Cloverland Leagues: 26 April Update

Today's an off-day, so it seems like a particularly good time for an update. I was due to post one anyhow. :)

Since the last update, Boston has been absolutely on fire, going 12-1 with all 12 of those wins in a still-active streak. Here--let me post the standings:

Boston going 12-1 combined with Cleveland scuffling and the Yankees treading water has put the Red Sox in excellent shape. Of course, we're still in April.  Elsewhere, the standings haven't shuffled too much--the best teams last time (Pirates, Atlanta) have continued to play well, the teams struggling last time (San Diego, the entire AL Central) have continued to struggle.  I will call out Charlotte as hanging in there, taking 2 of 3 from Atlanta and Arizona before getting swept by the Pirates just before this post.

Boston's streak has been built on sweeps of the White Sox, Twins, Blues, and Rays. Of these teams only Tampa has a winning record, but it's early enough that that may be tautological. Their next three series are against the Yankees, A's, and Rangers, the first and last of which are playing well.  Beyond Boston, the Mets have also turned it on, with 8 wins out of the last 9 as they swept Colorado and Chicago and took 3 of 4 from the Reds.

Looking at individual statistics, Chipper Jones continues to lead the NL in batting but has "cooled off" to only .414. Meanwhile, Carlos Correa has been on an amazing hot streak (do I hear trash cans getting banged?) and is batting .453 on the season--.650 with 13 hits in the past week.  As far as the other Triple Crown stats, George Brett has 15 HR and 37 RBI. Ichiro Suzuki has a 23-game hitting streak active. Sid Fernandez has a 1.26 ERA on the season, several folks have 4 pitching wins at this point. Randy Johnson has an astonishing 81 Ks in 39 innings pitched (yet he's only 3-2). Johnson is now on pace for "only" 506 Ks. The projected batting records have also come down, though are still way above record pace--Brett is on pace for 94 HR and 231 RBI.

As a bit of a reality check on things, the league is averaging 5.4 runs per team per game. In 2019 the real number was 4.83, and only once in history was the number as high as 5.4 (it was 5.5 in 1930). So my expectation of a high-scoring league is being met as of right now. Again, it could settle down...

Cloverland Leagues: 12 April Update

It's the second Sunday of the Cloverland Leagues season. I'm going to try two different ways to post updates--first, I've made a Twitter account (@CloverlandLeag1) where I've been posting daily scores and performances of note. I'm also planning to do weekly, broader updates here. Knowing how I am, it'll probably be a mix of in-game and real-life perspectives, but I'll try to keep them separate. :)

The game itself has been running fine, though I did have to replay one day a few times because it kept crashing. Frustratingly, it would crash after playing that day's games, so it in theory had an affect on the final results--when I resolved things, the Yankees had definitely lost a game that they won the previous 3 times they played. But so it goes.  I'd been anticipating an unrealistically good year for the hitters, and I think in the early going that's being borne out. I can almost see why that might happen--every team has great hitters (these are [almost] all historically-great teams),  but even the best teams have some so-so starters. So, great lineups are hitting every day, sometimes against iffy pitchers. However, there are also ridiculous performances by pitchers on occasion--Randy Johnson struck out 21 on Opening Day against the 1976 Philadelphia Phillies. Since the single-game record is 20, Johnson's performance seems...dubious.  But it's fun, which is all we can ask for.

Standings:

It's obviously early, but I suppose it's also pushing 10% of the way into the season. I'm not sure how seriously to take performances so far, especially since the only games I've seen are the Yankees games. If I had to guess, though, I guess I'd believe the Pirates and Atlanta are "real", and that the Angels aren't.  I also find it hard to believe that Cincinnati, the Mets, and Yankees will finish under .500. We'll see.

Obviously, individual statistics and leaders are also (presumably) not (necessarily) where they'll end up, but for the record Chipper Jones is leading the NL with a .476 average (Michael Young leads the AL at .465), Hanley Ramirez of your Charlotte Knights leads the NL with 8 HR so far (Bogaerts, Brett, and Kepler have 7 to co-lead the AL), George Brett leads the AL with 21 RBI (Richie Hebner has 19 for the NL), and Richie Hebner has an OPS of 1.596 to lead the NL (John Olerud has 1.513 to lead the AL).

As far as pitching, Jack McDowell and Jim Palmer both have 3 wins (many folks are tied with 2), Sid Fernandez leads the NL with a 0.71 ERA (James Shields has an ERA of 1.06 to lead the AL), and Gene Garber and Joe Smith each have 5 saves and lead their respective leagues. Somehow, 11 games into the season, Kevin Brown has two shutouts and Randy Johnson has 48 Ks (in 24 innings).

Projecting over an entire season at this point is always folly, but always fun. So at this point Ramirez is on pace for 109 HR, Brett is on pace for 286 RBI, Garry Maddox is on pace for 286 hits, Edgar Renteria is on pace for 41 triples, Garber and Smith are on pace for 68 saves, Johnson is on pace for 533 strikeouts, and David Wells is on pace to give up 123 HR. All of these, needless to say, would be all-time records in real life.

On to the next week!