Mid-August and the Continued Chase
Things are slowing down now a bit with the trade deadline passed. Seems that the waiver wire is also slowing a bit as there is nothing new to report there. The team is playing about as expected but we did manage to go 5-8 the last 2 weeks to bring our season to date record to 36-81. By winning percentage right now this is the worst Dynamo's team in the proud history of the organization as we are playing 308 baseball. The worst prior to this year was the 1898 Dynamo's that finished with a 47-93 record .336. No Dynamo's team has ever lost 100 games which unless we play 500 baseball the last 5+ weeks of the season we seem destined to break.
We most likely won't be good (or even average) next year, but I never want to lose 100 games in a season again. We will do everything we can to ensure that doesn't happen in 1936.
How bad is this team? By the numbers they look historically bad. Last in most offensive categories, last in almost all pitching categories and even last in the FA in fielding (see below chart). But is this the worst team in FABL history? That honor or distinction belongs to the 1890 Pittsburgh Miners who only won a paltry 28 games during the entire season. And before anyone says yeah but how many games did they play back then. Well this team also lost more games than any team in baseball history with 112. While mathematically we have a chance to eclipse that mark we seem to be winning enough games here and there not to match that historically bad mark (something to be proud of). The most losses in what I would call modern times belong to the 1930 and 1932 Toronto Wolves who lost 104 and 105 games respectively (CA) and the St. Louis Pioneers who lost 101 games in 1931 (and look at them leading the league now). Sadly all 3 of those marks are likely in our wheelhouse this season.
So where is the bright news you ask? When we traded for
RF Howard Moss (29) we weren't sure what we were getting. Well Howard has surprised us with a slash line of 315/415/1044 6-26 in 25 games. He is rated the 6th best RF in baseball (out of 16). So that is something promising for us.
While not much history on our side with this next one I will throw out that in
SP Al Allen's 4 starts and
SP Jim Crawford's 3 starts that there is some improvement in the rotation. Allen is 2-1 with a 5.60 ERA and Crawford is 1-1 with a 2.88.
We also like
P Donie Scheuermann who we inserted in the rotation mid-season. He is a 26 year-old lefty who is considered an extreme groundball pitcher. Being a lefty SP in our park, extreme ground ball pitching is a pretty good asset to be. As a SP in 10 games with us he is 4-5 with a 4.85 ERA in 78 innings. For this team those are high marks. Before this season he had never started a major league game. He will definitely get a shot to continue pitching in our rotation next season.
In the minor leagues here is a report I received on
Claude Merrill. On the season he is hitting 368 at AAA with 15 home runs and 45 RBI's in 33 games. He is hitting 353 in the games since he was sent down at the end of July. Now the fielding report which is what we were really looking forward to hearing about.....
Merrill played in 4 games and 34 innings in LF. He had 5 total chances and made 1 PO. He had 4 errors for a .200 fielding % and his efficiency was .510 with neutral range factors. Needless to say we have ended the experiment with him in the OF.
He has played in 4 games as a 3B and has had a little more success. He has 3 PO and 4 assists in 8 chances with only 1 error. He needs to get some more time here so we will ask the AAA manager to give him a few more starts there in the next 2 weeks.
He has really shown well at the 1B position though. In 9 games he hasn't made any errors with 104 total chances he has 9 assists and been involved in 6 DP's. He has an RF of +11.37 and a ZR of +1.8 and Eff of 1.129. He looks like he could be a very solid first baseman. But I really want to see him play more at 3B for some reasons that will be further explained in the off-season. But a position switch looks somewhat promising.
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So I was out of town for a bit but now that I am back in town we will catch up with the league and do 2 weeks today. Looking forward to the off-season as that is when we will really take off on things and get this party started.
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