Out of the Shadows: The Eclipse League

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Baltimore Elite Giants

Hilldale Athletic Club

Homestead Grays

New York Lincoln Giants

Philadelphia Liberty Stars

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Chicago American Giants

Cleveland Buckeyes

Cuban Stars East

Detroit Motown Stars

Indianapolis ABCs

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We'll start with the net WAR gains and losses from the offseason:

And here's a breakdown of the major signings and trades:

• P Carlos Zambrano: Grays, $5.9m / 7 years
• 3B Jose Ramirez: Black Barons, $5.8m / 8 years
• C Jose Agustin Rodriguez: Red Sox, $4.6 / 8 years
• 2B Roberto Alomar: Royal Giants, $4.4m / 5 years
• OF Herman Dunlap: Monarchs, $4.1m, 6 years
• OF Alex Johnson: Crawfords, $3.1m / 6 years
• P Gene Collins: West, $3.1m / 4 years
• P Jose Rijo: Red Sox, $2.5m / 4 years
• 2B Luis Arraez: Monarchs, $2.5m, 6 years
• P Don Newcombe: Red Sox, $2.1m / 4 years
• P Melvin Powell: Athletics, $1.9m / 5 years
• P Leon Day: Red Sox, $1.7m / 4 years
• 1B Erubiel Durazo: Motown Stars, $1.7m / 4 years
• SS Jonathan Villar: Crawfords $1.2m / 3 years
• P Andrew Foster: Elite Giants, $1.1m / 4 years
• P Johnny Markham: Liberty Stars, $1.05m / 2 years
• 1B Frank Thomas: Crawfords $0.7m / 2 years

• OF Oddibe McDowell traded from American Giants to Red Sox for P Lefty Holmes
• P Ramon Ramirez traded from Lincoln Giants to Dodgers for IF Huddy Oliver and IF Bill Kindle
• OF Vladimir Guerrero traded from Bacharach Giants to Buckeyes for 3B William Joseph and OF Hosken Powell

Odds are - with the exception of the BYs in the FC American - this year will more than compensate for the relatively uneventful 1976 pennant race.

One of the many points of interest this season is how Barry Bonds responds to missing out on another Red Sox Championship.

Detroit's Cristobal Torriente heads the prospect rankings.

Finally, the franchise finances on OD:

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Two things I have a soft spot for are underdogs and one-club players. So this fine effort by Ruppert Jones - who has spent his entire career to this point toiling away for the eternally-undermanned Cuban Stars East, not to mention won two of the first three Grant Medals - is, for me at least, a twofer.

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Plenty of early action around the league, including Alex Johnson making himself welcome at his new club with this outstanding effort against the BYs.

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For the most part, the scales of Marty Dihigo's two-way performance have tipped toward the pitching side, which is a fairly accurate reflection of his career, with this middle bit skewing back more towards the offence. He did have that fantastic 6 bWAR 1972 season in which he won the Grant Medal, but as it stands his career pWAR outstrips his bWAR by a rate of more than 2 to 1.

He certainly has come out swinging for the fences this season, however, and this is his first-ever 3 HR game - in a losing cause, would you believe.

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A fairly even start to the 1977 Eclipse League season. The A's are slow out of the blocks, while the BYs look to be recovering from a similarly sluggish beginning. Their cause isn't helped by the loss of star 3B Hank Thompson for 6 weeks with a hernia and then OF Steve Henderson for a similar period with a groin strain. Their crosstown rival Lincoln Giants also suffer a big loss with red-hot 2B Bill Kindle out for 3 months after tearing ligaments in his ankle. To that point, he had hit a phenomenal 423. The West and Grays have both begun positively and share the league's best record of 17-9, a game ahead of the ABCs and the defending champs.

A few late adds as Newark signs P Hilton Smith on a 1/304 deal and OF Richard Hidalgo for 1/280, while the MoStars ink a 1/508 deal with Closer Octavio Dotel.

• FC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Ender Inciarte (Giants) 381 / 4 HR / 22 RBI.
• FC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Dave Barnhill (Black Barons) 4-1 / 1.27 / 25 K / 49.2 IP.
• FC ROOKIE OF THE MONTH: Agustin Acosta (Crawfords) 3-1 / 1.19 / 23 K / 37.2 IP.
• WC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Tommy Harper (ABCs) 372 / 3 HR / 22 RBI.
• WC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Jesse Houston (Grays) 5-1 / 2.42 / 22 K / 48.1 IP.
• WC ROOKIE OF THE MONTH: Tommy Harper.

And here's how the TL has kicked off.

• CAC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Tommy Agee (Keystones) 357 / 5 HR / 24 RBI.
• CAC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Salvador Poree (Keystones) 4-0 / 3.24 / 19 K / 33.1 IP.
• FRC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Gerald Williams (Tigers) 386 / 6 HR / 17 RBI.
• FRC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Gerardo Ballesteros (Wolves) 3-0 / 1.16 / 28 K / 31 IP.

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To commiserate his unfortunate injury, I thought an OotS feature on Bill Kindle might be pertinent at this juncture.

I'm afraid that, as I am finding so often to be the case, there's not much by way of anecdotal evidence to give us a rounder picture of Tennessee-born William Horace Kindle. At least this time we do get some info from Jim Riley, who describes Bill as "quick as a cat" and lauds his defensive prowess (although this latter element doesn't really translate when you look at his raw stats, which are roughly league average). Those same raw stats tell us he was pretty handy with the stick, with SH giving him a career 305/369/383 slash line over his 7 NeL seasons in the 1910s and '20s, most of which were spent in the service of one or other of the New York clubs - above all the Royal Giants, although he did also play for the Lincoln Giants over a few seasons. Eric Chalek has apportioned him in excess of 20 WAR.

Speaking of the service, Bill's career would undoubtedly have been more substantial were it not for the effects of WW1, with his time in the Army seemingly leaving him worse off with regard to his baseball skills, and he all but left the game in 1920 while still in his 20s.

Here in the EL, Bill was taken 9th overall in the 1974 Draft by Newark and rated as high as #15 on the Prospects list in those early years. However, the Dodgers traded him at the end of last season to the Lincoln Giants having played only 60 games and hitting 264 for them in 163 AB. As I mentioned in the April summary, he took to his new club with gusto, hitting 423 in 71 AB before his unfortunate injury, and will miss at least half of the season. We wish him a speedy recover and continued success in the future.

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ShoTime will undoubtedly be keen to rebound from what was, for him, a fairly underwhelming 1976 campaign with a midseason injury not helping matters. His early form suggests he's back to his best, with this game a highlight.

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Rookie Gerald Williams makes a splash with this outstanding performance in the TL for Philly against Detroit.

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The Black Yankees are really struggling to get it going this year, with their pitching the main problem - their rotation in particular.




Outside of CC, those numbers are ugly, and they get hammered again in this one, with Rickie Weeks leading the way for St. Louis.

They'll obviously be happy to see Thompson back on the paddock, but that defence also looks to be causing them some real problems and needs to be addressed.

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While things remain tight as we head into the dog days of summer, the big story in the EL at the moment is the one big exception to this: the 19-33 Black Yankees. Their pitching continues to kill them, with CC Sabathia the only starter with a sub-4 ERA and the bottom two exceeding 7 in that category - Willie Gisentaner (7.28) and Bill Anderson (8.71). Hank Thompson's imminent return will be a boon but they'll need to get a move on before this season gets completely away from them.

Two of their chief FC rivals will also have to do without a big name for a while, with the Dodgers losing key rotation member Connie Rector for 4 months to shoulder inflammation and a broken cheekbone from an errant pitch puts a six-week hole in the fantastic season Martin Dihigo has been compiling.

Hilldale Closer Lefty Moses, who wins this month's WC pitching award, has started the season with 29 scoreless innings pitched. This has helped the A's turn around a slow start to now be just a handful of games behind the Grays, who have done the opposite and cooled right off.

• FC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Harry Simpson (Giants) 363 / 8 HR / 22 RBI.
• FC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Jair Jurrjens (Monarchs) 5-0 / 1.64 / 37 K / 44 IP.
• FC ROOKIE OF THE MONTH: Moses Yellow Horse (West) 3-1 / 2.31 / 28 K / 35 IP.
• WC BATTER OF THE MONTH: John Mayberry (East) 318 / 7 HR / 22 RBI.
• WC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Lefty Moses (Athletics) 3-0 / 0.00 / 10 SV / 16 K / 21 IP.
• WC ROOKIE OF THE MONTH: Leonardo Medina (Grays) 5-3 / 1.86 / 5 SV / 16 K / 19.1 IP.

In the TL, Cleveland are trying to make a wee run for it; the other three remain close.

• CAC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Johnny Washington (Choo-Choos) 473 / 8 HR / 31 RBI.
• CAC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Henry Strickland (Choo-Choos) 4-1 / 2.44 / 22 K / 44.1 IP.
• FRC BATTER OF THE MONTH: Emil Brown (Tigers) 427 / 2 HR / 12 RBI.
• FRC PITCHER OF THE MONTH: Lum Croxton (Wolves) 4-0 / 1.54 / 17 K / 35 IP.

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Perhaps not so much of a need to bring Harry Simpson out of obscurity, given he made it to the bigs in the wake of "integration", but even then I doubt he is anywhere near as familiar to most as his contemporaries.

Born in Atlanta, Harry Simpson's pro career commenced after he returned from serving in WW2, with him spending three seasons in the NeL with the Philly Stars. After a couple seasons in the minor league system, Harry made his MLB debut with Cleveland in 1951 but struggled in his time there and by 1954 was back in the minors with Indianapolis, with his 4-yo son tragically killed in a car accident during this period. The remainder of his MLB was a peripatetic one involving a seemingly endless number of trades (including one to the Yankees in 1957 as fallout from the infamous Copacabana nightclub incident continued) - indeed, he played for five different clubs during his eight seasons in the bigs - and somewhat disappointing performances on the field. He finished his MLB career after the 1959 season, leaving with a 269/334/403 line and 76 home runs - including grand slams for four different teams. BBRef has him earning a tad under 6 WAR for his career, while EC has his full MLE career set at around 14.

His EL career is coming along swimmingly indeed. Harry entered the league before the 1975 season as a FA and was signed by the Giants, for whom he still plays. His performances have improved with each subsequent season - he won last season's Kindling Award for the FC at LF and, as you might have noticed in the recent update, he just won his first monthly hitting award. Looking forward to seeing his blossom further from here.

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I'm always fascinated to see how the game treats active players as they pass their IRL age. With this being a dev-only league, from what (I think) I've seen the results are usually a bit kinder to the player than in recalc scenarios, when they do more often as not than not - relievers excepted - seem to fall off the cliff.

Ozzie Albies is currently in his age-28 season here, two years past where he is at in reality. His ratings are drifting, but perhaps just as much because they started off somewhat elevated - he won the Fowler (RoY) Medal in 1970 and has nearly double the WAR in this save as IRL to this point - as through these being the "wonder years". Still, he remains capable of doing the special things from time to time, as this performance attests.

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Best hitter in the league? Check - Barry Bonds

Winningest pitcher in league history? Check - CC Sabathia

And yet, this is how things are going for the New York Black Yankees of late.

That - to save you counting - is what a 15-game losing streak looks like. Ouch.

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St. Louis continues to defy the odds with their strong performance so far this season, but this loss will really test their depth.

All part and parcel of the game, however - here's the full list of current injuries in the EL.