Monday, March 22, 2021

Alt-1916: A quick post about the NL

 It'll be a quick post because I honestly haven't been paying terribly close attention to the Senior Circuit. The Boston Rustlers, winners of the 1914 and 1915 World Series in this timeline, have been in the driver's seat during the 1916 season thus far as well.  Brooklyn, the pennant winner in real life, had a short stint atop the league, but Boston was never far behind and when Brooklyn had a mediocre June they were able to step back up to the top. 

The NL batting leaders are, honestly, mostly people I'd never heard of other than HR leader Gavvy Cravath. Max Flack of the Giants leads the league in batting at .333 and real-life leader Jake Daubart is nowhere to be seen on the leader boards. A presumably-clean Hal Chase on the Buffalo Blues is in the hunt for various awards and leads the league in hits.  Rabbit Maranville leads in WAR via whatever formula it is that seems to make anyone who can play shortstop well into a WAR leader. 

Pitching-wise, it's more familiar faces like Pete Alexander and Tom Hughes leading the league in important categories. 

Taking a step back and looking at the former Federal League teams, the Newark Peppers are hanging around in 7th place and only a few games below .500 thanks to a recent 4-game winning streak. The Packers with their 22-game losing streak are deep in last. This is a bit of a reversal of fortune compared to 1915 for these teams. Similarly, Buffalo is playing...not well, but well enough to be a long-ish winning streak from .500 while Baltimore is pretty firmly in last place. And also similarly, this is a reversal from last year, though Buffalo escaped the cellar. 

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