After a few months of real-life excitement (including a pause to follow the MLB home stretch and post-season here in meatspace), I finished off the Alt-1917 regular season. The Yankees closed to 2.5 behind Boston in the last two weeks of the season, but a couple of tough losses to Washington set the stage for a series loss to the Red Sox at Fenway to put things out of reach. In the end, the Yankees finished 4 games behind a Boston team that was just too good (and seriously under-performed to make it even that close).
The Sox will face the Phillies in the World Series. After leading the NL through most of the season, Pittsburgh faltered a bit in the second half while the Phillies played better than anyone else in MLB after the All Star Game. The Phillies also outperformed their run differential by 5 games while the Pirates underperformed by 4--more than enough to change the results.
I'll get into individual performances in a later post, but suffice to say for now that the Yankees dominated the offensive leader boards (except for batting average) and were absent from the pitching ones. I confess I didn't pay terribly close attention to the NL leaders, but Alexander and Rixey pitched very well for the Phils, and Cravath and another Phillie who's name is escaping me led the NL in home runs.
I may play through the World Series before my next post here, so I'll put my prediction in now--Boston in 5. I'm probably biased by watching every AL game and basically no NL games, but the Red Sox seem too good.
Standings below, click to make it a readable size.
