Charlie Steiner and the Mets Messed with Our Minds

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Flint Hill Tornadoes	23	11	.681	—	148.6	100.4
Peshastin Pears	23	10	.684	0.1	148.1	100.7
Old Detroit Wolverines	23	11	.679	0.1	192.6	130.1
Haviland Dragons	23	12	.664	0.4	155.3	112.9
D.C. Balk	19	9	.695	0.7	147.7	98.1
Kaline Drive	21	14	.604	2.5	152.1	125.8
Portland Rosebuds	17	16	.520	5.5	170.7	164.0
Cottage Cheese	17	17	.500	6.1	193.0	200.9
Canberra Kangaroos	13	15	.480	6.7	148.0	154.3
Bellingham Cascades	14	17	.456	7.5	125.0	146.2
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	13	18	.419	8.7	137.9	164.9

 

Flint Hill: W, 4 – 3. (48 PA, .233, .298, .512; 1 ip, 0 , 0.00 era)  It didn’t much to install the Tornados in first place.  The T’s put together a Flinty .810 OPS, but it’s all slugging percentage and very little emphasis on avoiding outs.  Thus there were 3 homers, a double, a triple, 5 singles and 4 walks — and it only resulted in about 4 runs scored.  

 

Peshastin: W, 5 – 5. (42 PA, .257, .381, .429;  1 ip, 2 er, 18.00 ERA) We can point our finger at new Pear John Curtiss’ chulky little inning as what drove the Pears out of first place after only one day.  Sure, Ryan Mountcastle went 0 for 4 — but that’s not as damaging by far.  Victor Robles made up for it, going 3 for 4 with a stolen base.                           

 

Old Detroit: L, 4 – 4.  (49 PA, .195, .327, .195;  1 ip, 0 er , 0.00 ERA).  The W’s got nothing out of 5 hitters (who went 0 – 16) and only modest offense from the other 6 (8 for 22 with no extra bases).  The hitting star was Austin Rily: 1 for 2 with 4 walk, to keep the W’s within striking distance of first place.  I hear Nate Pearson is debuting for the Oldies today, he of the fragile pitching arm… There’s more dread in my heart than hope. (He’s at 4.50 ERA with 4 walks after 2 innings against the Astros as I write this. Yeah.  Dread is right.) 

 

Haviland:  L, 5 – 5.  (46 PA, .250, .348, .375;  11.4 ip, 8 er, 6.32 ERA).  Brandon Lau… I mean, Lowe homered to spice up the Dragon offense and help correct for an overly-generous pitching staff, keeping the Havvies on the edge of the top penalty-race pile. Tyler Glasnow had a rare tough game, by his standards (5.7 ip, 3 er) but the real culprit was Ryan (Jimi) Hendrix, who quadruple chulked (2/3 of an inning, 9/3 of an earned run). 

 

DC:  W (-3), L (-2). (40 PA, .211, .250, .553;  19.3 ip, 9 er, 4.20 ERA).  The Balk might have been in first place today, with that fine .695 league-leading winning percentage, if the NL East hadn’t reshuffled itself yesterday, leaving its NY Mets wild card on top.  Yesterday the balk had played 33 games and were sitting 0.6 games out of first.  Today they have played 28 games, and are sitting 0.7 out.  

 

Kaline:  W, 4 – 1.  (62 PA, .241, .323, .352;  7 ip, 1 er, 1.29 ERA) Aaron Civale is running is own Civalety project, apparently, and doing pretty well!  All that pitching was his doing.  The hitting was fair — or maybe even better: every Drive had a base hit except Mitch Moreland. 

 

Well, sort of.  Charlie Steiner style.  Yesterday evening as Ryan and I were driving back from Seattle, we listened as the Dodgers busted out to a 13 – 0 lead over the helpless Angels after 4 1/2 innings.  Charlie Steiner, the Dodgers announcer, kept marveling over how every Dodger had a base hit except Justin Turner.  When Turner got a hit later in the game, he noted that at that point EVERY Dodger had a base hit. 

 

But Gavin Lux, at every time when Steiner was going on about this, had not had an actual base hit.  He did have a walk, but didn’t get an actual hit until the 8th inning, by which the Dodger lineup was littered with subs who didn’t have hits.   

 

Portland: 4 – 9.  (51 PA, .289, .353, .311;  4.3 ip, 6 er, 12.56 ERA).   A reasonable offensive day (with 3 walks and 2 hbps complementing 13 base hits) at the plate was not enough to compensate for Dylan Bundy’s near-chulk: 3.3 ip, 6 er against those rampaging Dodgers.   Jorge Polanco went 3 for 5 with the Portlies’ only extra base.

 

Cottage:  W, 3 – 2. (44 PA, .250, .295, .400;  7.7 ip, 3 er, 3.51 ERA).  The Cheese regained their perch at .500 with a reasonable day at the plate and a good one from the mound.  Marcus Semien and Jeff McNeil homered and Alex Verdugo went 3 for 6 to lead the offense.  Michael Fulmer only lasted 2.7 innings, but they were scoreless, to salvage the day for the pitchers. 

 

The Cheese line presents an opportunity to explain when one can call a walk a (Charlie) Steiner base hit: when the walk is what qualifies the hitter to be counted as having a base hit in cases where all, or nearly all, a team’s other hitters have base hits.  So Marcus Semien’s walk is NOT  a Steiner hit because he also had a real — no, a simple hit.  Same for Yandy Diaz’ walk  Isan Diaz and Alec Bohm, who went a combined 0 for 9, were the only Cheeses who had no walks, so they could not be credited with a Steiner hit. 

 

Bellingham:  W,  L, 3 – 3. (PA 44, .225, .295, .250;  9 ip, 4 er, 4.00). Kevin Gausman pitched 6 nice innings (1 er) before giving way to three relievers, two of whom were great and the third of whom was positively awful: 1 ip, 3 er.   Coret Dickerson went 2 for 4 with a double and a walk, while Tim Anderson went a simple 2 for 5, to lead the Cascades to a very narrow win.

 

Pittsburgh:  W, 4 – 0. (42 PA, .257, .357, .314;  12.6 ip, 4 er, 2.86 ERA.   Will Crowe continues to demonstrate how the other Pittsburgh team (the Pirates) won the trade.  While Josh Bell went 0 for 5, Will Crow pitched 6 fine innings (2 er) to lead the Alleghenys to a big win Saturday. Frankie Montas did almost as well ( 5.3 ip, 2 er).  Max Muncy led the offense by adding 2 walks to his 2 for 2 batting.  So, over the last two days, the Alleghenys have gone 1- 0, outscored their opponents 5 – 2, closed the gap to first place by  0.8 games and the gap to 10th place by… only 0.1 games.  This corroborates the impression that the the EFL universe is getting smaller, pushing us together rather thad spreading us apart.

 

 

AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Flint Hill Tornadoes	23	11	.681	—
Old Detroit Wolverines	23	11	.679	0.1
Boston Red Sox	21	13	.618	2.2
Toronto Blue Jays	17	15	.531	5.2
New York Yankees	17	16	.515	5.7
Tampa Bay Rays	18	17	.514	5.7
Baltimore Orioles	15	18	.455	7.7

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
D.C. Balk	19	9	.695	—
New York Mets	15	13	.536	4.5
Philadelphia Phillies	18	16	.529	4.5
Atlanta Braves	16	17	.485	6
Canberra Kangaroos	13	15	.480	6
Miami Marlins	15	17	.469	6.5
Washington Nationals	13	16	.448	7

 

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Chicago White Sox	18	13	.581	—
Cleveland Indians	18	14	.563	0.5
Kansas City Royals	16	16	.500	2.5
Bellingham Cascades	14	17	.456	3.9
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	13	18	.419	5
Minnesota Twins	12	20	.375	6.5
Detroit Tigers	10	24	.294	9.5

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
St. Louis Cardinals	20	14	.588	—
Milwaukee Brewers	18	16	.529	2
Chicago Cubs	17	16	.515	2.5
Cottage Cheese	17	17	.500	3
Cincinnati Reds	15	16	.484	3.5
Pittsburgh Pirates	13	19	.406	6

 

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Haviland Dragons	23	12	.664	—
Kaline Drive	21	14	.604	2.1
Oakland A’s	21	14	.600	2.3
Seattle Mariners	18	16	.529	4.8
Houston Astros	17	16	.515	5.3
Texas Rangers	17	18	.486	6.3
Los Angeles Angels	14	18	.438	7.8

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Peshastin Pears	23	10	.684	—
San Francisco Giants	20	13	.606	2.6
Los Angeles Dodgers	18	16	.529	5.1
San Diego Padres	18	16	.529	5.1
Portland Rosebuds	17	16	.520	5.4
Arizona Diamondbacks	15	18	.455	7.6
Colorado Rockies	12	21	.364	10.6