Friday was an off-day, so it's time for another update.
I was actually thinking I wanted another update anyhow, and hadn't quite gotten around to one in the last 2-3 days. Taking a Doylist look at things, the runs per game (and home runs) are rather too high. I'm not sure if it's one problem or two different ones. It's worse in the AL than the NL, which maybe is DH-related? Not sure. I think there are also too many strikeouts.
In any case, let's just pull out a few players. We're very close to one-third of the way through the season. David Cone is 4-4 with a 5.35 ERA (which is actually good for a 106 ERA+) and 12.7 K/9. In the real 1998, his ERA+ was 125. It's not unreasonable to think he'd suffer when facing stiffer competition in a league of all-time greats. His real 1998 K/9 was 9.1, though. So he's striking out more than 33% more batters. Kevin Millwood of Atlanta is 4-3 with an ERA+ of 92 and 12.6 K/9. His ERA+ in real 1998 was 102 and he had 8.4 K/9. Once again, he's striking out more people in this all-time league than in real life. Turning to batters, Ichiro is hitting .398 with an OPS+ of 132 and a 16-HR pace. In real 2001 he had an OPS+ of 126 and 8 home runs. So, against all-time pitching staffs he's doing better than he did when he got to face a bunch of terrible staffs a bunch of times a year. I could go on, but you get the point. Maybe this is something I could go in and tweak (or could have gone in and tweaked) before starting the league, but so it goes. Maybe this is why the MLB-sponsored games are tournaments rather than full seasons--it works for seasons with a reasonable distribution of talent but not what I'm doing. In any case, it's perfectly fun and there's no real ground truth, so that's all fine. But I don't think it's "realistic" inasmuch as we can reasonably form expectations.
Anyway.
We've now got 48 games played, putting us close to 1/3 of the way. Here are the current standings:
Basically, the AL remains very close and the NL still looks pretty settled. In the AL Northeast, Boston and Cleveland have more or less maintained their previous pace while the Yankees went 8-4 to gain a share of first place. The Yankees' stretch included a frustrating sweep by the Angels where they were outscored 43-14 and had a bench-clearing brawl with the Angels in a game that was mercifully cut short by rain. Minnesota's mediocre 6-6 run was enough to let them gain sole possession of the AL Central, as the other teams have been playing abysmally badly (the Tigers and Brewers were 4-8, the White Sox 3-9). In the AL Southeast the standings have been kind of static, but the teams have (mostly) been playing well: Texas and Tampa Bay at 8-4 and Houston at 7-5. On the other hand, Baltimore had the worst stretch of any team in either league at 2-10. In the AL West, Seattle and Oakland inched closer to Kansas City but it was the Angels who had the best stretch at 8-4 during a difficult run of games (the Yankees, Red Sox, Blues, and Rays).
Over in the NL, the story seems to be that the teams in the drivers seats are still more or less there: Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and the Dodgers all extended their division leads. However, there does appear to be some action in the NL Central. St. Louis' lead has shrunk from 4 games to 2. They've played OK at 7-5 in the most recent 12-game stretch (the same as the Dodgers), but the Reds have been playing much better of late: 10-2 in the last 12 and with an overall Pythagorean record that would put them 1st in the division. I'd suspected they'd do well, so the question will be whether they can sustain this over the next stretch--it starts relatively easily against Florida and San Francisco before they host the juggernaut Atlanta team.
Turning to the individual statistics: The overall leader in batting is Manny Sanguillen at .416 and Eric Aybar leads the AL at .399. The leaders last time have cooled, with Bregman down to .390 and Clemente at .379. Bregman and Chipper Jones still lead their leagues in WAR, both by a significant margin. Pat Burrell has taken over the lead in the HR race, with 8 in the last 12 games and 11 in the last 15 games. Even that is not quite as hot as George Foster, who has 12 HR and 27 RBI in the last 14 games. Stargell leads the NL in HR with 20 to Foster's 19. 5 AL players have between 59-62 RBI, with Bret Boone leading the way. Matt Adams of the Cardinals leads the NL with 53.
As noted above, the NL seems to be a lower run scoring environment, or has better pitching, or something. So as you'd expect most of the pitching leaders are in the NL. Kevin Brown of the Marlins lowered his ERA to 1.20 since last time, giving up 1 run in 18 innings. John Smoltz also has his ERA down under 2.00 now. Jack McDowell leads the AL in ERA with 2.27 after a couple of nice starts including a 1-hit shutout of the Twins. Don Gullett and Garret Richards both have 8 wins to lead the majors (and their leagues). Kevin Brown of the Padres is now at 3.8 pitching WAR, with Smoltz not too far behind at 3.6. Meanwhile, the Randy Johnson strikeout parade continues, he's up to 163 after striking out 36 in 16 innings including tying his all-time record with another 21-K game.
That's all for now, see you at @CloverlandLeag1 on Twitter!
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