AL Season Wrap-up
The White Sox finished the first half of the season with a 7-game lead over Detroit. One month later, they had opened it up to an 18-game lead! The pennant was sewn up in early September in shocking runaway fashion. The White Sox had the best pitching staff in the American League. Add to that the fact that closer
Mellie Wolfgang (3-4, 50 Sv, 2.27 ERA) broke his own teammate's 4-year old record for single-season saves and also became the first closer in MLHR's 45-year history to reach 50 saves! The offense was ranked 3rd overall.
Oakland came on strong late to finish in second place, but Chicago clearly had no real challenge for the last half of the season. It is amazing to see how disappointing teams in Boston, Detroit, New York and even Oakland fared this year. Boston's season was a disaster in almost every sense of the word as nearly every key player underperformed their career averages, particularly stars like last year's PoY
Joe Wood (9-16, 4.47 ERA), who had only lost 11 games four times in his career but lost 16 this year at age 30, and 1919 World Series MVP
Fritz Coumbe (3-13, 15 Sv, 5.67 ERA), who was removed from the closer's role this season. There is some concern in Boston that Wood, a 3-time PoY, may no longer be dominant after two poor seasons in the past three years - even though the other season was a PoY campaign. Detroit's pitching staff fell apart and wound up ranked next-to-last in the league. New York had just the second winning season in franchise history, tying the team record with 83 wins, but that is still less than what they had hoped to achieve this year. Their offense scored the most runs in the AL, but their starting rotation struggled somewhat and their team defense was dead last in the league - something that surely needs to be addressed. As for Oakland, their pitching staff improved from recent years but their offense took a step back and their defense was ranked 6th.
Standings
Batting Leaders
Pitching Leaders
National League Rosters
