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03-23-2026, 09:07 AM
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#341 | |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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April 15-21, 1974
We are one week - well, a week and a half - in! Standings weirdness will be standings weirdness, although we're already beginning to see the wheat get separated from the chaff. Yikes, the Reds do not look good so far. The Yankees I think have lost some close-ish games but nope, they and the Royals legit have the two worst fun differentials in the American League so maybe they're just not very good. I keep having to say that it's still early because it is. The top of the standings are maybe more indicative - the Brewers are 7-4? The Cubs have the best record in the NL? April 15: Soo.... correct me if I'm wrong but this does not look like the actual 1974 Topps. It's in the master baseball cards template file and I'm gonna stick with it because it does look very, very 1970s... The very first AL Player of the Week award goes to the White Sox' Josh Wade (.600, 1, 8). The 30 year old Wade terrorized opposing pitchers to the tune of 13 hits in 19 at-bats, a homerun, 4 runs scored, and 7 RBIs. Even though it doesn't show me having made a card for him in the past, I'm seeing that Wade wonthis award once in the past in the week ending June 22, 1970 (maybe I hadn't been showing cards yet? I think I did that from the get-go though). In any case, Wade had an awesome big week. Good for him! In the NL, the award winner and wooow Miami Vice star apparently was Atlanta Braves 1B Peter Frampton (.419, 3, 8), who hit .455 (10-22) with 3 HRs, 9 runs scored, and 7 RBIs. Frampton's only a second year guy in this league and so this is his very first - but surely not his last - Player of the Week award. April 17: In today's game at Veteran's Stadium, Cardinals 1B Lorenzo Martinez (.304, 5, 10) became the 2nd player in major league history to hit 500 homeruns. Unfortunately for his team, neither #500 - a 2-run blast in the top of the 1st - nor his 2nd homer of the night were enough to take down the Phillies, who rallied late to win this one 6-3. "Lorenzo's been a real thorn in our side all these years" said Phillies bench coach Romain Reni. "I'm glad we got past him but man I'd love to, you know, not give up homers." Martinez has a .274 career average with 1,708 hits, 1,313 RBIs, and now 501 HRs. April 20: Hey hey hey another big hitting streak, this time by the Mets' Barry "The Ritz" Cooper (.367, 0, 5). The Ritz was 2-5 with a double and 2 runs scored in a 4-3 loss to the Pirates. Cooper has hit in all 11 Mets games this year plus the last 9 of last season. "I'd have liked it more if we won the game", said Cooper after the game, "but I'm a million dollar trooper". April 21: Ah, theeeeeeere's the 1970s Sunday baseball I know and love: everyone's playing and there are 14 games in all including double-headers between the Yankees and Orioles and the Padres and (terrible) Reds (2-10 right now!). I'm not saying I miss double-headers; it seems like a lot of baseball to watch in one day and I'm a baseball fan. I'm just saying, it's an interesting wrinkle to throw into the mix. I have rotations set to 4 man even though the game defaults to 5 man and Sundays are a big part of why - I still have a lot of teams running out 5 man rotations anyway and days like this I'll have to use emergency starters on a lot of teams with 4 man rotations. Both the O's and Yankees, for example, though, weren't expected to be very good this year and so came out riding with 4 man starting staffs (staves?). As such, boom, no emergency starter required. I still expect them to have to push their starters to not blow up their respective bullpens (that's a thing the game seems to love to do, by the way, murder the pen in Game 1). April 21: Are the Brewers actually kind of good? They completed a 2 game sweep of the defending world champion Detroit Tigers in Detroit with an 11-1 rout. Newly acquired ace SP Andy Ring (1-1, 3.38) threw a 7-hit complete game and a surprising Brewers lineup knocked Tigers SP Martin Buchan (2-1, 2.00, and that ERA looks low only because 5 of the runs he allowed today were unearned). Singing 2B Lionel Richie (.289, 2, 12) led the way with 3 hits in 4 at-bats, including a 2-run HR off of mop-up man Chris McGranahan (0-0, 11.57), a double, and 4 RBIs in total. "I like to think that when it comes to our team," Richie said after the game, "we are the world." The win, at least for now, puts the Brewers in a virtual tie with the Tigers atop the AL East. April 21: In other weirdly good early-season news, the Cubs doubled up the Phillies at the Vet today, 6-3, to take a game and a half lead over the Mets in the NL East. Yeah, it's super duper early, but Chicago should be spurred on by the excellent performance of new SP Mick Fleetwood (2-0, 2.78), who struck out nine batters in 6.2 innings before giving way to the Cubs' bullpen. Chicago's hitters KO'd Chris Olivares (0-2, 5.18), who was 19-4 last year, after 5 innings, with 1B Antonio Lopez (.283, 3, 9) belting a 3 run HR in the effort. "They were using a lot of backups today," said Cubs bench coach Sal Sifontes, never one to puff his team up too much, after the game. "I'm glad Mick could get it going tonight though. He's gonna make me eat my words about how rock and roll men can never become effective pitchers in this league."
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03-23-2026, 10:02 AM
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#342 | |
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Bat Boy
Join Date: Mar 2026
Posts: 1
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It sounds like you’ve hit that classic sim-gamer’s dilemma where the prep work is almost as addictive—and exhausting—as the actual gameplay. There’s a real charm to that 1970s era, but trying to be the league's lead historian and commissioner at the same time is often a one-way ticket to burnout city. Honestly, leaning into the chaos of those high TCR and injury settings might be exactly what keeps this save alive; it lets the league tell its own story while you just keep the wheels on the track. If The Baseball Timeline is calling, maybe just use it for occasional flavor rather than making it a manual for a second job. Sometimes the most fun dynasties are the ones where you stop worrying about the "perfect" archive and just enjoy watching a random 4-man rotation workhorse carry a team to a fluke pennant. |
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04-07-2026, 11:02 AM
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#343 | ||
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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Anyway, thanks for the feedback!
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04-07-2026, 11:05 AM
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#344 | |
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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April 29 - May 5, 1974
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AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Milwaukee Brewers 12 9 .571 - New York Yankees 14 13 .519 1.0 Detroit Tigers 12 12 .500 1.5 Boston Red Sox 13 13 .500 1.5 Cleveland Guardians 12 13 .480 2.0 Baltimore Orioles 10 13 .435 3.0 West W L PCT GB Minnesota Twins 16 7 .696 - Chicago White Sox 13 10 .565 3.0 California Angels 14 12 .538 3.5 Oakland Athletics 11 14 .440 6.0 Texas Rangers 10 15 .400 7.0 Kansas City Royals 9 15 .375 7.5 Code:
NATIONAL LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Pittsburgh Pirates 15 7 .682 - New York Mets 14 11 .560 2.5 Chicago Cubs 12 10 .545 3.0 St. Louis Cardinals 14 12 .538 3.0 Montreal Expos 10 10 .500 4.0 Philadelphia Phillies 11 14 .440 5.5 West W L PCT GB Atlanta Braves 17 10 .630 - San Francisco Giants 15 12 .556 2.0 San Diego Padres 15 13 .536 2.5 Los Angeles Dodgers 12 15 .444 5.0 Houston Astros 10 18 .357 7.5 Cincinnati Reds 5 18 .217 10.0 1 Jason Bushon - NYM .385 2 Bob McAdoo SF .381 3 Danny Seligman SF .380 4 Brian Maccioli CHW .379 5 Jesper Christensen PIT .378 LEAGUE LEADERS HR 1 Ernesto Garcia - NYY 9 2 Lorenzo Martinez STL 8 2 Mauricio Mendez CLE 8 4 Mike Galeana STL 7 4 Justin Lawson PIT 7 LEAGUE LEADERS RBI 1 Robin Gibb - LAD 23 2 Paul McCartney SD 22 3 Brandon Anderson NYY 21 3 Lionel Richie MIL 21 5 6 tied with 20 LEAGUE LEADERS W 1 Rich Reese - CHW 6 2 Ergot Newman MIN 5 2 Roger Quintana STL 5 4 Fernando Apolonio LAD 4 4 13 more tied with 4 LEAGUE LEADERS ERA 1 Juan Merino - MIL 1.11 2 Santos Arango PIT 1.80 3 Michael Pesco BOS 1.81 4 Roger Quintana STL 1.91 5 Paz Lemus PIT 1.93 LEAGUE LEADERS K 1 Roger Quintana - STL 50 2 Mario Garcia STL 43 3 Colin Rose ATL 41 4 Vince Bachler PHI 34 4 2 more tied with 34 Things are starting to sort themselves out, maybe, although man these standings still look craaaaaazy. The Tigers at .500? The Phillies in last place? The Twins leading the AL in wins and winning percentage? It's wild, man. Getting some of those league leaders in here too, you can at least see how the Pirates are on top of the NL East - yep, it's pitching! Who could have guessed? Also, crazily, the Bucs have yet to steal a single base in this, the era of the steal. They're 11th in the NL in runs scored but 1st in ERA. Pat Lemus is on pace for 103 games pitched and 171.2 IP. He won't keep up that pace, I'm sure, but he's the closest to Mike Marshall that I've got so far I think. Now onto the daily stuff... April 29: Monday meets us with some baaaaaad injury news. First of all in Chicago, White Sox 2B Juan "Cat" Perez (.237, 4, 11), acquired from the Cubs to shore up second base, will miss the rest of the year with a bad concussion. So, this is awkward... his replacement is the guy Perez replaced in the lineup, Chance Hopka (.267, 0, 2), who's... fine, just not an electric player the way Perez is. April 29: Before I get to the next injury... there are rumblings in the Mets clubhouse about SP Trevon Dean (2-0, 3.28). As one of the better pitchers on the roster it seems like he's gotten a big head about it. Rumors are that that's part of what chased him out of Atlanta... well, his clubhouse lawyer-ism and his inability to avoid the longball. The Mets had no official comment about this, although bench coach David Cerrato is reportedly not on the good side of several players for his handling of the situation including C Jason Bushon, 3B Mark Hamill, and RP Larry Hilbert. April 29: That other bad injury happened to Pirates SP DJ "Old Money" Cheeves (2-1, 2.82), who was expected to elevate his game with the loss of Jeremy Battaglia to the American League. Instead, 4 games in Cheeves tore his labrum and will miss the rest of the season. The Bucs had been sort of riding along with a 5 man rotation to open the year anyway given that they weren't considered strong contenders, so now adjusting for it is as simple as swapping down to 4 men. April 29: After the big two hits today it barely seems like bad news for the Red Sox that CF Jon Glynn (.269, 0, 2) was placed on the 21-day DL today with a strained back. Goodwill Zwelthini (.238, 0, 2) will take over the bulk of the CF duties while he's gone with organizational soldier Dean Perkins (.364, 1, 2) getting his first-ever major league time served as his backup (Perkins is already 25 so Dean Perkins he is). April 29: Cleveland's surge his year so far is a little bittersweet given the "Friday Night Massacre" where they lost OF Brandon Anderson (.329, 4, 17) to the Yankees. Well, news got even better for the Bronx Bombers because Anderson won the AL Player of the Week for the first time in his career. Anderson was, let's just say, very good: 10-15, 2 HRs, 7 runs, and 6 RBIs. "I miss my friends," said Anderson, "and I miss my adopted home town, but it is what it is, I guess." Anderson only spent a year and change in Cleveland, being traded from the Phillies in the offseason of 1972 in a trade involving OF Nelson Vargas (.257, 1, 10 with TEX). April 29: The NL guy of the week is another "old dog", 33 year old Pirates RF Justin Lawson (.280, 6, 13). Lawson, the #3 hitter in a surprisingly decent Pirates offense to date, went 9-21 (.429) for the week ending the 28th with 3 of his 6 HRs (2nd in the NL to St. Louis's Lorenzo Martines (.297, 8, 17)) and 6 of his 13 RBIs. This is Lawson's 5th PotW but his first in almost 4 years: he last won the award in the week ending May 11, 1970. April 29: A quick peek at the ol' power rankings: Teams (Total Points, Tendency): 1) Atlanta Braves (129.8, o) 2) Pittsburgh Pirates (129.1, ++) 3) Minnesota Twins (123.1, ++) 4) Chicago White Sox (117.0, +) 5) St. Louis Cardinals (115.8, ++) 6) Cleveland Guardians (113.2, ++) 7) New York Yankees (108.1, ++) 8) Milwaukee Brewers (106.3, --) 9) Boston Red Sox (100.0, +) 10) San Francisco Giants (98.1, ++) 11) San Diego Padres (97.0, -) 12) Baltimore Orioles (94.0, +) 13) Los Angeles Dodgers (93.3, --) 14) New York Mets (92.7, --) 15) Detroit Tigers (87.0, --) 16) Montreal Expos (85.1, ++) 17) Chicago Cubs (83.0, --) 18) Philadelphia Phillies (80.0, ++) 19) Oakland Athletics (69.8, --) 20) Texas Rangers (66.0, --) 21) California Angels (65.0, --) 22) Houston Astros (46.2, -) 23) Kansas City Royals (41.0, o) 24) Cincinnati Reds (29.0, o) It's really too early to talk about hippies and yuppies but there's been some big movement. I guess the Pirates are the big upward movers - okay, fine, yuppies - while the Angels rode a 1-1 split to the Orioles and then a sweep at Cleveland to be the big old dirty hippies this week. April 29: In an early week battle of... I don't want to say 2 unstoppable forces but two teams who are both waaaaaay overplaying, the Twins beat the Guardians 6-5 thanks to a walkoff dinger by CF Ronnie Hellstrom (.362, 4, 16). This was Hellstrom's 2nd ding-dong of the day; he'd previously knocked one into the cheap seats off of Guards starter Randy Nixon (1-2, 4.39) to give his team a 5-4 lead, only to have that surrendered by closer Eddie "Electric Avenue" Grant (1-1, 2.70, 4 Sv), who also picked up the vultured victory today. "During the day I swat soccer balls away from the goal," said the Swedish Hellstrom. "During the night I swat baseballs away from the plate." April 30: Rough morning for the Yankees, as they lost both CF Norm Hodge (.236, 1, 4) and DH Ernesto Garcia (.228, 9, 16) for three weeks apiece. It could have been worse, I guess. Hodge is a 9 time Gold Glover in his first season in New York and Garcia is, well, the self proclaimed homerun king. This does give the Yankees the opportunity to promote 1B/DH Jamil Mahuad (.303, 1, 4 at AAA Syracuse this year) to fill in for Garcia in particular instead of the struggling Edwin Manchego (.167, 1, 4). Brandon Anderson already slid over into center for Hodge with Phil Hartman (.208, 1, 8) and Lorenzo Escobedo (.226, 1, 5) getting their platoon in right field back, at least for now. April 30: The Angels traded OF Paul Stewart (.000, 0, 0) to the Royals for CF Prince Charles (.500, 0, 0). Neither of these guys have played much at all this year. The prince should compete with CF Jaco Pastorius (.226, 1, 5) for the job in center; they were stuck using Fernando Ceballos (.200, 0, 0), he of the .001 isolated walks in 1973. Stewart is quite a bit older than Charles but a much, much better hitter, although on KC he seems like a purely backup corner OFer and pinch-hitter. April 30: Cardinals SP Mario Garcia (3-3, 3.67) has had an up and down start to his season in 1974, allowing 4 or more runs in his first 3 starts. Today was an "up" day: he just missed becoming the 3rd Cardinal and first since 1967 to record 13 strikeouts in a game in a convincing 3-0 shutout of the Braves. Hey, it was at Busch Stadium, but with 12 Ks the Braves wouldn't have been doing anything in any park. Garcia did face some drama in the top of the 7th when he walked CF TC Boyle (.203, 0, 7) to drunken up the sacks with one out but two easy fly outs to C Gianluigi Farinelli (.266, 4, 18) and PH Ace Frehley (.154, 0, 4), in for Atlanta SP Ernesto Carillo (2-2, 2.94) got him all the way out of the inning. Garcia was frustrated this offseason by an unsuccessful attempt to increase his velocity but you wouldn't know it by tonight: his heater was occasionally hitting 97 on the gun. "The hitters, they can't hit what they can't see," said the imposing right-hander, who has 43 strikeouts in 41.2 innings pitched (an absolutely insane ratio for 1974), after the game. April 30: I didn't cover this while it happened but the Yankees won a pretty normal, ho-hum 5-3 game at their temporary home in Shea Stadium vs the A's, 5-3. What isn't so ho-hum is that this was the Yankees' 7th straight victory. With 2 key members of their lineup out this team seems to be on cruise control. Tonight Henning Mankell (2-0, 2.94) threw probably his worst game of the year - 6 innings, 3 earned runs on 5 hits, 3 walks, and 6 Ks - before giving way to Wally Vlahos, who threw two scoreless innings to be the pitcher of record when new A's closer Jesse Kelly (0-1, 2.25, 2 Sv) blew his first save of the season in the 9th. 3B Tiptoe Tommy Weiss (.250, 3, 16) hit a 3 run shot to transform this L into a W in that frame. "We don't have a lot of quit in us," said Weiss after the game. "I'm a Yankee at heart and that's who we are." May 1: It's time to award some Players of the Month for April! First, the rookies... the early contender for NL Rookie of the Month is 2B Jesper Christensen (.361, 2, 5). The Pirates dumped both halves of their long-running double play duo in Tyler Webster and Henry Villar over the offseason and at second base at least it's been like "Tyler who?". Was it just a good month for Christensen, who hit a pretty pedestrian .253/10/40 at AAA Wichita last year, or did he take a real uptick in his quality of play? Okay, the answer is probably the latter but if he hits in the .250s with double-digit power he's already an upgrade over Webster, who I remember as being a lifetime .226 hitter. The AL Rookie of the Month was Tigers SP Martin Buchan (3-1, 2.00). You don't usually see the reigning champs having to start a 25 year old rookie in the rotation but the Tigers got tired of Edgar Molina and liked the return on "5th man" Juan Merino (they really ran a 4 man rotation last year and Merino, who was 13-1 in 1972, barely played in the majors last season) so Buchan got the nod. And while the Tigers did not exactly have an April to remember, finishing 9-10 and tied for last in the AL East, Buchan has been pretty solid: 4 starts, 3 wins, 16 Ks in 27 IPs. His role is to get the team into the 7th and give the offense a chance to win. The NL Pitcher of the Month is Cardinals' SP Roger "Senor Smoke" Quintana (4-2, 1.27). When you do name a guy with 2 losses as the PotM? When he's a shutdown guy like Quintana, that's when. Quintana has allowed 0 or 1 runs in 5 of his 6 1974 starts, the 4th being a technical QS with 6 IPs and 3 ERs in a 5-2 loss to the Mets. Quintana is somehow only the 2nd best strikeout man on his team with Mario Garcia being a K beast but he's still preeeeeeeeetty good on his own. This is the 26 year old Quintana's first PotM award - he really only made the transition from good pitcher to ace last year - but probably won't be his last. Your American League Potcher of the Month is Chicago SP Rich Reese (6-1, 4.30). Um. I guess the writers decided to overlook ERA this month. Reese did win 6 games for the Chisox so that's nice. He's also given up 5 runs 4 times in 7 starts this season, so... he won the award based on his offense bailing him out a lot? He's gotten a decent if not amazing number of Ks (30 in 44 IP) but he always struggles with walks so I don't think I can just call the runs allowed bad sequencing / luck. I guess it shows up as a line drive in the books, right? Anyway, this is Reese's first major league PotM although he also won the award twice in the PCL. Finally, the Players of the Month. First up, I feel like the NL choice is pretty obvious, at least to me: Braves 1B Peter Frampton (.360, 4, 15). With teammate Henry Riggs battling injuries and a little slump all month, Frampton has really stepped up as Atlanta's big middle of the order guy. He's no longer in the top 3 in RBIs and isn't chasing .400 but I mean what he's doing is pretty damn solid. The 24 year old Frampton only came up midway through last season so needless to say this is his first PotM award, although he did win it twice in the minor leagues, both in 1971 in the Western Carolinas League (where he also won the MVP with a .300/12/52 year in only 377 at-bats) and in the International League with Richmond in 1972. In the AL, Cleveland's lost 3 of their best players in recent weeks but one guy they didn't lose was 2B Mauricio Mendez (.333, 7, 13), who rode a crazy uncharacteristic power surge to his first ever Batter of the Month. How wild were the 7 HRs? Mendez, who is now in his 7th season in the major leagues, has a career high of 12. Yeah, he has the rep of being a beltin' keystoner but we're talking middle infielder power, not 2nd in the AL in homeruns power. There's a great chance that this will be like half or more of Mendez's season ending total so enjoy it while it lasts, Guardians fans. May 1: Make that 8 in a row for the Yankees, who beat the A's 6-3 to pull off the little midweek 2 game sweep. This one was a done deal by the 5th when the Yankees scored 3 runs off Oakland starter Rick Shelton (2-3, 4.55) thanks largely to a 2 RBI single by 2B Geoffrey Rush (.330, 0, 9). Dylan Hamilton (1-2, 2,.41) picked up his first win in a Yankees uniform as well as in 1974 overall with 7 innings of getting out of jams: he gave up 13 hits and left with no outs in the 8th, then lucked out when RF Phil Hartman (.220, 1, 9) threw out A's catcher Texas Josh Lewis (.312, 2, 8) at home to end the inning. The Yankees are now 14-10 and in a virtual tie with the Brewers for the AL East lead pending Milwaukee's game today. They get Thursday off and then travel to Kansas City for a 3 game weekend series; the Yanks just beat them in a 2-gamer last week and, well, KC is struggling so this should continue..,. May 1: Whoops, make that division the sole property of the Yankees. Texas beat Milwaukee 6-2 at Arlington Stadium behind 3B Bobby Ramirez (.384, 2, 6), who had the 5th 5-hit game in franchise history and the first since they moved to Texas last year (the last one was by Ian Everett in 1970). Ramirez had 4 singles, a double, 2 runs, and an RBI for Texas, who knocked Brewers starter Andy "Lizard" Ring (1-3, 5.34) out of the game in the 5th. This was the second straight start where Ring, formerly the ace of the Angels' pitching staff, failed to go at least 6 innings - he was also KO'ed in 3+ innings by the Twins on April 26. Milwaukee is now 10-8 and, thanks to the weirdness that comes from them playing 18 games to New York's 24, a full game out of first place where they were in a virtual tie coming into today. May 1: What started as a terrible April just keeps on going for the Reds and for their closer Brian Yates (1-3, 9.75). Yates came in the 8th inning inheriting a 5-5 tie from starter Tracy Larazabal (0-0, 6.23) and reliever Pete Lynn (0-0, 0.69) and gave up a run to put himself in place to lose. Then the Pirates brought in their ace Paz "Sparky" Lemus (1-0, 2.45, 6 Sv) to finish up but after he struck out the side in the 8th he allowed a run on 3 straight singles in the 9th to tie it back up and presumably send the game into extra innings. But wait! Yates returned in the 9th and gave up it all on an RBI single to LF Jerry Sherk (.239, 2, 11) to end it. "I haven't gotten to see him much," said Sherk at the end of the game, "but I think I see him pretty well." Jerry Sherk is 1-2 lifetime against the Reds' closer, who finished the month of April with a 9.58 ERA. He also gave up 17 runs in 16.2 IP in spring training so, um... maybe it's time for a change? I tend to hold off on big moves until the 20-loss point but the Reds at 4-16 are fast approaching that point. May 1: Following another tough loss, 4-3 to the Giants, Phillies 3B Bobby Kraljevic (.242, 1, 11) exchanged some hard words with a fan at Candlestick Park. There is allegedly tape of this and it's not great, guys. "I've got nothing to say about this matter," said bench coach Romain Reni, who's been with the team since 1969 and is, per accounts, struggling to keep the clubhouse together for the struggling last place team that was projected to win 100 games and walk away with the NL East this year. May 3: The Guardians selected CF Russ Deuser (.100, 0, 0) off of waivers from the Padres. Deuser realy really isn't much but with Brandon Anderson now a member of the Yankees this team was completely bereft in center. Deuser replaces 31 year old Corey Harpst, who had 3 at-bats this year and hasn't been a major part of this roster since 1971. May 3: The Yankees traded a 23 year old SP TBNL (3-2, 2.60 at AAA Syracuse) to the Phillies for RP Victor Marin (1-1, 1.64, 2 Sv). This was, for NY, a necessary move following liquidating a lot of their relief staff in the trade to get Brandon Anderson. Marin is 33 years old and probably on the decline but he's a good pitcher right now and that's what the Yankees need. The PTBNL is someone I almost don't want to see come up before they're 25 because they have a cool name. May 3: If you're going to end an 8 game winning streak, do it in... "style", right? The Royals broke open a 2-2 tie in the bottom of the 5th with 7 runs off of starter John Carpenter (1-3, 3.64) and reliever Manny Carbajal (0-0, 6.17) and cruised to an 11-5 victory over the Bombers. 1B Christopher Durang (.371, 2, 9), who's gonna write him some funny ass plays in the future, was the man of the match with a 3-5, 2 run, 2 RBI game that included a solo shot off of Carpenter in the 3rd. SP Howard Rollins (2-1, 2.65) had a less than great game with 4 runs allowed on 8 hits over 7 IP but hey, that's why they call him Mr. Tibbs... ? In some less than great news for KC on an otherwise great day, LF Tony Danza (.318, 0, 8) left with an undisclosed leg injuries after running the bases. May 3: Are the Brewers, and for that matter SP Juan Merino (4-1, 1.11) for real? Today the 2nd place Chicago White Sox came into town and they were completely shut down by the former Tigers hurler. Merino surrendered 4 hits in a complete game shutout, already his 2nd of the season, and the Brew Crew KO'd Sox starter and April Pitcher of the Month Rich Reese (6-2, 4.76) in the 6th to cruise to an easy 7-0 win. LF Steve Winwood (.260, 4, 15) cranked his 4th HR of the year and RF Jun Kim (.318, 1, 12) had 3 hits in 5 at-bats to lead this team. We've seen this team retool the past couple seasons, too, but nothing seemed as organized as this one... May 4: The Twins traded P Pete Eason (0-1, 4.05) to the Yankees for a 23 year old RP TBNL (0-1, 2.45 at AAA Syracuse) and cash. Eason just returned from a spring training injury and at 34 is surplus to the team's plans, good record right now or not. They get moneys for him plus a kid who the scouts think could become a spot starter for them. Hooray? May 4: I pushed MY DAD (2-2, 2.53) up to start for the Expos today because he's playing well but also because today is his 26th birthday. To do so I had to take him away from his BRAND NEW BABY BOY (why is this all in caps???) who was just born 3 days ago but he really paid it off, outdueling Giants ace Justin Matthews (1-5, 6.05) to a 3-2 complete game win. DAD gave up 7 hits tonight but no walks, which is a bit crazy because he actually has not walked a single batter all year now. 0 walks, 33 Ks; I'm pretty sure that's the best K/W ratio ever. May 5: Josh Damon (.400, 0, 0) isn't happy with his new role with the Rangers and this time around I can't blame him. He was a starter last year, not, like, a good one but he was adequate and so far this season he's barely played. To make matters worse the Rangers have also stumbled out of the gate at 10-13. Blame trading away Geoffrey Rush but I can get the ire here. I've also been using former Tigers star Danny Villegas (.202, 6, 15) at DH and he's been hitting HRs and little else... actually. He's been crap but you know what's been crapper? The entire 1B situation. Villegas will get injured playing the field but hey for 6 games until that happens we have this solved! I am not a fan of Damon playing DH - he was .264/8/43 and roughly league average in 435 at-bats - but he's arguably one of the top 9 hitters on the team so... there's that at least. Jon Hernandez (.146, 2, 8) and Roberto Hernandez (.150, 0, 0) have both been amazingly terrible so Damon's right, a change needed to be made. May 5: Padres OF Ian Everett (.500, 0, 1) is also unhappy with his playing time as well as San Diego's inability to get separated from the pack (they're 14-12 now, on a 2 game winning streak). Here though I just don't see a case for him in this crowded outfield. Here I think I'm just going to remain inactive: the Pads should get better, which should solve some of this, there's no place to put Everett, but at the same time he's the only guy on the roster who can reasonably back up Dr. Phil McGraw. May 5: The Yankees purchased minor league IF Jonathan Odom (.294, 1, 1 at AAA Omaha) from the Royals. Hey! More purchasing of guys instead of giving up players for the Yankees. Here they do have a backup in Dustin Clark but mostly I don't trust that Jonathan Banks will be able to stay there forever. May 5: Now HERE is a Sunday I've come to expect: 16 games, so 4 double-headers. TEX-BOS, CLE-OAK, SF-MON, and SD-NYM. This is why you can do default 4 man rotations and still have teams not have guys with 48 starts or whatever. May 5: These Milwaukee Brewers have turned into an offensive powerhouse in just one season! Tonight they were losing to White Sox SP Chris Messina (2-2, 3.57) 4-1 in the 8th inning but DH James Hong (.376, 5, 16) blasted a 3 run homerun to tie it all up. That's where it stood at the end of regulation, and then in the bottom of the 10th Hong's fellow second baseman Lionel Richie (.337, 4, 21) belted a 2 run HR of his own to win it. Andy Ring (1-3, 5.45) threw a very meh 6 innings - 7 Ks but 4 ER - and RP John Landis (1-0, 3.00) threw 3.2 IP in relief to secure his first major league victory (he played in the majors last year but was just 0-2). The Brewers lead the AL in runs scored with 121 and are hitting .295(!) with 20 HRs in 21 games (which is only 6th in the AL and probably a sign I need to recalibrate but still). It wasn't that long ago - 1972 in fact - that it was looking like this same team might set a major league record for offensive futility. They wound up scoring 478 runs that year, which juuuuuuuuust put them out of the worst 3 of all time (the 1966 Senators, the 3rd worst team, scored 466). May 5: Game 2 of the Guardians/A's double-header was a real comedy of errors... literally. I don't think literally. But there were *6* errors in this game, including the game-loser, and oh boy was it ugly. The game was tied 7-7 going into the 7th after both starters, Cleveland's Claudio Rainieri (0-0, 11.12) in his first appearance in 1974, and Philip Trapasso (1-2, 5.19). At that the A's looked like they might cruise in this one before Guardians 2B Mauricio Mendez (.330, 8, 18) cracked a grand salami and his *8th* HR of the year to momentarily put Cleveland into a 7-5 lead. So in the top of the 8th, A's setup man Willis Chavez (0-1, 7.59) walked in to try to protect the tie - closer Jesse Kelly (1-2, 4.91, 2 Sv) had just gotten himself a vultured victory in the day game when he gave up a 4-1 lead and then was the moundsman of record when C Texas Josh Lewis (.297, 3, 10) hit a game-winning 2 run HR in the bottom of the 9th - and he suuuuuuuucked, surrendering two walks and a hit batsman to the first two batters. Sometimes guys get out of jams. This was not one of those times. The Guardians wound up scoring 4 times in the inning to give themselves a really solid 11-7 lead. Note that I did not say insurmountable. The A's got a run back in the 8th but going into the 9th they were facing a 3-run deficit and closer Bruno Kirby (2-3, 2.79, 4 Sv) on the mound. He delivered a flyout from the first batter and then had to leave with hand soreness. Hey, no problem; Gabriel Covarrubias (0-4, 3.12, 3 Sv) had handled closer duties for the Yankees when their own guy was out... right? He allowed a single to backup C Ramiro Gonzalez (.222, 1, 2), then 1B Ray Hawkinson (.333, 1, 5) reached first on a muffed ground ball by Guardians 3B Mitt Romney (.300, 0, 2), playing just his 2nd game of the season at the position. Then the flood gates opened. From this point on, all A's batters save one - 3B Sean Gabel (.215, 0, 10) got on base without an out, and finally with the score knotted up at 11 apiece, SS Bob Iger (.250, 5, 13) was unable to field a hard grounder right at him. Everyone was safe and boom, the game ended 12-11. UGLY. I guess this is how Cleveland falls apart but oh man... if there was ever a single game that makes you think "ugh, the sliders aren't where they're supposed to be", this was it. May 5: On my very last game this week... Phillies SP Richard "Ringo Starr" Starkey (4-3, 2.51) went from having the best game of his life to one of the worst. Pitching a perfect game through 6.1 innings, Starkey felt something pop in his elbow and had to leave the game immediately. The very next batter reached on an error by SS Henry Villar (.295, 1, 3), ending the chance at the team perfecto, and then the very *next* guy, C Gary McCord (.340, 5, 16) stroked a no-doubt-about-it double off the Veterans' Stadium wall to break up the no-no. At the end of the day the Phillies did win 6-2 but Starkey looks to miss the next month and a half of the year with the same elbow issues that made him miss the last month of the year in 1972.
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04-15-2026, 11:50 AM
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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May 6-12, 1974
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AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Detroit Tigers 16 13 .552 - Milwaukee Brewers 14 12 .538 .5 New York Yankees 18 17 .514 1.0 Cleveland Guardians 15 15 .500 1.5 Boston Red Sox 15 16 .484 2.0 Baltimore Orioles 13 15 .464 2.5 West W L PCT GB Minnesota Twins 19 8 .704 - California Angels 17 16 .515 5.0 Texas Rangers 16 16 .500 5.5 Chicago White Sox 13 15 .464 6.5 Kansas City Royals 12 18 .400 8.5 Oakland Athletics 12 19 .387 9.0 Code:
NATIONAL LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Pittsburgh Pirates 17 11 .607 - Chicago Cubs 15 12 .556 1.5 St. Louis Cardinals 16 14 .533 2.0 Montreal Expos 12 11 .522 2.5 New York Mets 16 15 .516 2.5 Philadelphia Phillies 13 18 .419 5.5 West W L PCT GB Atlanta Braves 20 13 .606 - San Diego Padres 21 14 .600 - San Francisco Giants 19 15 .559 1.5 Houston Astros 15 20 .429 6.0 Los Angeles Dodgers 13 19 .406 6.5 Cincinnati Reds 7 22 .241 11.0 But holy crap, what's going right with the Twins right now!? They've given up the fewest runs in the AL, although some of that is from only playing in 27 games so far. They do have top 5 ERAs for starters (3.92, 5th) and relievers (3.10, 2nd), which is nice. That's in spite of having the 3rd fewest Ks in all of baseball. The defense has been really, really holding up so far... their #1 defender by ZR is LF Jose Villasenor (.265, 1, 10) with 9.4 runs saved above average already. He is absolutely not that kind of defender though so again I ask: hoooow? And the NL East is just craaazy. I keep waiting for the Phillies to turn it around but they keep dropping games. They did win 2 out of 3 vs the Pirates over the weekend, but that's coming off of a 3 game sweep at the hands of the Padres in Philadelphia. They've had a weird bit of struggle to score runs so far. C Nikolai Volkoff (.136, 0, 6) is the most obvious culprit but come on, the man's hitting 8th every night, he's not THAT big of a deal. LF Alberto Juantorena (.254, 3, 15) isn't hitting at the MVP level of 1973 and overall the team just plain hasn't hit for power, being dead last in the NL so far in HRs with 16. I feel like I'm giving short shrift to Pittsburgh here. They're Pittsburghing it up as they always do: 12th in the NL in runs scored, a very meh .251 average (8th), but even without Jeremy Battaglia they're 3rd in starters' ERA (3.52) and they've been leaning extra-heavily on Paz "Sparky" Lemus (2-0, 2.05, 9 Sv) once they do get a lead. 2B Jesper Christensen (.323, 2, 10) still looks like a contender for Rookie of the Year so that's nice. May 5 (evening): The league power rankings because hey IT IS TIME TO NAME SOME DIRTY HIPPIES Code:
Rank Team Points W-L PCT AVG ERA Pyt.Rec Diff 1st (3rd) Minnesota 133 + 16-7 .696 .273 3.89 14-9 2 2nd (2nd) Pittsburgh 128 o 15-7 .682 .263 3.00 13-9 2 3rd (1st) Atlanta 114 - 17-10 .630 .261 2.95 17-10 0 4th (21st) California 107 ++ 14-12 .538 .258 3.27 14-12 0 5th (8th) Milwaukee 104 ++ 12-9 .571 .295 3.86 13-8 -1 6th (10th) San Francisco 103 ++ 15-12 .556 .272 3.49 13-14 2 7th (5th) St. Louis 102 - 14-12 .538 .248 3.34 13-13 1 8th (14th) New York 102 ++ 14-11 .560 .252 4.08 13-12 1 9th (4th) Chicago 101 -- 13-10 .565 .273 3.65 12-11 1 10th (11th) San Diego 97 + 15-13 .536 .264 3.32 17-11 -2 11th (17th) Chicago 97 ++ 12-10 .545 .271 3.91 12-10 0 12th (7th) New York 94 -- 14-13 .519 .270 4.31 12-15 2 13th (16th) Montreal 93 ++ 10-10 .500 .251 3.64 10-10 0 14th (9th) Boston 90 -- 13-13 .500 .263 3.47 11-15 2 15th (15th) Detroit 86 o 12-12 .500 .274 3.91 11-13 1 16th (6th) Cleveland 83 -- 12-13 .480 .270 4.14 13-12 -1 17th (18th) Philadelphia 81 + 11-14 .440 .245 3.89 12-13 -1 18th (19th) Oakland 80 + 11-14 .440 .264 4.05 12-13 -1 19th (12th) Baltimore 73 -- 10-13 .435 .257 4.07 11-12 -1 20th (13th) Los Angeles 72 -- 12-15 .444 .254 4.46 11-16 1 21st (23rd) Kansas City 71 + 9-15 .375 .276 5.12 11-13 -2 22nd (20th) Texas 66 - 10-15 .400 .258 3.51 11-14 -1 23rd (22nd) Houston 59 - 10-18 .357 .259 3.77 12-16 -2 24th (24th) Cincinnati 34 o 5-18 .217 .227 5.58 7-16 -2 The stinky dirty hippies this week have to be the Guardians, who sold off large chunks of their team and finally saw the chickens come home to roost on that. They got swept in a 2 game series vs the Twins and then lost 3 out of 4 to lowly Oakland... well. I guess the A's are a little less lowly than Cleveland will be in a couple weeks. Really the worst of all teams by far are Houston and Cincy but we don't award hippies of the week to bad teams, we award them to teams who fell off in the power rankings. May 6: When the Red Sox traded for DH/OF Matt Williams (.284, 2, 9), they did so knowign he's injury prone but also hoping that a move to designated hitter would help cut down on that. He tore his hamstring sliding into 2nd base yesterday and now he's going to miss the next 2 months. The 35 year old has played exactly two full seasons in his career in his age 22 and 23 seasons. He's missed substantial time pretty much every single season since and the last time he even got into 100 games was 1967. May 6: And on today's episode of "guys who need reality therapy"... Royals C Mike Perez (.286, 0, 2), who hit .186 last year as the Royals' starter, is unhappy at backing up a Rule V pick in Johnny Becton (.295, 1, 7) as well as being on a last place team. To be honest Perez has a better case than you'd think; Becton is really, really bad at catching, has 3 passed balls already this year, and has yet to throw out a single runner. I think I will push Perez back into the starter's role but I'll still mix Becton in pretty heavily, not because I think he'll, like, learn the tools of ignorance but because Perez is pitcher level bad at hitting. May 6: I'm all but positive I haven't called this number before... but journeyman OF Mike Schurke (.394, 1, 5), currently with the Cubs, won the NL Player of the Week award with an 11-21 (.524) performance with a homer, 5 runs, and 6 RBIs. Okay... maybe he's not such a journeyman. I think I'm thinking of Zachery Hadley. Schurke's played only with the A's and Cubs and he's been with Chicago since the middle of the 1971 season. In any case, this is in fact Schurke's first PotW in both the major and the minor leagues. His only other award, in fact, was winning the rookie league Silver Slugger for CF in 1966 (.307, 0, 38). That was... a long time ago but Schurke was only 18 at the time so he's still only 26. This feels like "flukey great hitting week" but hey, there could be more, presumably. Tigers 2B Joey Ramone (.312, 2, 17) was in a bit of a slump going into this week. Well... he went 15-26 (.577) with a HR and 4 RBIs to not only bust out of the funk but also earn the Player of the Week award. Too bad his team could only tread water at 3-3 during that time but hey, that's a performance. The 25 year old Ramone won his 2nd PotW, the other one coming the week ending August 6, 1973. He's also made 2 All-Star Games and won the Gold Glove at 2nd in 1972. May 6: I think the latest tweaks are properly in place and as if to show that this is the case I got a good old OOTP Special today: the Guardians and Angels were heading into the bottom of the 9th with a 5-3 for Cleveland and then Angels DH Ken Hitchcock (.310, 2, 5) belted a 2 run homerun to tie it. And that's where the score stayed... until the *18th* inning, when fiiiiiinally Angels long man Ignacio Visco (0-1, 5.23) got tired, walked the bases loaded, gave up a hit, and gave the ball up to Montay Luiso (2-1, 0.94) already having given up the go-ahead run. Luiso allowed 3 more runs, all charged to Visco, to score, and then the Angels got back and juuuuuuuust about tied it back up before Guardians RP Alfredo Contreras (2-3, 5.75) was able to shut the door on a 9-8 game. Games like this are where to be honest I'm not that unhappy about the ghost runner rule. May 7: The Yankees traded 1B/DH Edwin Manchego (.167, 1, 4) to the Rangers for RP Nate Kemp (0-0, 11.57) and cash. This is all about the Yankees still working to build up that bullpen that got kind of ravaged in the Brandon Anderson deal. Manchego just plain hasn't been playing and at this point he's behind Jamil Mahuad (.250, 1, 3) in the depth chart at first. Nate Kemp's been pretty bad but in very few innings and he had a 2.35 ERA as a lefty specialist for the Rangers last year. May 9: Astros OF Chris Tyree (.143, 0, 0) is a big ball of complainy about his role / the Astros' terrible start. Here too I'm in a spot where I don't blame him exactly and yet... what can I do? This guy can't be expecting more than a part-time role. It's true that 38 year old Justin Jensen (.143, 0, 2) is unbelievably awful so far. He had a nice comeback year last year but stories are for, um, novels, not BASEBALL what am I even saying. Anyway, let's do this... I'm gonna mostly satisfy young Larry Robinson (.323, 0, 5) by taking Jensen out of RF and putting him and Tyree in a platoon situation there. Is this the end of the line for Jensen? May 9: 12,633 Rangers fans collectively gulped when 3B Bobby "Ghost Runner" Ramirez (.371, 2, 9) left the game after complaining of an unknown upper body injury in tonight's 2-0 win over the Royals. Yeah, Texas did get the W (thanks to one solid start by Chad "Dog" Daugherty (5-2, 1.95), who picked up his 2nd shutout of the year) but if Ramirez, who finished 2nd in the AL in hitting last year, misses significant time, the season may be over for the 13-15 Rangers. May 9: I normally wait for the 20 loss marks to make changes like these but this is bothering me too much... Mets 1B Jim "Garfield" Davis (.115, 2, 8) had a pretty OK season last year with 25 HRs in 348 at-bats and also a .384 on-base percentage. He's doing absolutely nothing this year and I think it's time to send the now 28 year old down to AAA to work on his swing. The immediate impact here is 3B/old man Vicente Luna (.295, 2, 11) can move to 1st base; he'd made 6 errors with a .920 FA at third this year, with Mark Hamill (.268, 1, 4) taking over the hot corner. Mostly though this is about seeing if Davis can figure things out while trying to make 1st base work with a team who's surprisingly in contention in the NL East (15-12, 2 games behind PIT). May 9: Yankees 3B "Tiptoe" Tommy Weiss (.281, 4, 21) got off to a bad start this year but now he's hit in his 20th consecutive game. Weiss went 2-4 today in a 10-5 win at Boston to get it to the ol' 20 mark. When this streak started on April 18, Weiss was hitting .118. He's, um, much better now, even as I mess around with his position - the 35 year old has been splitting time with 3B Jaak Joala (.351, 0, 3) and playing first base when he's not duking it out at 3rd. May 9: And speaking of teams whose seasons are over... the Astros suffered a 5-4 loss today at the hands of the Pirates and what's worse they lost CF George Foreman (.333, 3, 12) for the next 5 weeks with a strained shoulder he suffered slamming against the Astrodome wall on a homerun-stealing catch. Looks like OF Larry Robinson (.286, 0, 6) is the new CF and RF Justin Jensen (.143, 0, 2) has a new lease on life. May 10: So... good-ish news for Bobby Ramirez: he only strained a ribcage muscle, an injury which has minimal impact on hitting and running (not throwing, which would have taken him right out of 3rd). It's still rough because man, so much of his ability is locked in the hitting. Still, the Rangers don't really have a choice... he's back in the lineup. May 10: Cubs CF Curtis Hope (.227, 2, 5) is only 28 and is convinced his starting career isn't over yet, no matter what happened last season (a pretty disastrous year where the Mets gave up on him as a starter and then traded him to Texas after he hit .190). The issue here is that the Cubs have Ed O'Neill (.280, 0, 7) out there now and he's just fine. Like, the corners aren't amazing but they also aren't so bad that I'm considering Hope in there. Even when Hope made his 2 All-Star appearances he did so with a looooooot of strikeouts and I just don't think he's a good enough power hitter to make up for that anymore. Best I can do is start mixing him in in right with Mike Schurke (.350, 1, 5), who did hit .293 last year, albeit with no power, and in place of Nuno Lucero (.150, 0, 3), who could probably get more PT in the minor leagues... May 10: In what I can only call an ugly ass game, Orioles C Frank Abagnale (.348, 3, 18) set a new AL record with 6 runs scored in a 17-9 game(!) where 12 of the 23 runs scored were unearned thanks to 8(!!!) errors. I swear, I've been *lowering* error rates since my first recalibration but here we are, I guess... anyway, Abagnale did go 4-6 and got on in the 9th on one of those 5 errors by the Guardians, and then came around to score to set the new American League mark. The former mark of 5 was set by a lot of guys, most recently Royals 3B JP Carter (.277, 4, 13 this year) on April 24 of last year. CF Efrain Morales set the same record of 6 for the Reds in 1959 in the NL. May 11: The Astros purchased minor league OF Carlos Montoya (.327, 1, 11 at AA Arkansas) and minor league 1B Jamie Kelso (.242, 2, 13). Like... maybe these guys might get a cup of coffee eventually, I guess. This is more or less just a little tiny minor league move (both players IRL had very short cups of coffee) in advance of my Astros review... May 11: Somehow - in fact, because they lost to the team - the Astros fell to 20 losses before the Reds. This team has had a winning record every year since 1969 but it looks like the good run of it is kind of over. The pitching, in spite of the Astrodome, is baaaad and the offense doesn't look good enough to make up for it (because that would be very, very hard). So, just generally with the pitching staff... it's not so much that I want to "stand pat" but the real badness is coming from places that ought to improve. Ernie Alvarez (1-3, 5.12) was a 17 game winner last year and Andres Castillo (1-5, 4.63) has been a solid pitcher with the Dodgers in recent years. I don't really want to dump either guy just yet. We did just move to a 5 man rotation to introduce Bae-hee Kim (1-2, 2.49) but he's been one of the best pitchers on the team so he won't go anywhere. Likewise, the bullpen has been... fine, in fact the Astros somehow lead the NL in bullpen ERA (2.17) so far. One place where we might help influence things is behind the plate. Latimer Roy (.282, 2, 12) has been doing a nice job of hitting but is a pretty meh defensive catcher whereas his backup Jonathan Hyde (.318, 0, 3) is much better. I'm going to make the miiiiild transition of dropping them into more of a half-and-half role, which means giving the right-handed batter Hyde all of the ABs vs LHPs and a bunch vs RHPs (Roy is a LHB). The infield is kind of all doing OK... Outfieldy, the recent loss of Big George Foreman (.333, 3, 12) both puts this team right smack in the "bad seat" and also kind of makes the 3 positions kind of set. Larry Robinson (.286, 0, 6) isn't a major league CF but he's a major league hitter at age 22 and he'll play there for now. He's bookended a lot of the time by Jason Workman (.237, 2, 9) and Justin Jensen (.136, 0, 2), who are both slumping in their own way and are also weeell over on the wrong side of 35. OF Terry Pavey (.213, 0, 4) is a Rule V pick who really should get PT whether he's actually good or not; I'll spell the 37 year old Workman a bit more for him. I was just about to bench Jensen and... man, he's been bad. I'll drop in Zach Hadley (.270, 0, 4), who's already played a fair amount as the team's 4th OF, into the mix there in right. I know I was already working Chris Tyree into things there but... Hadley's not exactly a spring chicekn either but he was pretty good last year. I haven't cut Jensen... yet but it's probably on its way. He's "helped" by the fact that their best prospect of a corner OF, Charles Frazier (.298, 2, 9 at AAA Denver) is himself out for the next month. May 11: In Montreal MY DAD (2-3, 3.23) finally allowed his first walk of the season, which really only makes his K/W ratio even gaudier: he had 1 BB vs 7 Ks and so he now has a 41:1 ratio(!). I'm pretty sure that would set a record. Unfortunately he also had some bad hit-luck (8 hits allowed) and worse sequencing luck (the Cards only left 5 men on base all game) and so gave up 5 runs in 7 IP and took the 6-4 L. The Cardinals' Mario Garcia (4-4, 3.88) got the win, aaaalmost lasting to a complete game before he faltered in the 9th and turned it over to Tom Brumfield (0-0, 1.42, 8 Sv) to close the door with runners on 1st and 2nd and 1 out in the bottom of the 9th. May 11: Remember how the Dodgers were off to a great start and looked like a team renewed or something? Well. With today's 3-1 loss to the Padres (now half a game out of first!) the Dodgers fell to 12-19 and in a virtual tie with the Astros (13-20) for 2nd to last in the division. The pitching has mostly been what's fallen apart; LA is currently last in the NL in starters' ERA with 5.38. Today though their SP Ken Hansen (1-3, 5.13) threw a quality start... well, one of those 6 IP, 3 ER QSes but it counts, right? But instead their hitters were stymied by Tim Anderlik (4-3, 3.96), who threw a 7 hitter in spite of only striking out 3 men. It's hard to be too critical, really, given that this is exactly where they were expected to be but whatever honeymoon was there, it's over now. May 12: Mets 2B Bill Heyen (.667, 0, 2) is getting cranky over playing time, which, to be fair, he has barely played. My main issue is that Mark Spitz (.290, 0, 8) has been going like gangbusters in that spot. For now I'll start mixing Heyen in but he wants to start and I'm not seeing how I can possibly accommodate that barring (further) injury. May 12: The Swamp Fox Kevin Landry (.250, 1, 7) also wants to start for the Reds at third base. On the one hand he's 41 so like come on... on the other, the Reds have been trying to make Chase Jones (.137, 1, 5) work there and... you can see the numbers. This time around, for once I'm going to do it... oh yeah, I'm looking at Cincy as a whole today anyway. We'll see if that sticks. May 12: So Cincinnati has been baaaaaaaaad this year, opening at 7-20. Their hitting sucks (3rd worst in runs scored, dead last in average (.232)), their pitching sucks (2nd most runs allowed in the league, league worst bullpen ERA (5.77)), and their fielders suck (worst ZR in the NL). Other than that... I kid. Starting with the rotation, 3 starts is too early to pull the plug on Tracy Mosher (1-2, 7.40), especially given that we're talking about a guy who was a 25 game winner just a few years ago. He's 35 now so it's not crazy if the end is coming but... is it? Other than him, the rotation is just a lot of "meh" that I don't think I want to trash just yet. In the bullpen though... Aaron Gebhart (0-1, 9.35) has just been trash. His LOB% is crazy low (49%) which indicates that this is mostly luck but what's the best case scenario here? He's a league average soon to be 30 year old reliever? I'll just call up a guy who apparently was briefly on the roster already: Kenny Ortega (0-1, 9.00), future character actor. He's also bad but is 24 and bad instead of 8 days away from 30 bad. The catching tandem of Leron Lee (.194, 0, 4) and Veit Beiler (.136, 0, 1) is not exactly filling me with joy but... they're getting better, I think. They're also kind of young, young enough that they both have names, so yeah, we're standing pat. Yeah, I'm just going to stick with Kevin Landry at 3rd most of the time (see above). Nick Weber (.125, 1, 1) but he's 27 and not even close to a prospect so it's not like Landry is stealing time away from someone. The game lists the literal only 3B prospect as a guy currently in rookie ball so... nothing on the horizon then unless a shortstop moves out of position (and we have 2 shortstops listed, Roberto Duran (.310, 4, 12), who's already in the pros, and a guy in AA) (incidentally the AAA Indianapolis Indians are 12-19 too so there's little help on the farm). There actually iiiiiiiiiiiis some help on the farm: Manny Trillo (.365, 3, 8 at Indianapolis) had a really meh rookie campaign last year but if his 21 games in AAA are any sign, he's taken a turn upwards. Frank Beard (.232, 3, 7) is still their best bet in CF (although the numbers say he has a negative ZR) but I can train Trillo in left field while still playing him every day. But do I? Their current guy there is RJ Dominguez (.265, 4, 21), who led the NL in walks last year and is actually kind of good. Okay FINE he will fill in everywhere. When a team is this bad, hey, everyone gets a turn! May 12: The Brewers salvaged a 4-game series with the Yankees today, avoiding a sweep with a 9-3 win at Shea, and in doing held Yankees CI Tommy Weiss (.285, 4, 24) hitless for the first time since mid-April. It was kind of not a rough day for Weiss, as he went 0-2 with 3 walks, but such is the fate of a man who walks as often as Tiptoe Tommy does (he led the entire AL in free passes last year with 118). "Hitting streak? What hitting streak?" asked Weiss, fakely, after the game. "I'm just sad we lost this game." The Yankees are a half-game behind Milwaukee for 2nd place in the division now, although the Tigers have passed them both and have a game today pending. May 12: White Sox long reliever Nick Colucci (0-1, 2.79) got a chance at a spot start today and made... well, I can't say the most, but a lot of it, pitching a complete game 6-hitter with 3 runs allowed. Unfortunately, his opponent, the Rangers' Amir Sudler (1-0, 1.77), who himself was only recently promoted to the starting rotation, tossed a 7 hit, 8 strikeout shutout to win it 3-0. The Sox stranded 10 runners today, 5 by LF Alice Cooper (.231, 6, 10); they got chance after chance but could never quite get that clutch base hit. This was Sudler's 2nd career shutout and his first since his rookie season all the way back in 1967. The former Angels prospect, at one point the #3 prospect in baseball, has floated around the league. Maybe he'll finally, at the age of 28, come through on all that potential? May 12: The Royals are also in a bad place and the bad place just got worse. RF Dave Corona (.210, 3, 8) had been struggling all year and he hurt himself on a throw home in an 8-4 loss to the Angels. He'll be out for the next 5 weeks. I'd love to figure out a way to get both 1B Dave Cowens (.306, 6, 17) and 1B Christopher Durang (.419, 2, 9) on the field at the same time but I'm just not seeing it so for now at least the career minor league vet Justin Hopkins (.333, 1, 2) will take over out there. May 12: As good as the Twins have been this year, they've been doing it without their longtime 1B Antonio Martinez (.299, 3, 25) just plain carrying them on his back. Today he had one of those games. He went 2 for 4 with 2 HRs and a sacrifice fly and drove in 7 runs in an easy 9-4 win over the A's at the Coliseum. The 7 ribbies tied the Twins' all-time record, including their time in Washington, and was the first time someone hit that mark since Aloha Dan Gilmet reached it in 1970. I checked and the current AL record is 9, held by two players (Tiptoe Tommy Weiss in 1968 and some guy named Mario Buelna in 1955). May 12: The Dodgers have come down to earth but you know who hasn't yet? The Giants. They swept a double-header today, 4-3 and 4-2, over the Braves to both win that series and keep their record at a tidy 19-15 on the year. Even though this series took place at the Launching Pad, the Giants' pitching held up, allowing 2, 4, 3, and 2 runs. Today's big guns were Oscar Amador (1-0, 1.00), coming in from AAA to make his first appearance of 1974, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1-1, 2.08), who got hurt in the 6th but has had an annoying lack of stamina that might push him into the bullpen anyway. San Francisco's sitting at 4th in the NL in both starters' and relievers' ERA (3.49 and 2.78 respectively) and is also 4th in all of baseball in that category. The hitting has also been pretty nice for an NL team: they're 3rd in runs scored (partially a function of having played a lot of games but still) with a league high average of .281 and the 3rd most steals with 22. The one thing they don't do is hit a lot of HRs (20th in the majors with 18) but that does fit their park fairly well this year. May 12: The Dodgers have been slumping and are facing the reigning division champs at San Diego. Their starter Rogelio Salinas (1-5, 6.11) has been struggling terribly so far. So... pretty obvious what's going to happen, right? Welcome to baseball! Salinas threw a complete game 4-hit shutout, striking out 8, and the Dodgers' bats came to life for an easy 8-0 victory. Padres starter Bronco Ben Feldhusen (2-3, 5.45), who's spent more time on the DL than off of it the past several seasons, just looked extremely hittable and got pulled in the 3rd. This one could have been even worse, as the Dodgers got 11 hits tonight but only one for extra bases (a double by 3B Robin Gibb (.283, 0, 23) in the 7th) and they left 10 men on base too.
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04-26-2026, 02:03 PM
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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May 13-19, 1974
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AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Cleveland Guardians 21 16 .568 - New York Yankees 23 18 .561 - Milwaukee Brewers 17 16 .515 2.0 Detroit Tigers 17 18 .486 3.0 Boston Red Sox 18 20 .474 3.5 Baltimore Orioles 15 20 .429 5.0 West W L PCT GB Minnesota Twins 23 10 .697 - California Angels 20 19 .513 6.0 Chicago White Sox 16 18 .471 7.5 Texas Rangers 17 21 .447 8.5 Kansas City Royals 16 21 .432 9.0 Oakland Athletics 16 22 .421 9.5 Code:
NATIONAL LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB St. Louis Cardinals 22 14 .611 - Pittsburgh Pirates 19 15 .559 2.0 Chicago Cubs 17 16 .515 3.5 Montreal Expos 15 15 .500 4.0 Philadelphia Phillies 18 19 .486 4.5 New York Mets 17 21 .447 6.0 West W L PCT GB San Diego Padres 26 17 .605 - Atlanta Braves 23 17 .575 1.5 San Francisco Giants 22 19 .537 3.0 Los Angeles Dodgers 18 21 .462 6.0 Houston Astros 18 24 .429 7.5 Cincinnati Reds 9 26 .257 13.0 The AL West is, crazily, owned by the Twins. Like I said before, it's all pitching and defense and by the raw numbers it seems legit... well, the fielding is ahead of itself and I can't see a team who's 11th in the league in Ks keeping this up but they really and truly are doing a job in the field with plus defenders at shortstop (Charles Bradley (.260, 2, 10)) and the outfield corners (LF Jose Villasenor (.263, 2, 14) and RF Gilles Villeneuve (.210, 3, 18)). CF Ronnie Hellstrom (.380, 6, 22) his looking like an early MVP candidate in his 3rd season in the league. The Cardinals went 6-0 this week to push themselves well on top of the NL East. Will they be able to hold off the Phillies when they eventually solve whatever issues they're having so far? Time will tell. They've been doing this for the most part without their stud 1B and cleanup hitter Lorenzo Martinez (.307, 8, 18), who hasn't played since May 5 thanks to blurred vision. Instead, they're riding the best pitching staff by ERA in all of baseball, lead by Senor Smoke Roger Quintana (6-4, 2.39) and lockdown closer Tom Brumfield (0-0, 1.12, 10 Sv). The offense hasn't even been that good so far - 3rd fewest runs in the NL so far in spite of leading the league and being tied for 2nd in all of baseball in HRs (36). And in the NL West the Padres rode a 5-3 week against the Braves and Giants to assert themselves to the top of the division. Here it's the offense that's finally starting to come together, although they swept the Giants in a doubleheader this weekend on the basis of pitching: 3-0 and 4-3. They've also been doing things without some key guys: 2B Paul McCartney (.188, 4, 27) has been playing every day but only very lately has started to come out of a season-long slump, and his double play partner Joe Wicker (.341, 4, 24) has been in and out of the lineup over the past week with an abdominal strain. In spite of this they've got 3 guys in the regular lineup hitting over .300 (Wicker, LF Jesse Lockhart (.318, 5, 14), and 3B Dale Earnhardt (.333, 5, 25)) with a 4th right on the cusp (CF Dr. Phil McGraw (.293, 3, 14)). There will suuuuuuurely be some turnover between now and October but hey, that's what baseball is all about! May 12 (evening): Power rankings! Code:
Rank Team W-L PCT AVG ERA Pyt.Rec Diff 1st (1st) Minnesota 134 o 19-8 .704 .265 3.74 17-10 2 2nd (10th) San Diego 113 ++ 21-14 .600 .263 3.31 22-13 -1 3rd (2nd) Pittsburgh 110 - 17-11 .607 .251 3.30 14-14 3 4th (11th) Chicago 107 ++ 15-12 .556 .273 3.97 15-12 0 5th (3rd) Atlanta 107 - 20-13 .606 .252 2.93 20-13 0 6th (6th) San Francisco 103 o 19-15 .559 .271 3.33 18-16 1 7th (15th) Detroit 102 ++ 16-13 .552 .284 3.82 16-13 0 8th (5th) Milwaukee 98 -- 14-12 .538 .291 4.01 16-10 -2 9th (22nd) Texas 97 ++ 16-16 .500 .262 3.36 15-17 1 10th (7th) St. Louis 97 -- 16-14 .533 .250 3.53 14-16 2 11th (13th) Montreal 95 + 12-11 .522 .258 3.73 12-11 0 12th (4th) California 94 -- 17-16 .515 .254 3.62 17-16 0 13th (12th) New York 90 - 18-17 .514 .272 4.59 16-19 2 14th (16th) Cleveland 89 + 15-15 .500 .274 3.94 15-15 0 15th (8th) New York 88 -- 16-15 .516 .254 4.19 15-16 1 16th (14th) Boston 86 - 15-16 .484 .267 3.71 13-18 2 17th (23rd) Houston 84 ++ 15-20 .429 .267 3.68 17-18 -2 18th (19th) Baltimore 81 + 13-15 .464 .262 4.15 14-14 -1 19th (21st) Kansas City 75 + 12-18 .400 .276 4.74 14-16 -2 20th (17th) Philadelphia 72 -- 13-18 .419 .247 3.75 15-16 -2 21st (9th) Chicago 72 -- 13-15 .464 .270 4.18 13-15 0 22nd (20th) Los Angeles 68 - 13-19 .406 .251 4.74 13-19 0 23rd (18th) Oakland 63 -- 12-19 .387 .268 4.13 13-18 -1 24th (24th) Cincinnati 36 o 7-22 .241 .231 5.21 10-19 - The DIRTY HIPPIE is cleeeeeearly the White Sox, who dropped from a top 10 team to 21st in these rankings last week. They went 0-5, with the aforementioned swept to the Tigers and then another 3 game sweep vs the Rangers, who battled them wire to wire last week. They've got a 2-game series coming up vs the Twins so, you know, good luck with that. May 13: White Sox RP Brian Bruno (1-0, 1.46, 1 Sv), who was an... interesting All Star choice last year with the Pirates (he finished 5-3, 4.33 and IIRC he was better but not like fantastic over the first half) is now mad because the Sox are struggling and he doesn't have a big enough role in the potential turnaround. Bruno's a career swingman so pushing him into the rotation isn't anything crazy. With Chicago sitting at 13-15 and the dirty hippies of the week (see above!)... yeah, why not, we'll drop into a 5 man rotation for now and push Bruno in there to give him yet another shot in a major league rotation. May 13: The first AL PotW seems like an inevitability and in fact I'm a little surprised this was his first such award this year: Mauricio Mendez (.359, 10, 25) has been a major component of why the Guardians haven't just fallen right apart after trading away key assets the past couple seasons, and last week he was major component-er. Mendez went 11-22 (.500) with 3 doubles, 2 HRs, 7 runs scored, and 7 RBIs. He even drew 4 walks and added in a couple steals in just 5 games. That's a lot of work! Mendez currently leads the AL in HRs and is tied for 2nd with sevearl players in RBIs. This is actually his first Player of the Week award, although you'll recall that he juuuuust won the AL Batter of the Month so, um, I was wrong, this isn't his first award this year. (not pictured because I already have a card for him this year) The NL also honored a vet that y'all have heard from many times before: Cubs 1B Antonio "Walrus Gunboat" Lopez (.330, 6, 22). Just when you thought he was tailing off after winning the same award on April 22, Lopez went 9-19 (.474) with 2 ding-dongs and 7 RBIs in 5 games to win his 2nd weekly award already this season. That gives him 9 for his career... and he's only 28. I seem to see first basemen in particular just fall off a cliff as they get into their 30s (see Boston's Mike Miller) so it's nice to see Lopez keep it up. He also passed the 1,000 hit plateau earlier this year and is 25 HRs away from 200 - we aren't quite in range of real milestones but we're starting to get close. May 13: In the pursuit of getting another baseball card, OOTP gave me a weeeeird weekly stat: relief Ks on the road. Like, what? Paz Lemus, PIT, 13 Darius Parchman, SD, 11 John Winn, ATL, 11 John Landis, MIL, 10 Doug Ellis, CHC, 9 Hey, it's an excuse to show Sparky Lemus I guess. May 13: The Brewers purchased RF Phil Hartman (.253, 2, 14) from the Yankees. Hartman's just started to turn it around this year but with CF Norm Hodge (.236, 1, 4) due to return next week the New York outfield is about to get super crammed. Hartman doesn't immediately have a spot to play in Milwaukee either but hey, this is how these things go: it's easier to trade a guy somewhere where he won't start than to just bench him on your own. (I wanted to note that the original object of this trade was Mike Hegan, who played for the Pilots and had a small part in the book Ball Four. JTIS) May 13: I got the craziest OOTP Special I think I've ever seen: a game tied 8-8 after regulation that stayed that way through 15, tied again at 9-9 after 16, tied *again* at 11-11 after 17, and then FINALLY ended in the 19th after a run in the top of the inning was overcome by a run in the bottom. I just... UGH. Real-life gametime was 6 hours, 43 minutes so IRL this definitely would have gotten cut off by the league curfew. Also, Dodgers won over the Astros. May 14: On a day when Angels OF John Belushi is back, Brewers SS Anatoly Karpov (.286, 1, 11) received word that he'll be out for 8 weeks with a strained hamstring. Man, I wish the game had more intimidating sounding injuries for the longer term ones. Anyway, this is kind of a massive hole in Milwaukee's lineup; Ian Reeder (.316, 0, 0) was the backup but he is the dictionary definition of a AAAA guy (he did start the whole year for the White Sox in 1971 so there is that). May 14: Yankees SP Manny Carbajal (2-0, 3.58) has had a rough time of it the last two seasons with a combined 17-26 record. I guess 2 years ago he was 11-16 in spite of a 2.63 ERA but last year he was just plain bad: 6-10, 4.92, and he'd moved into the bullpen by the end of the year, where he also began this season. Has he gotten his juice back? Carbajal made his 2nd start of the year today and threw a 7-hit shutout with 6 Ks and just one walk. Last year he'd been bedeviled by an inability to generate Ks - just 4.8/9 - so 6 of them was solid, especially against the Tigers. The Yankees took their own time scoring runs in this game, finally hitting rookie Martin Buchan (4-2, 3.19) for 3 in the bottom of the 8th, thanks in large part to 3B Jaak Joala (.314, 0, 5), who came on as an injury substitute for 1B Aitor de la Rosa (.171, 1, 8), cracking an RBI double to commence scoring. "I will take any runs I can get," said Carbajal after the game. "Just please score." May 14: Hey, heading into a midweek doubleheader even... the A's are not off to a good start at all. Just, everything is pretty humdrum this year: 4th worst scoring, 4th worst runs allowed. They're the first team in the AL to 20 losses. They had a bit of a nice run going after setting AL loss records in the late 60s but that run might be over. It's too early to just give the lineup over to unproven youngsters but, you know, it's sad and all that. There are a couple guys doing well in the rotation and 2 guys who are not. We're just not at a point where I want to demote the suckos although frankly Philip Trapasso (1-3, 5.22), who is starting today, is close. He was a lefty specialist last year and maybe that's his ceiling. The bullpen has been kind of terrible so far but again I don't think it's time to make moves: Jesse Kelly (1-2, 4.58, 3 Sv) and setup man Willis Chavez (0-2, 6.14) were really good last year... really, everyone should be better than they are. ZR isn't even that bad on this team (it's not good; 8th in the AL) so just bad luck I guess. DH/OF Tommy Pron's (.239, 0, 7) been playing hurt all year and it's one of those annoying nagging injuries too. I've been playing him through it but he's also been struggling terribly at the plate. I think we should probably drop him to the bench until he's 100%. That gives me the excuse to start both Alex Canales (.283, 1, 9) and Ray Hawkinson (.302, 1, 7), the team's two first basemen, at least for now. OF Viv Richards (.316, 2, 11) should really, really play more often and the Pron injury means he can get in and play full time since he was already starting vs RHPs. The AI keeps trying to bat him 3rd which is a sign. OF Frederick Sumaye (.125, 0, 2) is another guy the AI keeps trying to bat in the middle of the order whenever he's placed into the lineup but he's not exactly hiting at that level right now so I'll just keep him mixing in vs LHPs mostly. I'm seeing 3 OF prospects in the minors in addition to Richards and Sumaye so if this ship really does stall, we might see some turnover out there... May 14: Phillies SP Danny Plaunt (2-4, 4.26) was really hot and cold last year: he threw 5 shutouts in 35 starts (13-10 overall with a 3.62 ERA) but also had 13 games where he failed to throw a quality start. This year has been more of the same. Plaunt's averaging barely 6 IP a start so far but on the other hand over his last 2 games he's finished them both, allowing 1 earned run combined over the two. Today he shut out the Expos 8-0 to drop his ERA down from 7.45 as of May 6 to 4.26. "Sometimes he's a bit too nice for his own good," said bench coach Romani Reni after the game. "Tonight he had that good tenacity. We'll laugh about it over a beer." May 14: Sometimes a Battle of the Crap is still a good matchup. Today's game between the Astros and Dodgers saw their two aces Tony Rivera (4-6, 3.24) and Fernando Apolonio (5-1, 3.06) go down to a 1-0 pitchers' duel in favor of the City of Angels. Apolonio scattered 7 hits in spite of only 2 Ks and 1B Joshua Waltenbery (.254, 3, 11) drove in 2B Danny Fager (.264, 6, 15) to score the only run in this contest. LA improves to 4-7 on the month including 3 straight wins. May 15: Another day, another 1-0 pitching duel! This one went between the Cardinals' Alec Cosby (4-2, 2.91), who truth be told has got some real stamina issues, and the Mets' David Bowie (1-2, 4.58). Cosby emerged the winner after 142(!) pitches (he won't be available for a while), 8 Ks, and just 4 hits allowed. Bowie only allowed 4 hits himself but one of them was an RBI single by 3B Mike Galeana (.200, 9, 24) in the 4th inning. The Cardinals lowkey (or highkey?) have got a really good pitching staff this year: 1st in the NL in starters ERA (3.29) and 3rd in bullpen ERA (3.57). There's no question why they're only a game back in the NL East. May 16: The Braves (re)purchased RP Omar Sanchez (1-1, 3.94) from the A's. Sanchez's month in the AL was... fine (1-0, 3.75 in 12 IP) but Atlanta needed him more. I figured I'd completely forget who was involved in this deal but by putting that in my head I was sure to remember it. Anxiety! May 16: The Kansas City Royals got themselves swept in a road doubleheader at Oakland to lose that series and also drop to 20 losses (13-20). This was hoped to be the year this team finally had enough pitching to make that offense work but it just hasn't worked out that way. KC's still doing well hitting-wise: 4th in baseball in runs scored, the 2nd best batting average in the majors too (.281), and even 29 HRs (tied for 6th most in MLB)... but the pitching, oh boy. Only one team in baseball - the lowly Reds (5.04) - have a worse ERA than KC's 4.77. I think we're still in "let's wait and see" mode but man there are some bad, bad performances so far... Like, first and foremost, do I do anything with Tom Bertan (0-3, 8.14)? He was one of the best pitchers for KC down the stretch last year (4-1, 3.57 following his being signed after his release from Milwaukee) but he seems like he's back to his bad ways again. Looking at the peripherals he's not *that* bad, although he's allowed a loooooooooot of HRs 10 in 42 IP). I think I am going to go ahead and demote him to the bullpen - for now - in favor of 28 year old minor league vet Carlos Hernandez (2-0, 2.77), who's got the stamina to start and has been... fine in relief so far. Steve Tidwell (1-4, 6.94) has also been bad and I'm not a big fan of some of those peripherals, like only 13 Ks in 35 IP so far, but I don't want to turn over 40% of the rotation so I'll let it go for now. He's on a tight leash though. Chris Regan (0-0, 5.51) was awful last year as a starter (7-17, 5.54) and now he's awful as a reliever. He's also really unhappy, which is to be expected given how bad he's been I guess. Why is he still here again? I'm going to go ahead and grant him his release - he's 33 so his career might be done - and calling up P Michael Brecker (3-1, 2.10 at AAA Omaha) to fill that spot. Brecker wasn't great in 7 September appearances last year (3-1, 5.03) but he's been flashing in the minors this year and he can be a guy we drop into the rotation if Tidwell can't turn it around or someone gets injured. C Johnny Becton (.329, 2, 11) has been bad across the board and I can now see why he was left unprotected in the Rule V draft. That still doesn't mean I want Mike Perez (.258, 1, 5) taking that job over. Perez, frankly, isn't that great of a fielder anymore either at age 35 and I am not fooled by that average over 31 at-bats to date. He will play a bigger role but that's as far as I'm going to take it. As awesome as 1B Christopher Durang (.400, 3, 11) has been, 1B Dave Cowens (.309, 7, 21) needs to play more or less full time. They'd been platooning previously but now less so. This kind of reminds me of that real-life Blue Jays situation where they had to decide between Fred McGriff and Cecil Fielder. They chose the Crime Dog of course but Fielder was pretty good himself. Well, Christopher Durang, author of some funny and thought provoking plays, you are Cecil Fielder I guess. Last year 2B James Ellroy (.228, 1, 22) hit .264 and seemed like a future fixture in this lineup. Now he's hitting in the .220s and there are grumblings about his defense. There are a couple guys on the farm to maybe bring up in the 2nd half if this doesn't improve, including intriguing SS William H Macy (.279, 5, 11 at AAA Omaha) but for now Ellroy will stay in there. One side effect of losing Dave Corona (.210, 3, 8) for the next month is that it's meant OF Carlos Hernandez (.285, 2, 18) has played in RF with Keith Carradine (.300, 0, 3 at AAA Omaha) taking his cuts in center. Hernandez has been a solid CF in the past but he's 32 and is losing range. We'll need to revisit this in 4ish weeks but hopefully Carradine hits well enough to make this a tough decision. May 16: Um, so see above... Steve Tidwell (2-4, 5.52) earned himself at least a small reprieve from the doghouse with a 1-0 shutout win over the Rangers and Billy Crystal (2-4, 2.92). Kansas City has been hoping for production from Tidwell, who went a combined 12-9, 4.25 with the Cardinals and Yankees last year with pretty OK peripherals (149 Ks and 83 walks in 226.1 IP). He's been, from the numbers, a little unlucky this year. Today was a reversal of that: Tidwell allowed just 3 Rangers hits in spite of picking up just 1 K. Crystal was pretty great himself with 7 hits allowed and just the one run that came on a single from DH Tony Danza (.326, 2, 19), who's been staying out of the field for the most part while he nurses a strained quad. This was game 1 of a 4 game over-the-weekend series. May 17: Philadelphia got 125 games out of CF Bryant Tarala (.193, 3, 4) last year and that was... an awful lot. They're not going to get that much play from him this year, as the 32 year old was diagnosed with a torn quad that will keep him out of action for the next 2 months. "He's a real fan favorite from the way he's always running into walls and so on," said bench coach Romain Reni. "I'd personally love it if he ran into walls a little bit less often." May 17: We always knew that KC had this in them and DH/OF Alonso Rivera (.317, 3, 25) too. Today's 11-5 thrashing of the Rangers featured the Royals picking up 23(!) hits in 47 at-bats, including 6 by Rivera, which tied the AL record. Tony Danza (.333, 3, 21) added another 3 himself in this one that was pretty much never in doubt from the point that Kansas City dropped 3 runs in the bottom of the 2nd off of starter Mike Larsen (3-3, 4.14). For the Royals, SP Alex Izquierdo (3-4, 3.16) got himself out of a bad jam in the 9th that was only partly self-inflicted, leaving runners on at 2nd and 3rd following 2 runs scored - 1 earned - in the inning. "I'm not gonna say I didn't get support before," said Izquierdo after the game, "but it's nice to get support." The last time an ALer collected 6 hits in a game was Ray Herring with Cleveland on August 24, 1968 (so before I took over the save, hey!). May 17: Twins DH Aloha Dan Gilmet's (.288, 0, 7) best days are behind him but the 36 year old showed he still has some magic in his bat tonight. He drove in the game-winning runner with a pinch single in the bottom of the 9th off of fellow oldste Montay Luiso (2-2, 1.12) of the Angels. 2B Massimo D'Alema (.292, 0, 0), getting a rare start tonight over Tyler Webster (.245, 3, 13) scampered home from 2nd on a single to right and juuuust beat the throw from Jared Ferrell (.304, 6, 16). The win puts Minnesota at 21-9. Just... how? This is baseball, folks. May 17: Reds SP Tracy Mosher (2-3, 5.55) is a guy who looks like he spent his arm in a monster 1970 season (25-12, 2.67) but the former Yankees stud sure looked like he still had something left tonight. Granted, he was pitching on guile and subterfuge all game, and granted squared that he was playing the Astros in the Astrodome, but he threw a 7-hit shutout with just 1 walk and lots and lots of pop-ups and took home a 2-0 win. Mosher has 189 wins lifetime so it's maaaaaaybe possible he can get up to 200 this year. The active career leader in wins right now is actually an Astro himself, Andres Castillo (3-5, 4.65), who was traded away from the Dodgers this year. Castillo is 205-177 for his career, so Mosher is a distant 2nd (and unfortunately the way OOTP handles the 60s, I think any 300-game winner will be a product of the current decade). May 17: Sooo much mediocrity in the AL so far... the Rangers are the latest AL West club to drop its 20th game and they're doing it the way they did in the past: good pitching (best starters' ERA (3.52)) and terrible offense (2nd worst in runs scored in the AL, dead last in average (.252)). Here, too, the bullpen has been really bad so that's something new. This was a team who won 91 games and were 2 games away from the playoffs so... it's disappointing. The starting pitching, as noted, has mostly been good enough. Where it's been a little off, it hasn't been nearly so bad that you'd want to think about replacement. The one thing I do see is that the rotation had moved to a 5 man out of the 4 man and I'm going to go back to 4 in the hopes we can kick-start things. P Amir Sudler (1-0, 1.77) is the odd man out. Really it's Joey Kramer (0-0, 10.80), who got himself one game to prove himself before he got sent back down. It's cool! You'll be back up, I'm sure! C/1B Jon Hernandez (.182, 2, 8) has barely played catcher the past few years because he's not very good at the position anymore. A poor start to the year plus just the need to shuffle guys around has meant he's now the backup backstop so, you know, good luck and stuff. Meanwhile the starter John Bonham (.290, 0, 9) is hitting a veeeery empty .290 and he hasn't even been hitting singles lately... so Hernandez will get some backdoor starts since he's a left-handed hitter. I'm meanwhile just about to cut CI Roberto Hernandez (.130, 0, 0) outright. He did got .269/14/81 last year but even that came with a .284 OBP. I'm soooo close... it's just, you know, inertia at this point. I'd already dropped starting SS German Ybarra (.206, 0, 9) into a timeshare with last year's guy Michael Luna (.450, 0, 4). Ybarra is slightly better at fielding than Luna but they aren't that far apart, not so far that you'd use a replacement level hitter over a guy who's got a hot bat. On the other hand, Luna hit .230 and .224 the previous 2 years. LF Nelson Vargas (.276, 1, 17) looks very meh for an American League corner outfielder but everyone else who could play there seems just plain bad. Well, OF/DH Josh Damon (.302, 0, 2) has been OK but he's a 33 year old who hit .259, .261, and .264 in the past 3 seasons as a starter with the Braves and then Rangers. There are a couple of guys (as yet unnamed) who are looking pretty good in AAA who I'll have no problems calling up if this team continues to struggle. They're both corner OFers so I guess I can't expect tooooo much but that's a thing that exists at least. May 17: The Phillies continue to struggle, falling to 16-19 today with a 3-2 loss to the Pirates, but 2B Tony Shannon (.376, 3, 22) at least is doing his part. He went 2 for 4 today to push his hitting streak to 20 games, the 3rd longest streak in the NL this year and 5th longest on the season (including the ones that started last year). The streak has so far raised Shannon's average almost 100 points and the former batting crown contender - Shannon finished 2nd in average in 1971 - is now 3rd in the league, just 10 points behind San Francisco's Bob McAdoo (.383, 3, 25). May 18: Shocker of all shockers, Cubs RF Alex Vallejo (.300, 2, 12) is going to miss a bunch of time, this time 6 weeks with a strained PCL in his knee. Vallejo was one of Chicago's best hitters when he was available but of course this is Alex Vallejo we're talking about so he wasn't available that much. See you in July, Alex. May 18: Speaking of Chicago, Southsider 3B Brain Maccioli (.328, 2, 17) will also miss a couple weeks with a herniated disc in his back. Some of these injuries, I swear... this one isn't extensive enough to stick him on the DL so we'll just see a platoon situation between utility IF Yukio Hatohama (.200, 0, 2), who's barely played this year, and IF Chris Morgan (.000, 0, 0), who also hasn't played much - I guess all of this comes down to the infield otherwise being pretty healthy for the White Sox so far. May 19: Ahhhh, the 1970s are in full swing: a full NINETEEN games happening today. Can't wait to see those 31 game Julys... May 19: The Red Sox at least expected themselves to be in contention for the AL East title. That's not happening, even with the Tigers struggling a bit out of the gate, and it's all on the offense. Call this team Texas Rangers East because maaaan, they are dead last in runs scored in the AL and 3rd worst including the non-DH league (that includes a .260 BA (11th in the AL and 17th overall) and just 18 HRs (also 11th in the AL and 22nd overall)). The pitching has been better, although not nearly good enough to make this team look like they deserve to be out of the cellar. So far Mike Stuckey (1-7, 7.29) has been all kinds of terrible. Clearly a lot of that's bad luck although the new advanced stats don't paint a super pretty picture of his xERA either (4.44). His normally solid control dipped last year and he's only gotten some of that back, and he's on pace to allow 27 HRs in Fenway Park. I'm still going to keep him in the rotation because look, this guy's a career 101 game winner and 1968 wins champ (with just 18 - OOTP come on), but I'm going to start keeping a close eye on him. The bullpen's had the best ERA in the league. I've been running a two-headed closer situation and so far Jake Duckett (1-2, 2.76, 4 Sv) has clearly outplayed newcomer Travis Livingston (1-1, 5.62, 6 Sv), but this is overall not part of the problem. With C Jeremy Dolak (.312, 1, 7) out with back spasms for another day and backup Joel Moise (.146, 1, 6), formerly of the Tigers, slumping terribly, I'd love for there to be another option on the farm but there is not. Moise will have to do. 1B Mike Miller (.209, 1, 7) took a turn for the worse the last couple years, going from MVP candidate to .260s hitter with middling power, and looks like he might have taken another negative turn. This is more of a "oh yeah I'll need to find a replacement next year" situation though, not anything close to a "we need to replace him now" situation. Miller got his 1,000th hit with Boston last last year and is 6th all-time in Red Sox WAR. We can't just toss him out because he and the team are doing poorly. 2B Bert "Be Home" Blyleven (.250, 2, 15) is no longer hitting super great but he's a really awesome defensive 2B and the guys who'd replace him: Brian Long (.217, 0, 4) and Mike Runfola (.333, 1, 3) have their own issues. I'm talking myself into not doing anything with this team a lot... it's the plague of a ballclub that's falling off I guess. CF Jon Glynn (.269, 0, 2) literally just came off the DL today to take CF back over. The issue here is, that's one of the few positions where we've gotten decent offensive contribution, as Goodwill Zwelithini (.282, 0, 4) hit... okay, that's an empty average but still. Glynn does have almost half the team's steals (5 out of 13) in spite of missing about half the season so far so there's that at least. May 19: Baseball is a freaking weird game sometimes. The Guardians have pretty well dismantled their roster the past 2+ seasons and the Tigers conversely have won 90+ games in each of the past 3 years. So... what do you think happened with these guys? Yeah, of course, the Guardians finished up a 4-game sweep of the defending champs with a 1-0 duel where Claudio Rainieri (1-0, 4.30) came out on top of Chris Benavides (4-5, 3.17). The only run of the game came in from CF Luis Delgado's (.253, 2, 15) sacrifice fly that brought pinch-runner Bobby Kaplan (.257, 0, 11) home. Look for Detroit at the top of the hippie list next week. Cleveland, who finished the week 6-1, isn't just going to be on the yuppie list, they'll be on top of the AL East this week. May 19: A close loss to the Expos and the Mets (16-20) are in the cellar and the first 20 game loser in the NL East. This is just a generally meh team at this point. Remember when they were a contender? Yeah, they're not close. This team isn't anything special on offense or defense and some of the younger guys who were supposed to make a difference - particularly CF Lindsey Buckingham (.140, 0, 9) just plain aren't. These guys were never supposed to do much this year so they opened and will probably close with a 5 man rotation. None of the guys in there right now look downright bad enough to demote. The game thinks this bullpen is really bad and so far the stats back that up (11th in the league in bullpen ERA) but honestly these look like 4 solid vets led by Geoff Saus (0-2, 3.38, 7 Sv). Yeah, we'll hold off here until/unless this team completely falls apart. I don't think 1B/3B Vicente Luna (.265, 2, 15) does anything like what you want a first baseman to do enough to play and 3B Mark Hamill (.244, 1, 5) seemed to have reverted back to being the kind of guy you'd trade for a 38 year old corner infielder. Yeah, this whole team is a giant sack full of "meh". At shortstop I do think I'm going to do some changerinos... Bora Dugic (.198, 3. 16) was supposed to be a guy whom you lived with the iffy defense in exchange for some good pop (he was .267/17/57 at AAA Toledo in 1972). Now he's scratching the old Timonen Line and the team has an okay prospect who's off to a good start, 25 year old (juuuust missing the "name this guy" cutoff a lot this year) Corey McGee (.323, 3, 17 at AAA Tidewater). LF John W Henry (.247, 4, 11), an avid OOTPer in real life, is having a pretty bad sophomore slump following a .311/4/30 rookie campaign. He's not like "oh god replace him" bad (which is where Buckingham is at, frankly) but hey, why not mix lefty Bobby Turner (.333, 2, 7) into the mix a bit more? Buckingham took the CF job away from Kjell Isaakson (.243, 0, 1) in midyear last season and now I feel like I'm about to switch them back. Buckingham is still easily young enough that he can find what he was missing so far and I'm not like super enamored with Isaakson either, obviously, so for now what I'll do is enter them into a timeshare in center. May 19: It's taken the Padres a little bit to emerge in the NL West, and they still have a road to go here (8 games this week!) but their top of the line pitching is holding up at least. Stephen Tyler and Don Henley are a combined 14-3 to start the year following Henley's 3-0 shutout victory over the Giants in the first game of their double-header today. Henley did it with control, scattering 7 hits and 2 walks over 9 while striking out only 3 guys. His Ks have been down this year (4.2/9) but you can't argue with those results. 3B Dale Earnhardt (.329, 5, 24) scored 2 of the team's runs tonight; he's really stepped up throughout 2B Paul McCartney's (.181, 4, 25) season-long slump (Paul did have a multi-hit game today so maybe he's snapping out of it). OF Tom Petty (.229, 2, 11) cracked a solo HR in the 8th for the other score in this one.
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05-10-2026, 02:49 PM
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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May 20-26, 1974
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AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB New York Yankees 28 19 .596 - Detroit Tigers 22 20 .524 3.5 Cleveland Guardians 22 21 .512 4.0 Milwaukee Brewers 20 20 .500 4.5 Boston Red Sox 20 23 .465 6.0 Baltimore Orioles 18 24 .429 7.5 West W L PCT GB Minnesota Twins 28 11 .718 - California Angels 25 20 .556 6.0 Chicago White Sox 21 19 .525 7.5 Kansas City Royals 18 25 .419 12.0 Texas Rangers 18 26 .409 12.5 Oakland Athletics 16 28 .364 14.5 Code:
NATIONAL LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Montreal Expos 21 16 .568 - St. Louis Cardinals 23 19 .548 .5 Chicago Cubs 21 18 .538 1.0 Pittsburgh Pirates 21 19 .525 1.5 Philadelphia Phillies 22 22 .500 2.5 New York Mets 19 25 .432 5.5 West W L PCT GB San Francisco Giants 28 20 .583 - San Diego Padres 29 21 .580 - Atlanta Braves 25 20 .556 1.5 Houston Astros 21 26 .447 6.5 Los Angeles Dodgers 19 27 .413 8.0 Cincinnati Reds 13 29 .310 12.0 But the East... what? Who? The Montreal freaking Expos are on top. Granted, they're only 5 games over .500 and the distance between 1st and last is still less than a week's worth of games, but this is a team whose best-ever won-loss record is 70-86. The youth they've stocked up in the draft seems like it's starting to pay off and the addition of 1B Justin Stone (.293, 4, 13) has been big for the clubhouse even if injuries have prevented him from playing a huge amount. In the AL it's kind of tame by comparison. Okay, so the Twins were never supposed to be 28-11 at this point in time but they've been winning enough that we're almost used to it by now. The Yankees are "surprising" in that they finished 12 games off the pace last year but I guess a. they did win 88 games last year and b. money goes a long, long way. No team in baseball has scored more runs than the newly equipped Bronx Bombers (261); they're 2nd in the AL in batting (.286) behind only Milwaukee (.300) and also lead everyone in HRs with 48. All this without the services of DH Ernesto Garcia (.252, 13, 30) for 3 weeks. He's back now and man, Detroit might be sort of starting to turn it around and you can never count a team like that out but man, the Yankees look pretty, pretty good. May 19 (evening): Power rankings! Code:
Rank Team W-L PCT AVG ERA Pyt Diff 1st (1st) Minnesota 128 o 23-10 .697 .272 3.73 21-12 2 2nd (10th) St. Louis 123 ++ 22-14 .611 .251 3.14 19-17 3 3rd (2nd) San Diego 114 - 26-17 .605 .264 3.24 27-16 -1 4th (14th) Cleveland 111 ++ 21-16 .568 .276 3.50 20-17 1 5th (13th) New York 111 ++ 23-18 .561 .283 4.50 22-19 1 6th (5th) Atlanta 99 - 23-17 .575 .255 3.30 23-17 0 7th (3rd) Pittsburgh 97 -- 19-15 .559 .247 3.40 17-17 2 8th (6th) San Francisco 94 - 22-19 .537 .265 3.75 19-22 3 9th (20th) Philadelphia 93 ++ 18-19 .486 .258 3.60 19-18 -1 10th (12th) California 93 + 20-19 .513 .265 3.74 20-19 0 11th (11th) Montreal 91 o 15-15 .500 .260 3.92 14-16 1 12th (4th) Chicago 90 -- 17-16 .515 .265 3.76 18-15 -1 13th (22nd) Los Angeles 87 ++ 18-21 .462 .262 4.62 17-22 1 14th (8th) Milwaukee 87 -- 17-16 .515 .301 4.72 18-15 -1 15th (16th) Boston 85 + 18-20 .474 .265 3.67 17-21 1 16th (7th) Detroit 81 -- 17-18 .486 .271 3.70 18-17 -1 17th (17th) Houston 81 o 18-24 .429 .274 3.69 22-20 -4 18th (21st) Chicago 80 ++ 16-18 .471 .263 3.94 16-18 0 19th (19th) Kansas City 79 o 16-21 .432 .286 4.43 18-19 -2 20th (9th) Texas 77 -- 17-21 .447 .248 3.47 16-22 1 21st (23rd) Oakland 75 + 16-22 .421 .269 4.09 17-21 -1 22nd (18th) Baltimore 73 -- 15-20 .429 .260 4.52 16-19 -1 23rd (15th) New York 71 -- 17-21 .447 .247 4.02 17-21 0 24th (24th) Cincinnati 40 o 9-26 .257 .241 5.13 13-22 -4 Your DIRTY HIPPIE of the week though is Texas, who did the exact opposite of what Philadelphia did. The Rangers dropped a 2 game series to the Angels and then lost 3 out of 4 to the Royals. This was a chance to get back against a couple of sub-.500 teams (well, the Angels aren't sub-.500 anymore) and they crapped the bed. They've got a 3 game series vs the White Sox and then 3 gamvs against the Twins so it doesn't get any easier for these guys. The Mets fell 8 slots to win the silver hippie award. Well... I guess teeeeeeechnically the Tigers fell more spots. They had a bad, hippie week. May 20: I have a soft spot for sluggers but sometimes things are not going to work out this year. White Sox LF Alice Cooper (.212, 6, 10) is going to be out for the next month plus with an abdominal injury. They've got Mexican League vet Pedro Castrejon (.174, 4, 11) there to take his place so... hopefully they won't lose too much ground. May 20: The AL Player of the Week is a braaaaaaand new guy. In fact, the AI keeps trying to bat him 3rd in the lineup. Look, it's too early! But A's OF Viv Richards (.362, 5, 16) sure did his part to earn this award hitting from the 6 hole. He went 10-18 (.556) with 3 HRs, *8* runs scored, and 5 RBIs. A real monster week for a guy who's still trying to wedge himself into a crowded A's outfield and really has only been getting the at-bats he's had because of injures to Tommy Pron (.248, 0, 9) and Casey Satterfield (.278, 5, 16). May 20: And as these things go, to balance out the brand-new POTWness in the junior circuit, the senior circuit POTW is a proven vet: Phillies 2B Tony Shannon (.383, 4, 24), who went 14-26 last week (.538) with 2 HRs, 7 RBIs, and 11 runs scored. He almost singlehandedly pushed the Phillies into yuppie status this week and he really deserved this award. This is Shannon's 2nd ever POTW; he won his first the week ending June 14, 1970, his first season in Philadelphia. He also won Batter of the Month for July of 1971 and oh yeah, he's made the last 3 All-Star Games. He did move from short to 2nd this offseason but if anything the easier time in the field is re-opening his offensive game. May 21: For the Baltimore Orioles, I'm frankly a little surprised that they're only mediocre. This team doesn't really do much of anything to make you say wow, this is a team I can root for. The hitting is not great with the 2nd worst BA in the AL (.260) and the 3rd fewest HRs (19) and steals (19) to boot. The pitching is also bad; they've got the worst starting pitching in the AL by ERA (4.97) in spite, somehow, of being 4th in Ks (the "in spite" is because I very specifically remember this team being all finesse all the time last year). May is too early to completely pack it in and call up AAA guys but man I am tempted. The worst thing about the rotation is that most of the truly bad play has been from the top 2 guys: George Dapson (2-5, 6.70) and TJ Ziegler (3-0, 5.56). They might not be 1 and 2 in my head anymore but Dapson's a former 20 game winner and Ziegler has won 24 games the past 2 years with a combined ERA in the low 3s so they aren't getting dispatched that easily. Tim Reece (2-3, 4.91) could be another matter: he already started the year in long relief and has just not been good as a starter (0-3, 5.36; 2-3, 4.91 overall). There the question becomes of who you replace him with... yeah I'm gonna do this. Rob Reiner (1-3, 3.29 at AAA Rochester) hasn't been amazing in the minors but he's good enough and RP Themba Dialimi (0-0, 6.38, 2 Sv) has not been so it's time to flippedy floppedy. Backup C David Delgado (.357, 0, 2) has hit well in his little time he's played but also is like really bad at catching so I'm going to both call up a better defensive catcher in Austrialian computer scientist Neil Gunther (.282, 1, 20 at AAA Rochester) to backup up Frank Abagnale (.336, 4, 22) and give Delgado more at-bats at first base in relief of lefty Dante Chairez (.210, 3, 16), who hasn't hit for the power he was hired to hit for this year. This is a platoon situation, not a benching for Chairez. Second looked like a logjam in the best way going into the year but both Kurt Russell (.211, 0, 15) and Bill Murray (.212, 2, 14) have been struggling at the plate. Russell at least is a plus defender; Murray's been DHing and sliding around the infield wherever needed for the most part. I'm slightly cutting down on Murray's play but I kind of need both of these guys to do a good job for this team to improve. Remember when 3B Marco Perez (.237, 0, 13) was a hotshot defender and good hitter to boot? My man's still not even 30 but he seems very average as a hitter now and isn't even a top flight defender anymore. He's still far and away the best 3B in the organization (and I'm even being a little forced to hit him cleanup vs LHPs due to the complete lack of power hitting from the right side of the plate) but I wanted to complain, so... SS Jon "Lucky Number" Blevins (.250, 0, 1) has already started to time-share with Mario Segura (.253, 0, 7), who was more or less the starter last year when the team figured it could eat the poor fielding in exchange for the .302 average. When you're hitting .253, it's not so easy to stomach. Blevins is also 33 so I don't really like using him in too big of a role - not that he's showing any signs of falling off but he won't be on the next good Orioles team - but again, there's not a lot of other options right now. MAJOR MOVE INCOMING RF Juan Gabriel (.289, 5, 16) is clearly not as good a fielder as LF TJ Corron (.307, 3, 19) so they'll flip-flop spots in the outfield. Hope that doesn't ruin the CHEMISTRY I got nothin' May 21: Detroit had a rare and weird 5 game losing streak that they snapped today with a 4-2 win over Milwaukee at County Stadium. Jimmy Goddard (6-3, 3.03) pitched into the 7th, got into a spot of trouble, and ace or not I am not taking these Brewers and their .300 team batting average lightly so we turned to the bullpen. Jim Marceau (0-2, 4.98, 8 Sv) likes to make every game an adventure and he walked 3 guys in 1.2 IP but he still managed to pick up his AL best (tied with the White Sox' Malcolm Post at least) 8th save. "It was good to get out of that slump" said bench coach Chris Hayes. "Now we just have to turn this into a 5 game winning streak." Detroit is just 18-19 on the year with exactly as many runs scored (159) as given up but hey, it's still early. May 21: Braves closer Jim Winn (2-1, 1.78, 9 Sv) missed all of last year with a damaged elbow ligament in his throwing arm. No surgery is listed so I guess he just sat it out. You'd think that he might have taken a step back but the Braves have used him often and tonight he pitched the 9th in the 2nd game of a double-header vs the Giants to close out a 7-4 win and earn his 200th career save. Winn has been a Brave for practically his entire career save a bizarre couple months where he was claimed off of waivers by the Cubs at the end of the 1970 season (look, all I can say is that it happened to a guy in real life) and then was traded back that winter. Winn also has a career ERA of 1.62 and has not been over 2 - in spite of playing in the Launching Pad - since the Braves' first year in Atlanta back in 1967. Still only 31 years of age (he turns 32 in July), he's got a shot at breaking Dodgers man Bill Cory (156-97, 2.67), who saved 350 games for Brooklyn/LA between 1946 and 1964. Incidentally the #2 guy on the list is a current player, 35 year old Montay Luiso (3-2, 1.00, 5 Sv), currently toiling for the Angels after spending most of his career in Baltimore. Winn is 7th on the career list and 4th among active players (Geoff Saus (0-2, 3.03, 8 Sv) and Matt Brock (1-1, 4.05) are also ahead of him but well behind Luiso). Jesse Kelly (1-2, 4.26, 3 Sv) opened the year 1 save ahead of him but has fallen behind 200-195. May 22: The White Sox traded OF Josh Wade (.295, 1, 15) to the Guardians for minor league SP Johnny Ramone (1-1, 2.51 at AAA OKC). Wade fills a serious hole for a Guards team who's weirdly contending right now. Who knows how long that will long but hey, fill that need, right? They send back Ramone, who's just been the victim of a numbers game for the big league club this year. He was in the majors until former 20 game winner Jose Martinez (1-2, 4.33) got healthy. For the Sox, moving Wade along also gives them the ability to call up and play prospect / known Canadian John Candy (.278, 5, 14). May 22: Oh man did RF John Candy (.833, 1, 5) have a major league debut day. The White Sox outfielder who just got called up today (see above!) played in both halves of two doubleheader blowout wins over the Rangers and... was a monster. In the first game, an 8-1 win, he was 2-3 with 2 RBIs off of 2 singles, then in the nightcap he went to the plate 5 times, had 3 hits in 3 official at-bats, walked twice, hit a solo HR in the 8th, and scored all 5 times he reached base. The Sox won that game 15-2 so they barely even needed him but... man. "He's not going to keep up that pace," a weirdly jocular Sox bench coach Tommy Leon said after the game. The doubleheader sweep also brings the Chisox back to .500 and helps them right the ship in what has been a singularly awful month of May for them: even with these wins they're just 6-11 so far. May 22: His team may have lost but young Oakland A's OF Viv Richards (.368, 5, 20) continued what is now a 20 game hitting streak with a 1-4 effort vs the Twins and their starter Ergot Newman (8-0, 2.46), who became the major leagues' first 8 game winner in the same game. Richards got his hit out of the way early with a single in the top of the 2nd; even though he led off he was stranded at the end of the inning. The loss dipped Oakland into last in the AL West with a 16-25 record that also puts them as the only sub-.400 team in the American League. May 22: The Giants have been doing pretty well for themselves but all those games played means that they're the first over-.500 team to get a review this year. Good for them(?). It's hard for me to beat up on them too bad since they were supposed to circle the basement with the Dodgers so I'll leave it at this: the hitting is starting to look ready, the pitching is not. We're still running that 5 man rotation but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (2-1, 2.66) just does not have the stamina to start. He hasn't even averaged 6 innings, which is baaaaaaaad for the 70s (8 starts, 44 IP). I'll drop him into the bullpen I guess - he'll certainly be the object of some offseason training - and push Nick Paradis (0-1, 2.82) into the rotation. Paradis isn't anything like the prospect Abdul-Jabbar is but he has *some* stamina at least and did finish 7 of the 15 games he started in AA Amarillo last year... Actually no, looking at the team as a whole scouts are screaming at me to promote Faroese future prime minister Joannes Eidesgaard (6-1, 2.76 at AAA Phoenix). Paradis goes back into long relief and Eidesgaard just threw a bunch of pitches 2 days ago so he might not start in his newly scheduled spot tomorrow but he'll be in the rotation going forward. He was the #9 prospect going into the year, just won the PCL Pitcher of the Month award for April, and my scout thinks he has the makings of a future ace. This could be huge! Both of the catchers in the minor leagues are tearing it up but for now I'm going with the modest backup talent of John Kohut (.200, 0, 1). You're on my list, buddy! 1B Willie Ortega (.250, 8, 22) has been a revelation this year for the power but uuuuuuuggh he is Dave Kingman-esque in terms of his gigantic strike zone. His isolated walks this year is .008 (.250 BA, .258 OBP). Phil Lynott (.260, 3, 8) should be the eventual starter there but, um, he hasn't even walked this year so I don't even know... He's going nowhere but I wanted to point out that 2B Bob McAdoo (.398, 3, 31) is flirting with .400. Just thought I'd share. In RF Jon Berry (.262, 3, 23) has been... fine out there. The scouts really want me to recall Panos Michalopolous (.327, 2, 8 in AAA Phoenix) but he had a chance this year and hit .135 in 37 at-bats. I'm sure we'll turn to him eventually but this team is on the fringe of contention and it's not time to take chances (Eidesgaard aside, who at least is coming in for someone who can't do the job). May 22: Big Star frontman Chris Bell (1-0, 0.00) made his major league debut count. Working against the lowly Reds, he threw a 4-hit shutout and cruised to a 5-0 victory tonight. "He really had his good stuff tonight," said Dodgers bench coach Aaron Andrews. "We wish him a good drive home." (OMINOUS) May 22: The Phillies won (again) but 2B Tony Shannon's (.376, 4, 24) 24 game hitting streak came to an end after an 0-2 game. Shannon did get two walks and even scored 2 of the team's 3 runs (it was a 3-1 win at St. Louis) but it's a hitting streak, not a walking streak. This was the 2nd longest streak of the year; only San Francisco's 3B George Harrison (.321, 2, 25) had a longer one at 25 games. May 23: Pirates RP Erik Schnipke (0-2, 6.23) wants to be in the starting rotation. Man, picky picky picky... the Pirates are in a tie for 2nd (granted, with the entire rest of the NL West save the leading Cards and the last-place Mets) and he even just got himself a spot start (and he wasn't even that good - 6 IP, 5 R, 4 ER, 9 H, 4 BB, 6 K in a 6-5 loss to the Phillies on May 19) but the former Mets and Expos guy I guess just doesn't care unless he's in the rotation. I feel like this is a solid case of beggars can't be choosers - Schnipke was out of a job until the AI GM signed him to a minor league deal in January - so I'm just going to let him go and call up Montay Flores (1-0, 1.62, 4 Sv at AAA Charleston) in his place. May 23: The Twins traded minor league UT Fred Blades (.300, 1, 13 at AAA Tacoma) to the Expos for minor league RP Gyorgy Gedo (3-1, 1.84 at AAA Peninsula). Blades has gotten a couple of brief cups of coffee with Minnesota but wasn't going to move up with this team (it doesn't help that he's already 27) and so the Twinkies move him to the Expos for bullpen depth. Gedo even played a little bit in the majors this year; in any case the Tacoma Twins' bullpen has been pretty bad and at this point if someone got hurt in the majors they'd be forced to call up some scrub with a 5+ ERA in the minor leagues to replace him. May 23: 29 year old Graham Panarello (4-3, 3.02) hasn't pitched in the American League since 1969. During his 4 years in Cincinnati he picked up a reputation as a very hot and cold pitcher who could get torched one game and do the torching the next. Tonight he had one of those "do the torching" games against the league-leading Cleveland Guardians. Panarello threw a 7-hitter, allowing just 1 run, and tied a person record with 11 strikeouts in his team's 6-1 win. This was Panarello's 3rd complete game in 8 starts and thanks in large part to all those Ks, opposing hitters are carrying a paltry .239 average against him. "Ah jeez guys," said a bashful Panarello after the game. "Can't you ask someone else about this?" Cleveland's Robert Rivera (5-2, 3.46) took the loss, although generally speaking the former 19 game loser (with the Giants in 1970) has been winning more often than not this season. May 23: The Angels (21-20) are I guess doing pretty well overall: after finishing a distant 3rd they're... well, okay, they're still a distant third. This team has been treading water the past 2+ seasons, granted that in 1972 the AL West was so bad that "treading water" meant they got to play in the ALCS with a 79-76 record. This year they aren't quite as bad at scoring runs as they've been in the past but to make up for it they haven't been quite as good at preventing them. The California Approach to Rotations is a 5 man one. That's how we do. So far Carlos Figueroa (1-6, 5.93) has been the guy who hasn't been cutting it in there and now is as good a time as any to stick in Italian economy dude Ignazio Visco (0-1, 3.60) in there instead. Figueroa was pretty bad last year too (6-13, 5.11 in his first year with the Angels) so hey, maybe it's time to see if he can get it back in long relief. The team's two middle relievers have been so awful that it's hard to even take it seriously. Andy O'Connor (3-1, 8.62) only recently got his ERA down below 9 but he was... well, okay, he wasn't "good" last year (9-3, 4.64) but he was useful. Okay... I'm sending him down, which actually means I'm waiving him since the 29 year old is out of options. Because California is short on actual relievers at the top of the minors, I'll bring in Native American activist Elijah Harper (4-4, 3.46 at AAA Salt Lake City), who got a lot of action last year... talk about a guy who probably should have broke camp with the team. Anyway, he's up there now in long relief (and Camacho immediately gets "promoted" to middle relief). The other middle reliever by the way is Mark Seitz (0-2, 6.62), who a. has 18 Ks in 17.2 IP, which indicates to me that he's unlucky rather than bad, and b. is the 2nd guy of 2 who was bad to start the year and I'm not just going to completely switch out a bullpen for a winning team. I don't understand why C Tsui Hark (.245, 2, 15) is so popular in Anaheim. I guess the fans like Chinese cinema. Anyway, his backup Xiu-tou Shen (.200, 0, 3) is nothing special and oh boy there are guys in the minors who are kicking ass so I'm going to call one of these guys up... flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla (.346, 4, 14 at AAA SLC). They lose some veteran presence - Shen's 30 although a career AAAA guy - but in exchange get a guy who can hold his own with the bat. DH/3B Ken Hitchcock (.304, 2, 8) is not going to supplant Mike Brookes (.245, 6, 24) at the hot corner, especially since Brookes is hitting for power again (he had only 5 HRs all last year), but he has to get into the lineup somewhere. That's been DH because the team has solid guys playing 1st (1973 batting champ Chris Seek (.322, 4, 14)) and 2nd (Rodrigo Juarez (.307, 7, 33)) and he'd be a scary shortstop. So... I guess for now we keep him at DH (he's filling in at 3rd while Brookes plays through a bout of bronchitis but otherwise). But ugh, Willie Vargas (.293, 2, 16) is out there. I'm gonna have to figure something out once Brookes is ready to go. Starting SS Richard Simmons (.229, 2, 10) could use a better caddy but the drop-off defensively between him and Dagobert Cole (.250, 0, 3) is excessive so I'm sending the latter down in favor of soft rock singer I've never heard of Chris Norman (.240, 2, 9). Norman isn't exactly a superstar hitter himself but he at least fields the position averagely. One option I've got in the outfield is to trade out slick fielding but weak hitting GREATEST BASSIST OF ALL TIME Jaco Pastorius (.232, 2, 10) out of center in favor of John Belushi (.213, 1, 4), who should hit a lot better but who figures to play center like an overweight frat boy. He does have room to grow... but do I want to do that to a team who still has a shot of catching up to Minnesota? May 23: Padres SP Don Henley (8-2, 1.73) started the year 0-2 but has won all of his games since. Today he even took down the Reds 5-3 in spite of pitching in front of a team of backups. Okay, fine, it's still the Reds, but Henley had a typically solid Don Henley night with 7 IP, 6 hits, 3 unearned runs, 3 walks, and 3 Ks. This 8-game heater is the longest winning streak of the 26 year old's pro career; Henley also now leads the NL in ERA. 1B "Doctor Jack" Holman's (.293, 0, 5) sacrifice fly in the 7th was the eventual game-winner off of Reds SP Tracy Larazabal (0-3, 5.08). May 24: The Tigers claimed P Rick Legere (1-0, 3.86) off of waivers from the Braves. Atlanta tried to sneak the 29 year old who had a pretty nice year last year (7-0, 2.01 all in relief) down to the minors but the Tigers needed pitching help just a little bit too muchly. May 24: Speaking of the Tigers, they are 19-20 and so it's time to review them. The year has gone... bad, no two ways about it. They are having a ton of issues scoring runs, I guess mostly because of a severe power outage (they're last in the AL - all of baseball, actually - in HRs with 19). The pitching has been... fine, I guess more or less at the level they expected last year. I don't really see myself making a lot of changes with a team who won 100 games last year but I guess we'll see... The obvious spot in the rotation to push a person out is Martin Buchan (4-4, 3.61) but he hasn't been the worst guy in the rotation, even (that's Bruce Rubio (3-4, 4.83)) and he's not really part of the problem. There are a couple guys in AAA Toledo who are off to a good start but nah, it's just not enough to displace even a 25 year old rookie in Buchan. One move I think I will make is to push Jim Marceau (0-2, 4.88, 8 Sv) into a middle relief role and promote Todd Thiesen (0-0, 1.23, 1 Sv) into that job. Marceau was pretty decent last year but he's been kind of volatile ever since he came over from the Twins in 1970. Thiesen once upon a time saved 31 games for the Guardians but keeps getting injured recently. As long as he's healthy and pitching well, why not? C Armando Flores (.192, 0, 15) is barely OPSing .400 so far and looks like the age gremlins have caught up to him (he's 31). We don't have good catching options though so for now all I'm doing is mixing in his backup Justin Inkster (.222, 0, 4) a bit more than "start when rested". Inkster isn't anything wonderful himself and if push came to shove I'd start the better defensive Flores even if I knew he lost his offensive touch but hey, no point in pushing a slumping ballplayer to the point of tiredness. I'd feel a lot better about this Nikki Lauda (.206, 2, 10) and Bill Vizcarra (.175, 0, 2) platoon at first if Vizcarra showed any of the power he displayed last year in AAA Toledo when he jacked 32 homeruns. He just about sounds like the answer to the Tigers' power issues, really. He's not playing like a guy I want to give more at-bats to. There is a PTBNL in the high minors who... well, I wish he'd figure out how to avoid Ks (.202, 6, 12) but he has pop too. I'll keep an eye out. LF Danny Hohman (.225, 0, 4) has been a good, solid platoony corner OFer for this team for years. I don't really want to just bench him after 80 bad at-bats, and his partner Tom Berenger (.256, 2, 5) hasn't been super-amazing either so... I guess I'm sticking with this too. The fact that DH Jose Ayala (.282, 5, 22) is leading the team with 5 HRs isn't really his fault but is still an indictment of the lack of power on this roster. One huuuuuuugely mitigating factor here is that so far Detroit has played just 12 games at home (7-5) vs 27 on the road (12-15). That is craaaazy. They do have a 3 game weekend series at Tigers Stadium vs the Guardians so maybe the power will just, like, figure itself out, I don't know... They don't get a consistent run of home games until early to mid June when they've got themselves a 12 game homestand from the 4th to the 16th. May 24: One way to help out a struggling offense is to not allow any runs on defense and that's what Jimmy Goddard (7-3, 2.66) and the Tigers managed today with a 3-0 series-opening win against the 2nd place (at least for now!) Guardians. Goddard was highly democratic tonight with just 2 strikeouts but also only walked 2 and allowed 3 hits in this one, relying on some really great fielders on this Detroit team. Claudio Rainieri (1-1, 3.97) went all the way for Cleveland; he was fine but not quite fine enough. May 24: A's OF Viv Richards' (.355, 5, 20) hitting streak ended today at an even 20 games as he went 0-4 in a 4-3 loss to the Angels at Anaheim Stadium. "I'd like to think cricket translates well to baseball," said Richards today following the game. "Today not so much but generally I think people are seeing it." Richards actually had a shot at winning this one, appearing as the last man up in the top of the 9th against Angels starter Moises "Duck" Melendez (3-2, 4.11). Melendez was clearly tiring and had just battled CF David Mesa (.300, 0, 4) on a 7 pitch at-bat where he just could not get that third strike (Mesa hit a U3 groundout that scored a man from 3rd). Richards saw a pitch on a 1-0 count but could only manage a grounder to 2nd that Rodrigo Juarez (.301, 7, 33) scooped up and fired to first to end the game. The loss tumbles the A's to a 16-26 record, the worst in the entire American League. This is a familiar place for this team, historically speaking, albeit not a fun one. May 25: I can understand on some level why Reds OF Alonzo Huanosta (.192, 1, 5) wants to be traded - he's not in the lineup every day, he's not playing well, and the Reds are terrible this year - but, like, beggars can't be choosers, man... here he's just the victim of a numbers game: RF Jaden Weaver (.284, 9, 23) is one of the best players at his position in the game and LF RJ Dominguez (.269, 5, 32) is the team's big RBI man. I guess I'm going to give him what he wants and release him; I have to imagine the 33 year old 4-time All-Star will find somewhere else to play. May 25: It's Padres tiiiime! San Diego is doing pretty well so far at 28-20 but hey, the 20th L comes for us all and here it was a 5-4 heartbreaker vs the Reds so it's as good a time as any. San Diego is doing this with a great offense - 2nd in all of baseball in runs scored! - and pitching that's better than you'd think, I guess, although the top-line starters have got to be the best 1-2 punch in the league (Steven Tyler (8-1, 2.11) and Don Henley (8-2, 1.73)) so maybe not better so much as "just as good". They have the best record in the NL but somehow are still underperforming their Pythagorean Won-Lost record by 2 wins. The back half of the rotation has been pretty, pretty bad but aside from already having demoted Bronco Ben Feldhusen (2-3, 5.05), who is making his umpteenth comeback from a major arm injury, I don't think I want to change anything there. The bullpen has taken the tiniest of steps back from last year when the Darius Parchman (2-2, 2.51, 4 Sv this year) / Robbie Vaughn (1-0, 2.66, 4 Sv) combo just plain did not allow runs but this only means they're still amazing. C Peter Gabriel (.229, 0, 13) isn't really launching into the starting job like I'd hoped but he's still the best defensive catcher they've got and he's not Nikolai Volkoff levels of bad at least. Oliver Williams (.250, 1, 8) has been and will continue to be their guy vs LHPs. 1B Carlos Palacios (.263, 3, 21) appeared to take a step forward and turned into a .300 hitter (.306 to be exact) with awesome doubles power (49 last year) but he's regressed so far into the .260s guy he was previously. He'll still start for us but I'm going to start working in Doctor Jack Holman (.293, 0, 5) and newcomer Paul Hirata (.370, 3, 10 at AAA Hawaii) to keep him rested / an option to pinch-hit. 2B Paul McCartney (.188, 4, 30) continues to not hit but a. ribbies and b. he's got a track record of being a great player so he'll get at least the entire season to get it right. You can do this on a team who has no issues scoring runs. The resurgence of former Astros star Jesse Lockhart (.322, 5, 15) has taken everyone by surprise but hey, why shouldn't he hit well? This has pushed Tom Petty (.255, 2, 12) into the 4th OFer role. I'd love to find a place for the lead singer of the Heartbreakers but what are you going to do? This team already has 2 lead singers in prominent positions on this club. We can't just be the Lead Singers Team! One place Petty might find more time in is right field; he's an excellent defensive outfielder and the guy they installed there, Mads Vindig (.247, 4, 16), has only been okay offensively. The scouts think he's a finished product and a touch better than Petty so I'll go with what they say, although Petty's getting PAs in at the position for sure. May 26: The Astros claimed P Nick Escabar (0-0, 10.80) off of waivers from the Cardinals. Escabar is coming off of a 2-4, 2.25 1973 season so probably the 4 outings this year are not indicative of his ability. Mostly he was the victim of numbers in St. Louis. With Houston he'll be in the relief mix. May 26: Cubs PH Raul Bueno (.194, 0, 0) had a pretty productive year with Texas and Chicago last year but has been pretty bad and is blaming it on the team. The guy's got a history of being a career pinch-hitter; you'd think he'd be used it it by now. I guess there's a point to be made that once upon a time he was a 2nd baseman and the Cubbies are experiencing some baaaaaad play by Jon Cooley (.161, 0, 6) there. For now I'll stick him at the ol' keystone against most lefties but that could be pretty disastrous pretty quickly. Mostly I want to see him hit and make me not have to release him... May 26: 25 year old Yankees OF Brandon Anderson (.327, 6, 32) has played in the field wherever the Bronx Bombers want him and got himself stuck into the 3 hole when they traded for him last month. He's also just been really, really good, as evidenced by the fact that his hits in both games of today's doubleheader vs the Orioles puts him at 20 games on the season, looking like the longest active streak right now. Anderson came out of that loaded Phillies minor league system and got pushed from Cleveland to the Yankees earlier this year in a big salary dump move. May 26: It's surprising that we're looking at the Brew Crew so late in the year but they've been... I wouldn't say good but weirdly mediocre. They've been flirting with a team-wide .300 average all year and are currently at .298, 1st in baseball (and 2nd in the AL in runs scored behind just the Yankees). The pitching has been more in line with the Milwaukee we've come to know, by which I mean it's been bad. These guys aren't ready for prime time but hey, let's look... First up, this team has been going with a 4 man rotation because they've been semi contending but this recent Yankees surge plus Milwaukee's own 2-8 record in their last 10 tells me that's over. The first two candidates on the roster already are King Decker (1-1, 5.70) and David Camacho (2-2, 6.26). Both have had their shot and both have been really bad. Instead we'll call up future St. Kitts and Nevis Governor-General Tapley Seaton (5-2, 3.31), who is FOREVER A BANE TO OOTP because there is no entry for St Kitts and Nevis on the country list. Anyway, the scouts love him. Andy Ring (1-5, 5.54) was supposed to be the club ace but instead he's been the... deuce, I don't know, the opposite of an ace. His peripherals are still solid and the advanced stats say he should be doing well but I have my eye out. The bullpen has been a mess. I've already demoted Decker and Camacho into the bullpen and I don't want to demote them off the team at the moment. Joe Scott (1-0, 4.22) and John Landis (1-1, 5.01) have been better than the ERAs suggest, I guess, but it's not been great, and then their closer Tom Grohs (2-2, 3.80, 2 Sv) has been really up and down with a 50% save rate to date. I feel like something's got to change but what? For now that means no changes. C Adam Brown (.179, 2, 11) was honestly kind of meh in 1972 before missing all of last year with a ruptured MCL. He's demonstrating that wherever this team goes, he's at best a future backup catcher. Shaun Dennehy (.333, 1, 8) really isn't any better though. I guess he's a little better defensively. I'll give him more reps but long-term we need to look elsewhere. I normally can't stand guys who never walk but 1B Willie Morales (.325, 4, 16) is having himself a huge year. He won't keep it up but it's nice and they do have Kozue Nakamura (.330, 0, 11) for when Morales inevitably gets into a month-long slump. 3B Ghulan Nabi Azid (.315, 1, 15) has been everything advertised and I think has played his way into a full-time gig; previously I was using backup IF Bill Charles (.286, 0, 3) to spell him around once a week. In a league that's seen some horrific errorness by some of the 3rd basemen, he hasn't even been that bad at the hot corner with 5 errors and a .955 FA. Hey, sometimes it's good news! With SS Anatoly Karpov (.286, 1, 11) still out for another month and a half at least, Ian Reeder (.245, 0, 2) has mostly been handling the duties... but Bill Charles is flat out a better defensive shortstop - Reeder at 29 has regressed into being a net negative at the position - and, lack of experience in the high minors or no, I think the Brewers are better positioned to use him and let the other 8 guys in the lineup (well, 7 given catcher) hit. RF Jun Kim (.291, 1, 21) is seeming to have a resurgence right when the team traded for Phil Hartman (.238, 2, 18) to play that position. The 35 year old is still one of the best defensive right fielders in baseball and while he's not hitting for any kind of power what he's been doing has been really contributing to the team's success. Hartman's filling in where he can but it's hard to find spots with Lionel Richie (.329, 4, 29) needing to find a spot in the lineup every day and LF Steve Winwood (.303, 6, 24) also playing like a middle of the order All-Star type player. This is a good problem to have... May 26: How have the Cleveland Guardians (22-20) hung in like this? Their roster looks very, very 90-lossy. Somehow they've outscored their opponents... 192-190, but that's still more runs scored than allowed. This probably also freezes me from making a lot of moves so the 40 loss mark will probably be the one where I'll start bringing in farm guys but hey, let's look just in case... The Guards are in a 4 man rotation without a super great reason other than that they're in 2nd place in the division. I'll leave it up for now but we are carrying a 6 man bullpen so the staff itself is pretty roomy. Kevin Freeman (2-1, 5.44) has 4 no-decisions in 7 starts which is probably for the best given how bad he's pitched so far. His peripherals don't even look that bad but oh man the advanced stats hate him... anyway he's going to stay but I have my eyes on him. The bullpen has honestly been really good so far, or at least the guys currently in it have outperformed expectations. No changes there but I think I will continue to lean on these guys. C John Lennon (.238, 1, 13) looked like a potential breakout star last year (.239, 11, 57) but so far this year has just kind of looked like a catcher. I'm going to start mixing in his backup Andres Gamez (.421, 0, 4), who's only gotten 21 at-bats so far, a bit more. Gamez is only 25 himself, the same age as Lennon (um in game anyway) but has already been a 2 year starter for Texas. 1B/DH George W Bush (.158, 3, 9) has now hit .168 over 63 games and 224 PAs for this team and I think it's time to start thinking of him as a guy who's not going to be all that. He hit .281/13/40 in a breakout rookie year in 1971 and has completely failed to hit since then. That also means Nick Hodzic (.250, 4, 18), who's finally started to hit and now just looks like a mild disappointment, gets the 1st base job by default. Tyler Knight (.244, 0, 9) has been DHing... for some reason. He is just not a good enough hitter so I'll replace him with a combination of Richard Berman (.243, 0, 4 but .286, 6, 50 last year) and Russ Deuser (.308, 0, 2 in 26 at-bats with CLE). At 32 Knight also isn't that great of a fielder either so I think his days with the team are numbered. SS Bob Iger (.282, 6, 19) has been hitting 9th for most of the year and I've kept saying "I'll move him up when I do a review", expecting him to fall off. Well, 20 losses have come and Iger's still hitting, so... up he moves. Since Mitt Romney (.276, 0, 7) has taken over in the infield (at 3rd initially) and he's a far better fielder at short compared to Iger, I'll move Iger to 3rd, too. The outfield just in general looks very meh to me. I'm happy for Eric Weyenberg (.313, 1, 9) but even with the big year he's a career .259 hitter with 6 career HRs. I'd look to the minors but oh maaan is this team depleted: they have 2 top-100 prospects but they're both in the international complax so they kind of don't count, and their highest rated actual minor laegue guy is rated 138th. They are an outfielder (yay!) but they are hitting .234, 1, 13 in their first real taste of AAA (boo!). Do I go after a free agent? The only guy we can afford and we didn't cut earlier is 40 year old Elijah Johnson (.239, 0, 8 with San Diego last year), which... I'm going to say no. May 25: What do you want to call it, a Reverse Clemens? Expos SP David Johnston (4-1, 3.81) threw a 7-hit shutout today against the Phillies... in which he had zero strikeouts. Normally that's a bad sign but Johnston also only walked one batter and only even left 6 men on base in back of him since he benefited from a double play and a runner thrown out on base. The game was decided very early by a LF Harry Turtledove (.367, 6, 31) 3-run homerun in the top of the 1st off of SP Vince Bachler (3-4, 3.58).
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05-21-2026, 11:31 AM
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Hall Of Famer
Join Date: May 2004
Posts: 10,672
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May 27 - June 2, 1974
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AMERICAN LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB New York Yankees 32 20 .615 - Detroit Tigers 28 20 .583 2.0 Boston Red Sox 25 24 .510 5.5 Baltimore Orioles 24 24 .500 6.0 Cleveland Guardians 24 25 .490 6.5 Milwaukee Brewers 22 24 .478 7.0 West W L PCT GB Minnesota Twins 29 16 .644 - California Angels 27 24 .529 5.0 Chicago White Sox 22 23 .489 7.0 Kansas City Royals 21 28 .429 10.0 Texas Rangers 19 31 .380 12.5 Oakland Athletics 18 32 .360 13.5 Code:
NATIONAL LEAGUE STANDINGS East W L PCT GB Montreal Expos 26 16 .619 - St. Louis Cardinals 28 20 .583 1.0 Chicago Cubs 25 20 .556 2.5 Pittsburgh Pirates 25 21 .543 3.0 Philadelphia Phillies 26 24 .520 4.0 New York Mets 22 27 .449 7.5 West W L PCT GB San Francisco Giants 31 23 .574 - San Diego Padres 31 25 .554 1.0 Atlanta Braves 25 25 .500 4.0 Houston Astros 21 31 .404 9.0 Los Angeles Dodgers 20 32 .385 10.0 Cincinnati Reds 16 32 .333 12.0 The Twins meanwhile are spluttering just a bit. They're still way out on top of the AL West thanks to some solid defense and good, if not great, run scoring. Okay, this team does look like a bit of a fake but the best record in baseball don't lie. The NL continues to be weird. Montreal is in first place and I think has a legitimate case to be there but they're also like a week's worth of games behind many of their opponents and they'll be making that up with... oh my god. A 32 game July. Yes, we are taking a 3 day break for the All-Star Game. The Expos are playing *7* double-headers that month, including 3 in 4 days from July 4 to the 7th. 2 of those 3 are against the Dodgers but they'll be coming back to Parc Jarry the day after wrapping up a midweek 4 game series vs the Pirates. Good luck. In the division that's less likely to see a team get boned by its schedule, the Giants continue to somehow stay on top of the West. I guess to be fair TOOO BEEE FAAAAAAAIR the Padres also came out of nowhere last year; maybe it's a California thing. They've got a young lineup that's both scoring a ton of runs (234, 2nd in the NL) and bailing out a sometimes wonky pitching staff with defensive gems. Sadly 2B Bob McAdoo (.384, 3, 38) has "only" hit .333 over the past week so he's a bit off that .400 pace now. May 27: As if the Royals' lineup wasn't hurting enough with RF Dave Corona out, DH/LF Alonzo Rivera (.320, 3, 26) will be out for the next month with a back injury. LF Tony Danza (.333, 3, 26) has also been fighting knee tendinitis that has kept the 25 year old off the field and playing DH so the end result of this is more playing time to guys like OF Paul Stewart (.273, 0, 3) and minor league vet OF Justin Hopkins (.333, 1, 3). May 27: As a reminder that things could be worse, though, I guess, Royals RP Michael Brecker (0-1, 11.81) has his 1974 season end after just 4 games, 5.1 IP, and more runs allowed than innings. Brecker was at one point in time a top 70 prospect (#69 before the 1971 season) but at this point the 25 year old's career is on life support. May 27: In happier news across the division, Angels 1B Chris Seek not only is not hurt, he's off to a hot start. This week he went 12-26 (.462) with 2 HRs, 6 runs scored, and 7 RBIs in helping his team to a 5-1 record that put them all alone in 2nd place in the AL West. Seek is no stranger to Player of the Week awards; this is his 5th and 4th in the AL (he got his first in September of 1969 when he was playing with the Giants). Seek also won the award 4 times in the minor leagues, and I've got to say he's a heavy, heavy favorite to make the league overlook its weirdness in not selecting him to the All-Star Game last year, when he led the league in batting. May 27: Speaking of multi-time award winners, Chicago's 1B Antonio Lopez (.333, 10, 26) picked up what is already his 3rd NL PotW award this season. He went 12-24 with 4 solo HRs accounting for his 4 RBIs, 5 walks, and 8 runs scored. The Cubs were 4-2 last week with series victories over the Mets and Cardinals. Could this be Lopez' 2nd MVP season? He won back in 1969 (.315, 43, 123) but last year slumped to a .259 average with 15 HRs and people were wondering if the 28 year old's best years were behind him. May 27: The weekly rando leaderboards is a weird one but hey, it gives me a chance to show a picture of a different guy. Homeruns with 2 outs: Dave Cowens, KC, 5 Bob Iger, CLE, 5 Gary McCord, LAD, 5 Jaden Weaver, CIN, 5 Danny Fager, LAD, 4 2 Dodgers on the list is wild. Anyway, one of them is C / golfer Gary McCord (.338, 6, 24) a second-year player who's pushed himself into the middle of the Dodgers' order. LA as a team is having a weird year: just as the hitting seems to be putting things together, the pitching has completely fallen apart and have even given up more runs than the Reds this year. May 26: In an otherwise happy day for the Yankees, OF Brandon Anderson's (.320, 6, 32) hitting streak ended at 20 games with an 0-4 night against the visiting Chicago White Sox. As noted, it was otherwise a happy day as the Yankees won this one 3-1 off the excellent pitching of John Carpenter (4-4, 3.86), who gave up 1 run on 4 hits and struck out 11 batters, tying his 2nd highest total. The win also put the Yankees at 10 games over .500 (29-19) for the first time this season. May 26: Lingering injuries are a part of the game but maaaaaan they are annoying. Cardinals 1B Lorenzo Martinez (.316, 9, 20) has been out of the lineup for most of the month with blurred vision but he was fiiiiiiinally cleared to play all the way. He's a National League first baseman so I would have probably kept him in the lineup if the issues affected anything but his hitting (and even then maybe if it had minimal effect) but if you can't see the ball it does make it trickier to make good contact with it. He had himself a nice day too, going 4-5 at the plate with 3 runs and topping it all off with a solo HR in the bottom of the 8th in the Cards' 7-3 win over the Dodgers. The win puts them back into a virtual tie with the Expos (still shaking my head at that) for 1st in the NL East. May 26: The Atlanta Braves (25-20) are... fine, I guess. They've been more or less treading water the past couple seasons after winning 93 games in 1971. They're still only a game and a half out of first in the NL West so it's deeeeefinitely not time to pack things in. The pitching so far seems like it's held up better than I figured it would and led by John Winn (2-1, 1.78, 9 Sv) the bullpen in particular has been lights-out. I'm guessing there won't be a lot of changes but we'll see... The rotation is 4 men large and doing well; when you play half your games in the Launching Pad your ERA tends to get a bit fluffy but the only guy with a 4+ ERA is Ernesto Carillo (4-4, 4.24) and I'm not about to stop using him. As noted the bullpen has been fine; I probably don't need to carry 5 guys but with the 4 man rotation I feel like I'll need a spot starter fairly often so I'll leave it as-is. C Gianluigi Farinelli (.181, 4, 20) is not exactly off to a great start and his backup, the 33 year old Sid Bartoszek (.138, 0, 2) might have descended into "can't hit" territory. We used Christopher Guest (.247, 1, 7 at AAA Richmond) as a September call-up last year but he isn't exactly tearing it up either. Still, I think it's time to push him up just so we can have a bit of a younger spark in there. If Bartoszek doesn't get claimed, and he might not given that he hasn't even hit .200 since 1972, he can be our new AAA catcher. This really feels like the death of the pinch-hitter year... "Cranklin" Martinez (.174, 1, 3) isn't the only guy like that who's struggling but he's struggling and he hasn't exactly been amazing the past couple of years either. Yeah... sorry, you were great for us but your long career with the Braves, spanning 1957-1974, is coming to an end. That's a toooon of time for a guy who was never a starter, and the .270 average is actually pretty good for a guy who was mostly a pinch-hitting specialist in the 1960s. LF Henry Riggs (.240, 5, 11) is another guy who's had a nagging injury for most of the month so I won't blame him too hard for his lack of production. He's also back at 100% now which is nice. His game screams "move him to the DH league" but that will come next year, I predict. In the meantime the current situation where he plays full-time vs RHPs and gets spelled a lot by organizational soldier Andy LePera (.389, 0, 7) seems to be working. One thing that hasn't been working this year was the 2-headed CF tandem of TC Boyle (.204, 2, 17) and Frank Menner (.127, 5, 12) so in the wake of the Cranklin release I called up Michael Lee Aday (.243, 2, 16 at AAA Richmond), better known to his fans as Meatloaf. He's a bit prone to errors in the field and has a scattershot arm but you'd hope he'll hit above the Timonen Line. He'll just do the full-on platoon with Boyle for now and maybe if Menner can learn to hit singles he can get back into this some as well... Now the outfield defense is almost hilariously bad as RF Chris "Presto" Ward (.285, 4, 18) is also well below average. Yeah, this could get ugly. I'm not seeing very much I can do right now though except... hope. May 28: Man, it is just not the White Sox' season. They learned today that SP Chris Messina (4-3, 3.04), who led the AL in losses last year (13-19, 3.41) but mostly just wasn't supported, will miss the next six weeks with shoulder bursitis. They're already down LF Alice Cooper, 2B Juan Perez, and RP Sergio Alvarado this year, plus two more guys you just expect to see on the IR anyway in Dan Schoner and Damien Seja. It's a little surprising that they're even treading water at this point at 21-20. May 28: Speaking of those White Sox... they're outscoring their opponents 191-176 but are just a game above .500. I'm not sure I can do much as we're mostly weathering the storm of injuries but let's see I guess? OK Michael Keaton (5-0, 1.26 at AAA Iowa) has earned himself a place on the roster. Even if Chris Messina didn't get hurt that would be the case. I'll drop him at the end of the rotation in place of Rich Whetzel (2-1, 4.23), who I will never trust again after that 4-18 season he had last year. The rotation is otherwise fine, with the possible exception of Rich Reese (7-4, 4.92) but he won 18 last year and was their best starter so he's not going anywhere. In the pen we could use a lefty. I'm going to extend an offer to free agent Chris Falls (0-0, 0.00 with one appearance with Cleveland this year), who is 27 and is a loooooongtime farmhand for the Dodgers but, you know, he's a lefty and stuff. I'll probably forget about him but we'll see. Otherwise, the bigger gameplan has got to be to lean as heavily as possible on the Stroopwaffel Malcolm Post (1-2, 1.45, 10 Sv) coming out of the bullpen. I haven't even really pushed him all that hard in 1974 terms. C Rene Arnoux (.260, 4, 16) has yet to draw a walk this season. UGH. Still, he's hitting well enough now that his defensive advantages over Chris Flores (.324, 1, 7) make him the easy choice to play most of the time. I'd love to get a replacement for Chance Hopka (.212, 1, 11) but this is the thing: he's already the 2nd string second baseman. There's an as-yet-unnamed guy in AAA that the scouts like (.222, 1, 9 at Iowa) but he's 22 and doesn't look like he's ready yet. Juan Perez won't be back until the very end of the year if he makes it back at all so Hopka, who was at least the team's regular-ish 2B the past 2 years, will have to be the guy. I almost have to try and let former Mexican League star LF/DH Pedro Castrejon (.183, 5, 16) play through his hitting woes, at least until Alice Cooper returns in 3 weeks. He's striking out once every 4 PAs, which I don't have to tell you is terrrrrrrrrrible in 1974 terms. He was a strikeout king last year but wasn't quite this bad so we're crossing our collective fingers. If he doesn't figure it out, Peabo Bryson (.271, 3, 11) has been fine and at 23 years of age he could show us the world. CF Masanori Hattori (.248, 4, 19) looks like he's gone from being a poor defensive shortstop in Houston to being a pretty solid defensive centerfielder, which is nice. I don't really have a lot to say about him... why did I write this? I don't know. Anyway, he looks like he's good to go, as is newly installed RF John Candy (.350, 1, 5), who's doing some hitting in his 6 games with the big league club. May 28: Sorry, White Sox! The Yankees completed a 2-game sweep of the South Siders with an 8-7 victory that's also their 11th win in their last 12 games. This one saw 3B Jaak Joala (.339, 0, 16) bust out of a slump to go 3-4 with 3 runs scored and LF Armin Shimerman (.319, 4, 22) give them a 2-3, 4 RBI game including his 4th HR on the season off of Sox starter Brian Bruno (2-1, 3.41), who was pulled after 5 pretty awful innings. Shimerman also got the game-winning RBI, a single off reliever Jason Gilmer (0-5, 4.57); unfortunately Malcolm Post was too tired to play today. Pete Eason (1-1, 4.67) got his first win as a Yankee following a 15 year career with the Twins and Archie "Super" Manning (1-2, 4.11, 7 Sv) pitched an eventful 9th - a base hit, a walk, but 2 Ks - for the save. May 28: Oakland (16-30) is in free fall now as they lost their 8th straight game to the Tigers at home, 5-2. The bats just couldn't get anything going against rookie Martin Buchan (5-4, 3.33) and the A's starter Rick Shelton (4-5, 4.27) had to come out of the game with a strained calf that immediately got him sent to the DL. That led to middle reliever Ben Lamar (1-1, 6.56) being forced to work with a nearly empty bullpen; he started fine but by the 6th inning and over 100 pitches he was completely gassed and allowed all 5 of the Tigers' runs. The A's have one last game in this series vs the defending champs and then host Milwaukee, who is also struggling as of late, for 3 games over the weekend. May 28: Expos 1B Justin Stone (.307, 5, 16) hit his 500th HR and finished the game a double away from hitting for the cycle as he rallied his team to a late 5-4 victory over the Astros. Houston's starter Ernie Alvarez (3-4, 4.79) carried a shutout into the 7th but faded quickly after Stone's 2 run blast cut his team's lead to 4-2. After he allowed another 2 runs, the last of which came on Stone's 3rd triple of the year, he got pulled in the 9th for Astros closer Alex Ochoa (2-1, 1.26). At that point Houston's defense completely broke down... along with Ochoa's arm as he had to leave the game. Jon Teague came on to face pinch-hitter Danny Waters (.240, 1, 4), who "drove in" the winning run thanks to an error by 1B MC Gainey (.267, 5, 18). The Expos' crazy start continues; this keeps them tied for first with the Cardinals with St. Louis' 8-6 win over the Dodgers. May 29: The White Sox are struggling so I guess it's not super surprising that OF Ray Herring (.356, 0, 5) is petitioning to start. The thing is, I'm already using him as the DH vs lefties and I'm also working him in against RHPs in left. I think that's as much as it gets and hopefully that amount of PT will keep him from getting madder. May 29: All-Star Game voting begins! May 29: The Mets purchased minor league CF Arsene Wegner (.291, 6, 18 at AAA PEN) from the Expos. Wegner is still a stud although I guess too much playing time last year (he got into 43 games with the big league club, going .243, 1, 13) means he no longer is prospect-eligible. He's blocked at Montreal by Jeff Murphy (.225, 1, 11) so he's available for the Mets, who are going to use him to send fellow 24 year old Lindsey Buckingham (.176, 3, 11) down to the minors to figure out what's wrong. May 29: The Pirates dropped 1 of 2 games on Monday's double-header to the Padres, which was enough to drop them to 22-20. They're still just 2 1/2 games back in the East in spite of a pretty bad (10-14) May. They're slumping in that classic Pirates way: no hitting whatsoever (the fewest runs in the league, somehow not dead last in baseball though) and good pitching. I am, um, not sure what we even do here... There are a couple decent looking pitchers down in AAA Charleston, including Charles "Roc" Dutton (5-3, 2.02) but I don't think #4 starter Edward James Olmos (2-4, 4.01) is quite bad enough to pull out of the rotation just yet. They do have less room to manuever with Jeremy Battaglia gone to Kansas City, DJ Cheeves on the DL, and Billy Ording (4-4, 5.57) flat out not looking like a #2 starter to date. I still think the answer is to lean on what we've got and the bullpen, especially superstar stopper Paz "Sparky" Lemus (2-1, 2.29, 10 Sv). One move I am going to make is sending down long reliever Vasilis Papakonstantinou (0-1, 2.38) down - sorry my Greek man, you were the guy who had options left - in favor of lefty reliever and future EGOT winner Allan Menken (1-0, 3.86, 4 Sv). Even the "slumping" C Doug Connally (.246, 3, 13) hits a pretty full .240s - a 107 OPS+ this year and 122 last year with the same average - and Timothy Higgins (.455, 1, 4), his backup, is pure... backup material so I'm keeping that as is. Connally's also been hitting a bit up from where catchers normally hit in the NL (8th) but he walks a ton. Yeah, he clogs up the basepaths but this is kind of something the Pirates need more of - they're hitting just .250, 3rd worst in the NL, with a .317 OBP (8th). Neither Janez Drnovsek (.291, 1, 10) nor Nick Miller (.293, 1, 12) have been, like, amazing at first but the scouts reeeeeally like Drnovsek, who is destined to be a Czechoslovakian President when he grows up, and so I think I'm just going to put him in the lineup in pen from here on out. The big issue going into the season was whether or not he could carry himself after having skipped AAA and the answer is "yes". I'll keep giving Miller some hacks in left field filling in for Jerry Sherk (.242, 4, 24), who's just starting to hit himself. 2B Jesper Christensen (.344, 3, 16) is clearly the man at the position but he's out with a sore back for right now so I'm using Luke Dunnahoe (.235, 2, 3) there. No worries! He'll be back on the bench soon. ...or will he? SS Huey Lewis (.156, 1, 6) has looked completely outmatched after looking like he was going to make the AA-to-MLB jump with a cup of coffee last year. Yeah... I'm sending him down to AAA and starting Cecil Womack (.268, 0, 6) there. I did call up 25 year old minor league vet Mike Rhoades (.276, 0, 6 at AAA Charleston) to back him up; upon further review the 32 year old Dunnahoe looks like he's lost a little too much in the field to trust starting out there at that position. Has CF Justin Hearl (.189, 0, 14) lost it at 30 years of age? It's not like he had a ton in the beginning - the Bucs were hoping for him to bounce back from a rough .228, 2, 27 1973 season - and a further step down might just look like a 450ish OPS. This feels a little desperate with all these changes now but... oh no. I was going to stick OF George Macchia (.300, 0, 1) in there but there is a reason he's not playing center already. He has poor range for a corner OFer. OK, so THIS is truly desperate but Micronesian politician Manny Mori (.274, 1, 11 at AAA Charleston) had all of 4 games of experience above A ball going into this season but is looking kind of good in AAA. And he's got tremendous range, the kind of range that could win him Gold Gloves if he can hit. The man's nearly 25 so I'm not expecting much but hey, he should produce outs in the field at least. RF Justin Lawson (.213, 8, 19) hit a bunch of HRs in April (6) and has decided to go all-out with the dinger or something because he's been baaaaaaaad in May (.162, 2, 6), so bad that I feel like I just have to let him work through the slump. With all these other changes I'm making to the lineup, I just have to leave him be. May 30: It is reeeeeeally not the Astros' season this year. Closer Alex Ochoa (2-1, 1.26, 3 Sv), who got a late to the year thanks to elbow tendinitis, had that same injury crop right back up and now he's going to miss the next month and a half. I'll promote Vince Bump (1-1, 3.38, 1 Sv) to "close" in the rare instances this team needs it and call up future President of Brazil Fernando Collor de Mello (4-1, 2.21, 6 Sv) to take his place on the roster. May 30: Oh yeah also their 2B Jordan Green (.310, 5, 22), one of the brighter spots on the team so far, is gone until September with a dislocated shoulder. JEEEEEEZ. The cupboard in middle infield is so bare that I just offered IF Jon Reid (.213, 3, 16 with NYM in 1973), most recently a member of the Cardinals' organization before they released him on the 23rd, a contract. May 31: The Padres purchased IF Alex Sanchez (.235, 5, 26 at AAA Syracuse) and P Manny Carbajal (3-1, 4.39) from the Yankees. It's just basically depth for the Pads here; in real life both guys they bought played a decent amount for the major league team but the real-life Padres were pretty terrible at this point in time. On New York's side, Carbohydrates in particular is a good case of "demotion via expulsion" and Sanchez, who was the backup middle infielder in the pros 2 years ago with the team, is buried. May 31: In a weekend series that might be an early ALCS matchup, the Twins came back from a 4-3 deficit in the 7th to beat the Yankees 7-4. Young Twins starter Santiago Serrano (3-0, 3.38) put himself in a potential losing position by pitching to DH Ernesto Garcia (.238, 14, 42) in the top of the inning with a man on 2nd; Garcia responded with a 2 run homerun to put the Yankees in the lead. Santos Rodriguez (3-5, 6.66) meanwhile had pitched well enough but got himself into trouble, allowing the tying run and then loading the bases in the bottom of the 7th. Victor Marin (2-2, 2.78) came on in relief to face CF Ronnie Hellstrom (.359, 8, 29), who promptly belted a bases-clearing double into the left-center gap, his 7th on the year. The Twins broke a 3-game losing streak with the victory - they were coming off of getting swept by a Red Sox club who I for one thought were dead in the water. This was the Yankees' 20th loss so I'll be reviewing them tomorrow. May 31: At the other end of the spectrum, Rangers SP Robbie Coltrane (2-10, 4.00), a 23 game winner last season, became the first 10 game loser in either league after he faded late and lost a 3-2 nailbiter to the Orioles. 3B Marco Perez (.245, 1, 20) cracked a 2 RBI double in the 8th for the game winner, and George Dapson (5-5, 4.57) had an encouraging complete game win. A quick look at Coltrane's peripherals really makes you scratch your head as to how he's been this bad. His K rate (6.2) and walk rate (2.3) are basically identical to last season, and although Texas/the old Senators seems to always have problems scoring runs, that doesn't explain the 4.00 ERA. Coltrane's allowed a .309 opponents' average in spite of the good Ks; that's probably a huge factor. May 31: The 2nd place Angels were dealt a bad blow in tonight's 7-6 loss at home to the Tigers when 3B/DH Mike Brookes (.253, 6, 27) hurt his knee stretching a single into a double. He'd looked like he'd bounced back in terms of power from a tough 1973 season but he hasn't played more than 112 games in a season since 1970 so this was almost to be expected. To potentially make matters worse, 36 year old stopper Montay Luiso (4-3, 1.36, 6 Sv) also left the game in the 8th with back issues. California's bullpen behind him has been really, really bad. May 31: The A's broke a 9 game losing streak in a 5-2 win over the fading Milwaukee Brewers at home. Lee "Batty" Barnard (2-6, 4.00) pitched 8 solid innings, then left in the 9th after allowing a walk and a hit, and this time around closer Jesse Kelly (1-3, 4.94, 4 Sv), who's just 4/8 on the year in save situations, punched three batters out to wrap things up. DH Ray Hawkinson (.321, 2, 13) hit his first 2 doubles on the year with 2 RBIs in the victory. May 31: Trevon Dean (6-2, 2.66) hasn't been very good with the Mets since his trade there in the winter of 1971-2 and the Mets aren't a very good team either but somehow the stars have aligned. Dean tied his Mets career high in wins today - I said he hadn't been that good! - and pitched his 2nd shutout of the season with a 2-0 win over the Astros. Dean allowed 6 hits and 2 walks, picking up 6 Ks in the process, a good, solid outing for the 32 year old who won 21 games for the Braves back in 1969 (21-5, 3.76). 1B Vicente Luna (.271, 3, 21) gets credit for the game-winning RBI thanks to a single in the bottom of the third that brought in SS Corey McGee (.290, 0, 4), who took over the position after last year's starter Bora Dugic (.200, 4, 18) was looking inadequate both offensively and defensively. June 1: Another month, another... round of Players of the Month! First up, the NL Rookie of the Month is the ill-fated geologist David A. Johnston (4-1, 3.81), who got called up at the end of April and put together a nice May: 4 starts, 1 shutout, 31.1 IP, and a 3-0 record. He only struck out 8 guys, which is a warning sign, but his control was good with 8 walks allowed (which also underscores how he was putting everything into play in front of him). Johnston was the 25th overall pick - 1st pick, 2nd round - of the 1971 draft but never appeared on any top prospect lists and isn't in the Expos' internal top guys list either. But hey, it was a good month! In the AL the top rookie was Guardians SS Bob Iger (.274, 7, 21), who has generally come from out of nowhere to provide Cleveland with a potential middle-of-the-order hitter to replace OF Brandon Anderson (.316, 6, 32), who they traded away to the Yankees last month in a cost-cutting move. Eiger hit .276 with 3 HRs and 12 RBIs. He does play short so there's that. I guess it was a slow month for AL rookies. Eiger was the #90 prospect in midyear 1973 but didn't appear on the top 100 list this season. The top NL Pitcher and the early Cy Young favorite is the Padres' Stephen Tyler (9-2, 2.45). No, his name is not in fact Stephen Aerosmith. He had a 6-1 record for the month with 4 complete games including a shutout in 7 starts, 59 IP, and a K/W ratio of 27/18. What won him this award was the wins and a 2.14 ERA, which, granted, appears to have mostly come from good hit-luck (a .228 BABIP this month) and sequencing (his LOB% was 82.5%) but hey, 6-1, 2.14 is mighty nice. This is Tyler's first Pitcher of the Month award although he did win the NL Rookie of the Month award twice in 1972 - for May and August - in a season where he won Rookie of the Year. Detroit's Jimmy Goddard (9-3, 2.71) got off to a so-so start with a 3-2, 4.36 April. Scouts said he was just shaking off rust. Well, he sure shook it off in the month of May. Goddard finished 6-1, 1.75 with 56.2 IP, 41 Ks, and a .230 OAA for the month. He completed 3 of 7 starts and got his first shutout. It's still going to be hard for Goddard to replicate what he did last year (24-4, 2.07) but he doesn't have to reach those heights to repeat as the AL Cy Young winner. This is Goddard's 3rd Pitcher of the Month, having won it for last June as well as for April of 1972. To the surprise of absolutely nobody who was paying attention, the Cubs' 1B Antonio Lopez (.328, 10, 27) walked away with even more hardware, earning the Player of the Month with a .370, 7, 16 line where he also scored 19 runs and posted an OPS over 1.000 (1.082). Lopez won 2 Players of the Week and that's practically a recipe for PotM. He won the MVP back in 1969 and is the odds-on favorite to win it again this year. FINALLY. the AL Player of the Month is a new entrant to these lists: Brewers OF Steve Winwood (.323, 8, 31). Winwood has been hitting 4th for a surprisingly potent Milwaukee lineup. He went .378, 5, 18 last month with 22 runs scored in 24 games. Although the Berewers have hit the skids the past couple weeks, falling to 21-23 and tied for last place in the AL East, it's not because of their hitting: they're 2nd in the league only to the Yankees in runs scored with a major league best .297 BA and .367 OBP. This is only Winwood's 2nd full season in the major leagues; he played too much in 1972 to qualify for rookie status last year when he hit .273, 18, 83. The 26 year old English singer/songwriter has clearly taken the next step. June 1: The Guardians traded IF Mitt Romney (.271, 0, 8) to the Cardinals for 3B Pat Jones (.193, 2, 10) and minor league IF Jason Williams (.185, 0, 5 at AAA Tulsa). The Romneybot was more or less without a position with the surprising play of Bob Iger (see above!), which, sure, why not, and Pat Jones does fill a hole at 3rd base technically speaking. Are the Guardians trying to get worse? June 1: The Yankees have the best record in the AL East (30-20) and the 2nd best in all of baseball... but they did lose 20 so here we go. They've got a heeeck of an offensive game this year, leading the AL in runs and that's without DH Ernesto Garcia (.238, 14, 32) for 19 of their first 50 games. The pitching has been pretty bad - 9th in starter ERA (4.28), 7th in bullpen ERA (3.98) - and it's not like they're playing in a high-offense stadium (Shea Stadium while the old Yankeee Stadium gets renovated) - so this is some crazy stuff. Of the top 4 guys, Santos Rodriguez (3-5, 6.66) has been baaaaaaaad ever since he came over to the AL from Atlanta last year - 9-12, 6.03 overall. I didn't want to make a move but what the heck, it's the 20 loss review, so I'll drop in newly promoted Epeli Ganilau (1-2, 1.12) and we'll see if the Fijian can make it happen. Yeah, it's a first place team and you don't normally make a move like this but oh maaaaaaaan Rodriguez has been bad and he hasn't even been getting better lately. Archie Manning (1-2, 4.11, 7 Sv) seems like he's not ready for prime time just yet. There really isn't anyone to slot in there though and I guess here I'm mostly stuck waiting for a trade to come up. Just looking down the lineup man by man, pretty much everyone is playing well and if there's any controversy, it's, like, in LF where Adam Groves (.348, 6, 21) is clearly blowing things up as the starter but Armin Shimerman (.317, 4, 22) also deserves PT somehow. We did trade away RF Phil Hartman (.239, 2, 19), who promptly went into a slump upon joining Milwaukee, so I guess that makes things look a little more high-flying than you'd think... but this offense is monstrous at basically every position and I weep for the rest of the league. June 1: Angels 1B and reigning batting champ Chris Seek (.352, 6, 21) is on a heater. He went 2-5 today to extend his hitting streak to 20 games. Unfortunately, neither of those hits did much and his team lost to the Tigers 7-2 but hey, it's been a good month. June 1: The Expos' big season continues but today it came with a side of pain. In the middle of a 2-0 shutout of the Braves by David A. Johnston (5-1, 3.27), LF Harry Turtledove (.367, 7, 32) crashed into the wall to make a big catch. He had to be taken off immediately and it turns out he's going to miss the next month with an intercostal injury. Turtledove was an early MVP candidate so the team's going to need to really step it up in his stead. June 2: The news on Angels CL Montay Luiso (4-3, 1.36, 6 Sv) is... medium to bad. He'll miss at least the next month with a herniated disc in his back. This is worse than normal, I'd say, because the rest of the bullpen outside of him has been teeeeeeeeeerrible. This is so bad, I'm just going to try to sign former Mets guy Jeremiah Vardaman (1-1, 7.04 in 3 appearances this year) off his couch. He was pretty okay for the Mets in 1973: 4-4, 3.19, 30 G, 4 GS, 59.1 IP, 39 Ks. He's 35 and isn't going to be dropping into the closer role - California will need to handle that via committee - but literally everyone else in the bullpen was carrying an ERA north of 5. June 2: Speaking of guys signed off the couch, the Twins announced they came to terms with OF Alonzo Huanosta (.192, 1, 5), most recently with Cincinnati. Huanosta was proooobably just a victim of numbers and losses in Cincy; he still hit well when he was healthy last year - .273, 5, 23 in 48 G - and should give the team veteran OF help while and after Ernie Griffin (.295, 0, 10) rehabs from injury. June 2: Last game of the week and there's a review! It's the Cardinals, who just lost to the Padres - no crime - and have the 2nd best record in the NL East behind the Expos, who they're way ahead of in terms of games played (the Cards are 27-20, the Expos 26-16 with the game in hand today). Montreal has had that insane schedule the past couple years. ANYWAY this is not about les Expoix. The Cardinals... are weird. They sure look like an offensive powerhouse but they're dead last in the NL (and somehow not all of baseball, as the Rangers have scored 11 fewer runs than the Cards' 173). They're riding a surprising (at least to me) pitching staff. So... yeah, they just got Ricardo Gomez (1-0, 1.20) back from the hamstring issues that shut him down in mid-March. Even before he was back all of their starters had a sub-4 ERA. Bullpen-wise the only guy who's even close to struggling is Jesus de la Cruz (1-1, 4.85), who's coming off of a great year with this team and Chicago (5-1, 2.49) so he's not going anywhere. Has C John Stuart (.226, 4, 13) taken a step backward at age 33? He sure doesn't seem like an ideal guy to hit 2nd right now. I think I'll drop him in the order and let him find his hitting stroke. Of course he's not going anywhere in terms of starts. If SS Angelo Serrano (.267, 0, 11) doesn't watch out he's gonna get displaced by the Romneybot (.271, 0, 8). Serrano's been... fine, although that average is pretty empty, but Romney is clearly the better defender. He also has a barrel rate of 0%, which tells me he's got zero of of the power. I'll leave Serrano in as the starter but Mittens is mixing in more and more. CF Jim James (.223, 2, 7) isn't hitting this year and is only fine as a defender. I recalled Sonny Burwell (.257, 2, 5 at AAA Tulsa) to spell him more. Burwell's been a 4th OFer and backup CF for a few years in St. Louis but he's not a good platoon mate with James since they both bat lefty. Ryan Ashbaker (.375, 0, 3) is off to a good start in 24 at-bats and is playing vs LHP but he's 30 and not a super great defender. They do have a couple of guys who might drop in there, including the #61 overall prospect (as yet unnamed) (.294, 2, 6 at AAA Tulsa), who earned a promotion from AA Arkansas after a .378, 10, 30 start down there(!).
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