[BirdWatcher]

The Brewers limp a bit to the finish line after clinching the MGL title, as they lose 5 of their last 6 games, including being swept by the second place Speed Devils at home.

The unfortunate Speed Devils finish with 105 wins- meaning both they and the Brewers break the previous season win record for a WPK team- and yet are on the outside looking in as the post-season begins. For the first time in WPK history, three teams record at least 100 wins, and they are all in the same league (MGL).

For the first five years of the WPK the balance of power clearly was tilted in favor of the Shoeless Joe League, as that is where the most dominant teams resided and where many of the biggest WPK stars played. The SJL won all of the first five WPK World Series. With the Brewers championship last season things began to appear to shift a bit, and this year saw a dramatic shift as the top SJL team won only 93 games. Now granted, there is no inter-league play in the WPK so it is possible that talent was just more evenly distributed in the SJL, but clearly the most dominant teams this year were in the MGL.

Some of this is that several of the biggest stars of the game have moved from the SJL to the MGL through free agency in the past few seasons- including Brewers Ryan Rodgers and Cheol-han Lee, as well as superstar L.A. leftfielder Travis Johnson (formerly with Jacksonville) and slugging Detroit firstbaseman Nate Kuykendall (formerly with Philadelphia.)
On the other hand, a glance at the leader boards, especially among batters/position players, shows that the MGL was dominated by aging veterans this year while the SJL has some quite young rising stars who put up great numbers in 1971, which might indicate that the balance of power is due to shift again soon.

One of the brightest young stars of the SJL is Boston Berserkers' centerfielder Justin Vargas. At 23, Vargas not only led the SJL in batting average (.353, and second best was just .319) but also in slugging percentage and OPS while finishing second in OBP. While Vargas finished third in WAR in the league, he should be a strong candidate for SJL MVP. Vargas was a first round (#11 overall) draft pick of the L.A. Spinners in 1966 but was traded to Boston in that very off-season and has proven to be a great deal for the Berserkers (the two players the Spinners got in the trade have not given them anywhere near comparable value-one, a veteran pitcher, was only with the team one season and pitched just 8 games and the other, a 23-year old firstbaseman, still has the potential to earn a bench role but not likely anything more than that.)