to Albuquerque.

The Rockies are 6 – 16. Their starting outfielders are OPSing .810, .637, and .586. Jones can also play 3b. The starting Rockies 3b is OPSing 669. Jones is a very good defensive OF (2.6 on our scale). Who let the Rockies run a baseball team? It’s a national travesty.

Free Nolan Jones!

(* … if John isn’t too busy writing up a Dragons update.)