Here are some Sunday evening comments on Saturday results.
REMINDER: ALLOCATE FOR WEEK 7 BY NOON TOMORROW (MONDAY)
Standings: Week 6, Game 6 (May 4)
| Team | Wins | Losses | WPct | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canberra Kangaroos | 23.32 | 12.68 | .648 | 0.0 |
| D.C. Balk | 20.13 | 15.87 | .559 | 3.2 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 19.98 | 16.02 | .555 | 3.3 |
| Cascadia Glaciers | 18.02 | 17.98 | .501 | 5.3 |
| Peshastin Pears | 17.15 | 18.85 | .476 | 6.2 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 17.05 | 18.95 | .474 | 6.3 |
| Salem Seraphim | 16.78 | 19.22 | .466 | 6.5 |
| Haviland Dragons | 15.95 | 20.05 | .443 | 7.4 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 15.84 | 20.16 | .440 | 7.5 |
| Kaline Drive | 14.85 | 21.15 | .413 | 8.5 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 9.67 | 26.33 | .269 | 13.7 |
Things to notice:
1. The league didn’t get stretched any wider yesterday. In fact, it shrank! The gap from first to last before Saturday’s games was 13.67 games difference between the Kangaroos and Woeverines. Today it is 13.65!
2. That means the Wolverines BEAT the Kangaroos yesterday, 0.51 – 0.49 wins. Which is kind of shocking when you look at the Kangaroo batting line from Saturday: .360, .429, .660, in 56 PA! Wow! But the Canberran pitching? 18.7 ip, 14 earned runs, with two starters getting clobbered and a third being so-so. That’s enough to bring the formerly sky-high raw Kangaroo Week 6 winning percentage down to .665. The Wolverines almost missed the opportunity by hitting only .214 .250, .357, but Jared Jones pitched 7 sparkling shutout innings, and Brandon Pfaadt added 6 more decent ones (3 earned runs), so the W’s could get their raw winning percentage all the way up to .330.
3. Now, no matter how badly the rest of the season goes, Wolverine fans will be able to say, “Ah, but remember May 4? When we clobbered the Kangaroos, 0.51- 0.49! Those were the days… er , I mean, that was the day!”
4. The Woeverines got their first “are you dumping yet?” trade inquiry yesterday. I guess we really did look like roadkill. But this little twitch of our left eyelid was just enough to show we weren’t entirely dead yet, so we succeeded in postponing for now our dismemberment.
5. I don’t blame our inquisitive colleague for asking. After all, the Rays traded Luis Arraez yesterday, even though they are only 2 games under .500. And, as everyone knows, acquiring requires inquiring.
( OK, with my Commissioner hat back on, all this fuss about the W’s should not have been the lede. They did not have the best day in the EFL yesterday… far from it. )
6. The winners of the May 4 Best Day in the League Award are… The Kaline Drive! They won 1.66 games yesterday, slicing up the already-bruised Pears. Or, rather, the Pears sliced themselves up and served themselves as a delicious Pear sorbet. Cal Raleigh hit a homer, but after that Pear “hitters” went 2 for 33 for an .097, .176, .194 line. Meanwhile, Michael Wacha got through 3.7 innings with “only” 7 earned runs allowed, and a reliever added another earned run in another inning. The Drive did better both offensively (.238, .319, .286) and pitching (2.7 scoreless innings), but the key here was Peshastin’s raw winning percentage moving closer to 0.00 (it’s now 0.072) while the Drive bumped theirs up to .298. That’s a 4 to 1 ratio in favor of the Drive, making their adjusted winning percentage shoot up to .845, the best in the league for the week to date.
7. The 10th Place Kaline boosted their margin over 11th place Old Detroit from 4.1 to 5.2 games. To give you a better sense of what that means, please note that the 10th place Drive are exactly 5.2 games behind the 3rd place Dragons, and only 5.3 behind the second-place Balk. We could just about fit an entire other league between our 10th and 11th place teams. So, yeah, the Wolverines aren’t even in the same league as the rest of you.
8. The “winners” of the May 4 Worst Day in the League are… the Pears, of course. Their dream of EFL dominance has been shattered, and they are now 6.2 games back of the Kangaroos.
9. The Alleghenys had the second best May 4, even though they had no pitching. But they did have hitting (.292, .333, .458), led by Adley Rutschman (3 for 4 with a homer) and… just a second, this is killing me… Jurickson Profar (also 3 for 4 with a homer, plus a stolen base).
10. Why is Profar’s good fortune killing me? Well, last year, for the Rockies, Profar went .236, .316, .364, pretty much the empty husk of a former #1 MLB prospect. Now, for the Padres, he’s going .347, .435, .542. Last year Nolan Jones, for the Rockies, went .297, .389, .542. But this year Jones has been an empty husk of himself for the Rockies (.170, .243, .277) and is now on the DL. They say it’s for a lower back injury, but I suspect something far more sinister is afoot. That .542 slugging percentage is the tell: Profar stole Jones’ mojo. I am combing through the league rules — I’m sure that kind of Caribbean voodoo is prohibited in the EFL.
11. However, in the meantime, there is this one silver lining to Profar’s voodoo: it has helped to delay the Glaciers’ all-too-easy conquest of the EFL, as they were on the short side of the A’s great day. Dustin mentioned Trevor Rogers’ triple chulks (2.3 ip, 8 er), but omitted Nate Pearson’s smaller triple chulk (1/3 ip, 1 er). That 16.98 daily ERA was the killer for the Glaciers.
