One-third through 1918

 

I feel like I'm flying through the season--I guess that's what happens when you play 3-4 games a day. The Yankees are 1/3 of the way through their schedule, with other teams within 1-2 games of that. Since the last post, the three AL leaders have cooled off a bit, with the 4th-place Browns almost having caught the 3rd-place Spiders. The Yankees are actually in 1st place, with a slim lead over Boston and Cleveland just a bit further back. The Yanks dropped the most recent series they played (against the Spiders), but obviously have been playing well before then. 

The Yankees have been getting it done on offense, but their pitching has also been surprisingly (to me) excellent, with a league-leading ERA. I'm not sure if it's smoke and mirrors, but Pennock and Caldwell in particular are pitching very well. What concerns me right now is injuries--Reuther, Barnes, and Thomas have all spent time on the IL, and Pennock had to pulled from a game due to injury (though he was back the next day). The hitters have continued as in 1917, with Zimmerman serving as a great addition. The infield defense has been great, and the Yankees are averaging more than a double play per game, which is an amazing contrast to 1916 and certainly is much less frustrating. 

The other recent news is the signing of Louis Santop. This was driven by Pat Collins just not hitting at all. He started something like 1-for-30, and after something like 50-60 at-bats still only had maybe 5 hits. I started getting concerned that it might affect his development, but the team only has 3 catchers in the entire organization. So I cast around and realized a few Negro Leaguers weren't in the simulation, so I added them. Santop is a catcher, who I made an offer to (and who signed), and I also added Cristobal Torriente, who's a monster hitter and who I also made an offer to. Torriente knows he's a monster hitter, though, and wants to be the best-paid player in the game. So he's had offers but is still unsigned...

Over in the NL, the Phillies seem to be settling into spending the most time in first place, with a few teams (mostly the Rustlers) giving chase. 

End of April 1918

All right, just a quick note here before work starts. So I'm again going to go without looking at the stats, though I think I have a decent sense of what they say? 

We've gotten to the end of April 1918, teams have played 25-27 games. At the moment, the AL is split into a trio of teams playing roughly .700 ball (the Spiders, Yankees, and Red Sox), a mass of teams within a game or two .500 (presumably they'll differentiate as the season wears on), and the awful, awful Packers. Just a few game days before the end of April they were playing .154 ball, about a 135-loss pace. They've picked it up just a touch since then, but are still playing jaw-droppingly badly. 

The Yankees have been fun to watch/manage so far this year. At this writing they've won 9 in a row and are firing on all cylinders. Wally Pipp just won Player of the Week, Herb Pennock has thrown a couple of shutouts, and the defense has been good. I don't know how much of this can be laid at the feet of Heinie Zimmerman (not the pitching, obviously), but having a great-fielding second baseman who also can hit .300 has certainly helped a lot. There's a lot of the season left to go, and as noted the Yankees aren't running away with anything, but they're playing as well as I could have hoped.

I keep saying I need to pay closer attention to the NL, and that is still true. That league is much more bunched, with the Cardinals at the top at the moment just ahead of the Rustlers, Giants, among others. While the early going in the AL looks like it's setting up for a 3-team race, the NL looks like a total free-for-all. 

Depending on how the season plays out for the Packers (and the other former Feds), I could see it having some repercussions for the worldbuilding around the next round of expansion, too, which I'm still imagining for 1927 or so, which would put it at something like...2025-2026 given my pace of play? I guess I have time to think about it. :) 

Thoughts from 1917 about a third major league

 

Here's another piece that I thought I'd stick here so I don't lose it.  I actually ran across it a while ago while working on making Omaha's Vinton Park. It's a piece from the Omaha Bee from...October 7th? 1917. At least I think that's right--there's no date on the top of the page, and the most recent articles on this page are dated October 6th.

In any case, there's a discussion about the way the war might affect the minor leagues in the coming 1918 season, which is of local interest since Omaha played in the Western League, and it wasn't clear if that league would survive and/or if the Omaha team would move up or down a level. 

What's of most interest to me here is that one of the drivers is what happens to the major leagues. There was some amount of intrigue going on with the American League in general at this point, which isn't mentioned in the article, but they claim in the article that Ban Johnson (president of the American League) thinks a third major league was on the way. The further claim, though not ascribed to Johnson, is that such a league would have teams in Providence, Baltimore, Toronto, Buffalo, Newark, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Louisville. I've already got c. 1917 parks made for many of these cities, and Providence and Toronto were next on my list. So, I suppose I should hit Columbus after that...