Less kinky every day

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Cottage Cheese	21	12	.627	—	200.0	154.4
Old Detroit Wolverines	20	14	.588	1.2	137.7	118.2
Canberra Kangaroos	19	14	.588	1.3	152.8	128.2
Portland Rosebuds	19	15	.568	1.9	148.3	130.7
Kaline Drive	18	16	.538	2.9	158.9	147.7
Flint Hill Tornadoes	18	16	.525	3.3	145.1	137.4
Brookland Outs	17	16	.520	3.5	165.3	156.9
Haviland Dragons	16	18	.468	5.3	141.8	152.9
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	15	19	.430	6.6	182.8	210.5
Peshastin Pears	13	21	.388	8	150.6	188.7
D.C. Balk	13	20	.379	8.2	113.7	145.5

Cottage:  “W”, 6 – 8. (.333, .333, .556; 0 pitching Monday)  That’s only 9 plate appearances of offense on a very light day for the Cheese.   The Cheese’ enduring tenure as EFL leaders despite their casualty rate tells me something is kinked, if not with our system then with the universe itself.  Also — 200.0 runs exactly?  Isn’t that suspiciously improbable?

Old Detroit: W 1, L (-1); 0 – (-6).  (.150, .261, .561; 1 ip, 0 er) The Wolverine kink was leaving Walker Buehler out of the pitching stats yesterday by the simple slip of not capturing the “W” when I copied from Baseball Prospectus.  “alker Buehler”  doesn’t have a contract in the EFL, so the always-vigilant, never intuitive database wouldn’t give Buehler credit for his 6 shutout innings (nor his 2 earned runs allowed in the seventh inning). We fixed that this time, but there is a known kink still in the numbers here: Shohei Ohtani isn’t getting credit for his Wolverine hitting exploits.  Given the dismal state of Woeverine offense so far in May, we could use Ohtani’s relative competence at the plate.

Canberra: DNP, 5 – 0. (.370, .469, .704;  no pitching). All seven Kangaroos to come to bat got at least one hit. Five of the seven reached base safely at least twice.  Four of the seven had at least one extra base hit, for a total of 9 extra bases among them. Five of the seven OPSed at least 1.250.  Two of the seven had an OBP of .750. Three slugged over 1.000.  The worst hitter — Scott Kingery, only 1 single in 4 trips — also stole a base.  OK. Now that the engine’s been tuned up, let’s see if the ‘Roos can add some pitching. (By the way: the Canberra kink yesterday seems to have been the

Portland: DNP, 2 – 0. (.313, .421, .563; no pitching).  The Rosebuds sought to emulate the ‘Roos, but fell short: only 19 plate appearances rather than 32; no homers rather than 2; no stolen bases; a team OPS of .984 rather than .1.173 — a solid effort, enough to make every mammal in the league jealous EXCEPT the kangaroos.

Kaline: DNP, 2 – 1. (.281, .361, .563;  5.7 ip, 5 er).  I did create a kink for Kaline Monday when I accidentally loaded the Kaline year-to-date stats, and then when I loaded the May-only stats I didn’t overwrite five or six Drives’ yearlong stats.  (Dave: the system doesn’t crash when a player appears twice with different stats. I suspect it just keeps whichever version comes last!)  It’s hard to see how any damage was done, since removing all those extra stats didn’t change the Drive’s position appreciably.  Kindly Kaline kinks contributing kernels to our cache of comprehension are the coolest kind of kinks.

Flint Hill:  DNP, 1 – 4. (.320, .346, .520;  10 ip, 10 er) Tornados are often beautiful.  Not Convection Confection beautiful, nor even furry Ferret beautiful, but more of the symmetry under pressure kind of beauty.  So of COURSE the Tornados would strive to perfect the form.  The Cheese can land precisely on 200.0 runs for the season?  Well, so can the Tornados achieve gratuitous symmetry: witness those innings pitched and earned runs allowed from Monday’s efforts!  10 exactly.  The perfectly self-erasing pitching performances of Tyson Ross (6 ip, 5 er) and Jeff Samardzija: 10 runs in 10 innings.

Brookland:  L, 2 – 5. (.143, .125, .286; 2 ip, 2 er). Sort of a Tornado junior thing going on here?  Matching innings! They’re so cute when they’re little.

Haviland: DNP, 2 – 0. (.455, .462, 1.182; no pitching) AGon has Gon Off!  Yes, that ancient first baseman clouted two homers, breathing life into his moribund career.  I thought it was a worthy gamble to grab Adrian Gonzalez.  I myself collected Carlos Gonzalez on a similar roll of the dice.  CarGo has yet to homer twice in a game, though,  so for the moment AGon is AGoing better than CarGo has CarGone.

Pittsburgh: W 1, L (-1), 1 – (-4). (.368, .400, .526; 7 ip, 3 er). This is as close as anyone came Monday to a good game on both sides of the ball. (Now there’s a kink: “both sides of the ball” doesn’t make much sense in baseball.)  True, the offense was only a scale model of a good game, since it featured only 4 hitters totalling 20 plate appearances, but Stephen Strasburg strung together a solid 7 inning start.

Peshastin: DNP, 1 – 0. (.313, .313, .563; 12.3 ip, 8 er). Had Brett (the Kink) Anderson not chulked (3 ip, 7 er), the Pears could have been well-roundedly good, too.

DC: DNP, 2 – 5. (.353, .421, .706; 4.3 ip, 7 er).  Jarlin Garcia didn’t go all kinky like Brett Anderson, but he came close (4 ip, 7 er).  Actually, that wasn’t all that bad, considering the Balk only fielded a catcher and four infielders. That vast empty outfield should have surrendered a lot more than 7 earned runs in half a game.

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Oh, well, the EFL error correction system is still working, and the MLB teams are arising from their hammocks to actually play a full schedule, so we shouldn’t kink up the place so badly tonight.

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AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Boston Red Sox	25	9	.735	—
New York Yankees	24	10	.706	1
Old Detroit Wolverines	20	14	.588	5
Toronto Blue Jays	19	16	.543	6.5
Flint Hill Tornadoes	18	16	.525	7.1
Tampa Bay Rays	15	17	.469	9
Baltimore Orioles	8	26	.235	17

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Canberra Kangaroos	19	14	.588	—
Atlanta Braves	19	14	.576	0.4
Philadelphia Phillies	19	15	.559	0.9
New York Mets	18	15	.545	1.4
Washington Nationals	19	17	.528	1.9
Miami Marlins	13	21	.382	6.9
D.C. Balk	13	20	.379	6.9

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cleveland Indians	17	17	.500	—
Minnesota Twins	14	17	.452	1.5
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	15	19	.430	2.4
Detroit Tigers	14	20	.412	3
Kansas City Royals	11	23	.324	6
Chicago White Sox	9	23	.281	7

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cottage Cheese	21	12	.627	—
St. Louis Cardinals	20	13	.606	0.7
Milwaukee Brewers	20	15	.571	1.7
Pittsburgh Pirates	19	16	.543	2.7
Chicago Cubs	17	15	.531	3.2
Brookland Outs	17	16	.520	3.5
Cincinnati Reds	8	27	.229	13.7

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Los Angeles Angels	21	13	.618	—
Houston Astros	22	15	.595	0.5
Seattle Mariners	19	14	.576	1.5
Kaline Drive	18	16	.538	2.7
Oakland A’s	18	17	.514	3.5
Haviland Dragons	16	18	.468	5.1
Texas Rangers	14	23	.378	8.5

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Arizona Diamondbacks	23	11	.676	—
Colorado Rockies	20	15	.571	3.5
Portland Rosebuds	19	15	.568	3.7
San Francisco Giants	19	16	.543	4.5
Los Angeles Dodgers	15	19	.441	8
Peshastin Pears	13	21	.388	9.8
San Diego Padres	13	23	.361	11