Stray Thoughts

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Portland Rosebuds	57	34	.631	—	483.9	360.9
Old Detroit Wolverines	55	37	.593	3.4	416.1	343.6
Canberra Kangaroos	52	36	.586	4.4	393.8	332.6
Brookland Outs	50	41	.554	7.1	479.4	432.2
Cottage Cheese	50	41	.547	7.6	452.5	412.3
Flint Hill Tornadoes	49	43	.529	9.3	399.9	372.8
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	47	42	.528	9.4	477.7	455.4
Kaline Drive	46	47	.495	12.4	407.7	408.5
Haviland Dragons	42	51	.453	16.3	394.1	438.1
Peshastin Pears	41	50	.451	16.4	383.7	423.6
D.C. Balk	36	52	.412	19.6	370.7	446.1

Portland: DNP,  0 – 0. (21 PA, .238, .238, .381; 10.3 ip, 4 er).  Jose Berrios buried the various hitters he faced (7 ip, 1 er).  Don’t despair, it was nothing nefarious. It’s just the season for berries. I don’t know Berrios’ bio: perhaps he surmounted barriers in barrios to prepare to impair us with this imperious pitching performance.

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Old Detroit: “W”, 0 – 4.  (24 PA, .050. .208, .100; 7.7 ip. 1 er).  The W’s were one-hit by… umm, some pitchers.  That’s the thing about the EFL: when your hitters are humiliated the blame is spattered among a dozen pitchers in stadia strewn all over.   All those pitchers had wildly different outcomes, but if you patch together just their performance against Wolverines Sunday, they’d all be candidates for the Hall of Fame’s inner circle.   The one Wolverine to get a hit was the once and present Wolverine shortstop Jose Iglesias. Max Muncy and Willson Contreras each contributed two walks, but in this case the pitchers not only scattered those baserunners across nine innings, they also strewed them across the continent: Iglesias got his double in Florida; Contreras and Muncy walked in different California cities. I don’t think I ever considered how hard it is to stage a rally under those conditions.

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On the other hand, Anthony DeSclafani’s sterling  7 innings (allowing only one earned run) really were relieved by Raisel Iglesias’ 2/3 of a scoreless inning.  True, there were four other thirds of an inning in between in which Amir Garrett and some guy named Tanner Rainey conspired to hand-deliver 4 earned runs to the Indians. But the two pitchers that counted were DeSclafani for the win and Iglesias for the save. Except, of course, DeSclafani wasn’t active on the Wolverine roster, so his work didn’t really count where it really counts.  Yet. If I activate him today, 63% of DeSclafani’s excellence will count where it really counts… but DeSclafani’s other July start didn’t go nearly as well, and his overall July ERA is still a little higher than the tam’s ERA, so I don’t think I’ll let DeSclafani out of the cage today.

Canberra: “W”, 2 – 5. (.52  PA, .208, .269, .250; 8 ip, 1 er). That looks like a modest offensive line, like a line of low hills on the horizon. But  it’s vertiginous compared to Old Detroit’s offensive profile. You could zip line off the towering heights achieved by Adam Eaton (3 for 3 with a double), making Jose Iglesias’ line look like a kiddy slide.

Brookland: W, 10 – 5.  (54 pA, .385, .407, .692;  2.7 ip, 1 er, 3.37 ERA). With Cody Bellinger (3 for 5 with a two doubles) and CJ Cron (3 for 4 with two doubles),  Brookland looks like it wants back in the  pennant race.  Sure, they’re a little more than 7 games off the pace, but that’s only a little over 2 games a month to get within smelling distance of the Rosebuds. Because Bellinger and Cron are only the beginning for Brookland. Scott Schebler went 4 for 5 with a homer, and Gregory Polanco topped tham all: 2 for 3 with a homer, a walk, and a stolen base (that’s a 23.417 OPS). If the Outs can get something other than outs from Gregory Polanco — a project I pursued pointlessly for years — I don’t know who’s going to stop them.

Cottage: “W”, 1 – 1.  (44 PA, .171, .227, .317;  6.3 ip, 0 er).  Danny Duffy!  6 innings with nine strikeouts and nary an earned run.  Who knew he was any good! The Head Cheese, that’s who. Bask in the vindication, Head Cheese! Watch Duffy’s value rise.  Watch the Cheese peddle him at the peak of his restored value.

Flint Hill: W, 10 – 7. (.308, .449, .410;  2 ip, 4 er, 18.00 ERA).  I added the ERA to these little stat lines just so you wouldn’t have to multiply in your heads the earned runs allowed by nine and divide that by the innings pitched.  I do that for my team each day and make enough exasperating errors to not want to subject (most of) you  to the same trauma. But I’m afraid that bald 18.00 for the Tornados yesterday will be trauma all by itself. Tornados suffering trauma! Only in the EFL.

Pittsburgh: W, 8 – 3. (.333, .405, .636; 8 IP, 0 ER). WOW! Such great hitting, despite Domonic Smith’s 0 for 7. Stephen Piscotty led a quartet of supra-1.000 OPSers Sunday, going 3 for 4 with a homer for a 2.250 daily OPS. I thought Frankie Montas was a reliever.  But yesterday he went 6 scoreless innings!  Shades of traditional  Allegheny dominance!  Surely those troubling shadows will disappear when the sun’s angle changes.  Right?

Kaline: W, 11 – 2. (41 PA, .389, .463, .639;  4.7 ip, 0 ER).  Recent Drive heroes, the alphabetically adjacent  Wil Myers and Steve Pearce, continued apace — and I mean, apace:  both were 2 for 4 with a homer for identical .500, .500, 1.250 batting lines. Chase Anderson pitched 4.7 innings without an earned run. The combination produced the best day any EFL team experienced Sunday. So we can all calm down now.  Please notice how close Kaline’s line is to Pittsburgh’s: if the Alleghenys begin rising to the top , the Drive will be right there with them.  No one has learned to fear the Wizard’s dominance. Because if we ever did find ourselves dominated by the Drive,  Wizard rule would be kindly and warm.

Haviland: L, 5 – 6. (.208, .269, .625; 8 ip, 4 er).  It was a much better day than some other teams had (eg, Wolverines) but still, I don’t think this is the day to bring up the recent epoch of Dragon dominance, or how the Drive are sandwiched between the Duumvirate like sauerkraut on a stadium hot dog. Homers from Alonso, Harper and Soto carried the offense, but not quite far enough considering the overall scarcity of hitters (and Ivan Nova’s so-so day: 5.7 ip, 3 er).

Peshastin:  W (-1), L 1; (-4) – 1.  (.065, .171, .161;  5.7 ip, 3 er): The Pears tried to match the W’s offensive output, but overshot the mark by  about 0.025 OPS.  Still, it was a nice gesture and impressive in its way: Clint Frazier, the Ps’ second best hitter yesterday, went 1 for 8. But the one was a double giving him a daily OPS of .472!  The really good news for Pears fans is this: the team’s offensive leader was Kevin Kiermaier, back from injury.  He went 1 for 5 with a triple and a walk. It’s a nice .933 OPS, but as a team’s best hitting, it was an off-day.

DC: W(-1), L 2; 1 – 14. (50 PA, .159, .260,. .273; 10.7 ip, 12 er).  As Canberra’s batting line is to Old Detroit’s, so is DC’s to Peshastin’s.  But where the Kangaroos got 8 innings with 1 earned run from their pitchers, the Balk got 10.7 innings — but 12 earned runs. Francisco Liriano… I remember when Liriano was a rookie in the EFL.  He was in the same class with Felix Hernandez and Justin Verlander.  I desperately wanted one of those three.  It was hard to tell who was going to be best, but I thought Liriano would be a very close third.  I decided I’d bid someone way up on Hernandez, and drop the bid, and with one competitor out of the market try to get Verlander for a reasonable price, and cheerfully settle for Liriano as my fall back option.  The plan went awry — people stopped bidding on King Felix at $7.5 million,  about $1.5 million below my planned drop-the-bid-on-the-other-guy threshhold.  So I got Felix. I believe Canberra got Verlander — or maybe it was Pittsburgh? — and the Drive scooped up Liriano  But later I traded for Liriano — carrying both Hernandez and Liriano for a little more than one season, as I remember — and even later I drafted him for a second Wolverine stint (and maybe a third? My memory is fuzzy there).  Liriano proved to be every bit as good as the other two when he was at his best, but he was plagued with a level of inconsistency not seen in the others.

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Of course, now Verlander is separating from the pack with his late career excellence, while Hernandez fades and Liriano teeters on the edge of the Cliffs of Unrosterability.  It’s sad to see these fine pitchers’ careers begin to fray.

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AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Boston Red Sox	63	29	.685	—
New York Yankees	59	30	.663	2.5
Old Detroit Wolverines	55	37	.593	8.4
Flint Hill Tornadoes	49	43	.529	14.4
Tampa Bay Rays	46	44	.511	16
Toronto Blue Jays	41	48	.461	20.5
Baltimore Orioles	25	66	.275	37.5

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Canberra Kangaroos	52	36	.586	—
Philadelphia Phillies	50	38	.568	1.6
Atlanta Braves	50	39	.562	2.1
Washington Nationals	45	45	.500	7.6
D.C. Balk	36	52	.412	15.3
New York Mets	36	52	.409	15.6
Miami Marlins	38	55	.409	16.1

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cleveland Indians	49	40	.551	—
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	47	42	.528	2
Minnesota Twins	40	48	.455	8.5
Detroit Tigers	40	53	.430	11
Chicago White Sox	30	60	.333	19.5
Kansas City Royals	25	65	.278	24.5

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Milwaukee Brewers	54	37	.593	—
Chicago Cubs	51	37	.580	1.5
Brookland Outs	50	41	.554	3.6
Cottage Cheese	50	41	.547	4.2
St. Louis Cardinals	46	43	.517	7
Pittsburgh Pirates	42	48	.467	11.5
Cincinnati Reds	40	51	.440	14

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Houston Astros	61	32	.656	—
Seattle Mariners	57	34	.626	3
Oakland A’s	51	40	.560	9
Los Angeles Angels	46	45	.505	14
Kaline Drive	46	47	.495	15
Haviland Dragons	42	51	.453	18.9
Texas Rangers	40	52	.435	20.5

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Portland Rosebuds	57	34	.631	—
Arizona Diamondbacks	50	41	.549	7.4
Los Angeles Dodgers	49	41	.544	7.9
San Francisco Giants	48	45	.516	10.4
Colorado Rockies	46	44	.511	10.9
Peshastin Pears	41	50	.451	16.4
San Diego Padres	39	54	.419	19.4