It’s A Wonderful Weekend in the Neighborhood of…

Portland: W 1, L 1; 16 – 11. (.322, .390, .478;  14 ip, 6 er).  Yordano Ventura rebounded from his previous rough outing against Manny Machado with 7 ip, 1 er.  Adam Conley apparently needs to face off with Manny as soon as possible so he can get out of the 5 ip,  5 er rut he was in over the weekend.  The Rosebud offense was led by sluggers Maikel Franco (4 for 7 with a homer and a walk) and the even more renowned Cheslor Cuthbert (4 for 7 with two homers and a walk).  Another solid weekend, but marred by a loss despite Cuthbert’s usual dominance.

Haviland: W 2, L 0; 8 – 4.  (.254, .262, .424; 25.3 ip, 7 er).  Three strong starts (Archer: 7.7 ip, 3 er;  Duffy: 6 ip, 0 er; C Martinez: 8.3 ip,, 1 er) put the Dragons on the path to victory.  The hitting was just good enough, led by homers from much-maligned catcher Kurt Suzuki and his “backup” Chris Herrmann.  So here’s a team, finally, with two wins on the weekend.  The best weekend in the EFL?  I don’t know —  the Dragons lost 0.1 games in the pennant race despite winning both their games.  (How marvelous!)

Canberra: W 1, L 1; 10 – 9. (.226, .294, .452; 15.7 ip, 7 er).  The ‘Roos hit just a little better than the Dragons, mostly because of Chris Davis’ 2 homer, a double, and 2 walks in his 7 AB. They pitched more, um, efficiently, surrendering their 7 runs in only 15.7 innings. Porcello continued his good season with 7 ip, 1 er, which is a nice thing since so many people thought he wasn’t this good.  Nice, but not as nice as winning twice, so the Kangaroos couldn’t have had the best weekend in the FL this time.

Pittsburgh: W 1, L 1;  10 – 10. (.258, .342, .409;  6 ip, 2 er).  Pittsburgh hit just a little better than the ‘Roos.  We could say they pitched better than the ‘Roos, too, except mostly they pitched less so were vulnerable to replacement innings.  Back to the hitters:  it’s sometimes hard to pick which hitter to feature as the best on a team for a weekend.  One could point to Pedro Alvarez’ team leading 1.750 OPS, but he only had 5 plate appearances, totally unremarkable except for the homer. One could point to that man Jose Altuve who reached base safely 4 times in 7 plate appearances and plays a solid second base.  But probably we’d just better give it to boring old Mike Trout (3 for 5 wth 2 walks) and his .750 OBP.  So a boring weekend with a split result — clearly not the best in the EFL.

Flint Hill: W 2, L 0; 10 – 2.  .259, .318, .494;  13.3 ip, 2 er). It’s hard to tell which EFL team had the best weekend.  If we go by score, and wins and losses, you might pick the Tornados.  Xander Bogaerts led the offense with a 6 for 10 weekend with a double and a homer.  Newly activated outfield Scooter Gennett chipped in with a double and a homer and a walk as part of his 3 for 7 output.  Robbie Ray pitched a dominating 7 shutout innings to key a good day for Tornado twirlers.  So, yeah, a very nice weekend.  Probably the best in the EFL.  A wonderful weekend.  Really, who could compete with it?  I mean, surely the T’s wouldn’t trade their weekend for the W’s spent entirely in first place.

Peshastin:  W 1, L 1; 10 – 9. (.266, .289, .468;  7.7 ip, 1 er).  I haven’t remarked much on the Pears’ decision to sign Carlos Santana.  I drafted Santana just ahead of Mike (Giancarlo) Stanton 5 years ago, thrilled to get a slugging catcher.  The Drive then snagged Stanton, and I settled for Logan Morrison with my second first-round pick immediately afterwards.  (I donated Morrison to the new Cheese the next season, and finally convinced the Drive to trade me Stanton in the middle of the 2014 season, so everything came out right in the end.)  Anyway, Santana had a fine Wolverine career, but never great enough to merit having been taken before Stanton.  So now Stanton is struggling, obviously depressed over no longer being a Wolverine, and Santana has entered a new phase in career with his 4 year, $7,000,000 Peshastin contract.

Stanton comes to mind now because he had a great weekend — 4 for 8 with a double, two homers and a walk.  That’s a 1.900+ OPS.  For the month he’s right at .800 OPS.  For the year it’s .780: .231, .344, .445.  That’s not what we were hoping for in Old Detroit when he caught for us.  I doubt it’s what they’re hoping for in Peshastin where he DH’s and plays first base.  But that weekend .500, .556, 1.375 line — yeah, that’ll do.

The problem for the P’s was the pitching. Only 7.7 innings isn’t enough for two games, so Peshastin uploaded more replacements, who downloaded more runs, resulting in a loss. So far, only 6 Pear pitchers have ap-Pear-ed for Peshastin in June, and only 3 of them are starters.

Cottage: W 1, L 1; 11 – 10.  (.243, .308, .414; 14 ip, 6 er).  Somehow since they joined the league the Cheese have picked the Pears to be their rivals. So they matched the Pears offense, pretty much, and … wait, the Cheese got a nice 14-innings out of their pitchers, including 6 more shutout innings from Michael Fulmer, the greatest mid-season debutant pitcher of all time (so far)! How did they still surrender 10 runs? Well, Kendall Graveman is inactive, so his pretty 4 ip, 1 er effort was off the books. Matt Wisler’s 4 ip, 5 er was ON the books, however, giving the Cheese  a weekend ERA of 4.50.  Add in an inning of replacement relief pitching, and the ERA climbs to 4.77.  With a team defense of 37.7 your unearned runs equal about 6.5% of your earned runs, which in this case is about .31 unearned runs.  So now your team is allowing just over 5 runs per game, times 2 games, equals 10 runs allowed. A blot on a pleasant weekend, I’m afraid.

Kaline: W 2, L 0; 8 – 4. (.282, .345, .487;  18 ip, 2 er).  Kaline may have the best raw stats from its weekend play.  Michael Saunders continues to fill Wolverine fans with wist — 6 for 8 with two doubles, a homer, and a walk.  James Paxton filled Mariners fans with hope:  6.3 shutout innings in an eventual, seemingly inevitable extra inning loss to the Rangers.   (Note:  the results seem a little dampened from the raw stats because the Drive are “wasting” 65 plate appearances by having positions over-subscribed.   This suppresses some of the hitting results — or more precisely, steers those results toward the average hitter or pitcher at a position.

D.C.:  W 1, L 1;  6 – 9. (.217, .308, .304;  10 ip, 4 er).  The Balk parlayed a poor hitting day (well, except for Welington Castillo, of course, who went 2 for 2 with a double and a walk) into a win because of some good pitching, especially by Pat Dean (6.3 innings, 1 er).  Although the Balk were the only EFL team outscored over the weekend, they did collect a win to stay ahead of Atlanta in the “try to avoid the first pick of the draft” competition. So that’s a pretty good day for D.C.!