Alt-1922: Home Stretch!

 

For starters, The AL won the All-Star Game 4-1 on the strength of a Babe Ruth home run. 

When last we left things, the Yankees were 7 1/2 games back, in third place just behind Newark. The Red Sox, who had gone 20-7 over the previous month, looked like they were cruising to an easy pennant. The defending AL champion Yankees had just gone 14-13 over that same stretch and seemed to be slogging their way to a 2nd place finish if they were lucky, but they were closer to 7th place than 1st.

At the start of play today, 1 September 2022, they are only 1 1/2 games behind Boston and much closer to the Sox than the now-3rd-place Spiders. In theory I should be happy about this, and in practice I am, but I nevertheless can't feel a bit disappointed--as it turns out this has been (or at least felt) less like the Yankees catching fire and the Red Sox coming back to Earth vs. the Yankees playing a bit better and the Red Sox collapsing.

Since 9 July, the Yankees have gone 28-18, a .609 pace that translates to 99 wins over a full season. That's good but far short of what I was speculating might be necessary at the end of the last post. Boston has gone 21-23 over that stretch, though. Cleveland, meanwhile, has gone 29-15, including a 12-game winning streak that's landed them 4 1/2 games out and in third place at this writing. The time since the ASG adds up to over a quarter of the season, so this is no mere blip. The frustration here is that the Yankees had actually caught the Red Sox and have spent a couple of days in first place (by 1/2 game) before dropping back, and could just as easily be up by 2-3 games at this point--they're 5 games off of their Pythag pace. 

Just a quick note about the Yankees' farm teams--the Maple Leafs are also sitting in 2nd place, a game behind Rochester. The Pelicans are in 8th place, per usual, but have played at a .540 pace in the past two months. I did something of a house cleaning for New Orleans rather than letting the AI do its thing, and since then the Pels have been much improved. 

The Yankees led the league in OPS in both July and August, though this was no change from their May-June slump. The pitching did turn around, though--the Yankees gave up 5.4 runs per game in May+June, which dropped to 4.05 in July + August. It's not completely obvious to me what drove that, though it's likely to have been an addition by subtraction thing of getting Alexander out of the starting rotation and really just doing mop-up work until he (hopefully) got himself sorted. I've been using Vance a lot more, driven by his ratings starting to come way up. Faber turned a slow decline into a slow improvement, and Luque has been pretty steady. Ruether and Pennock took Rixey and Alexander's rotation spots and Ruether in particular has pitched well. 

So, we'll see how the final month of Alt-1922 plays out. Rosters expand in about a week, I'm not totally sure who to bring up. If Toronto is still in the hunt for the IL pennant I probably won't bring up anyone yet...

All-Star Break, Alt-1922

It's July 9th, 1922. The All-Star teams have just been announced, with the game scheduled for the 11th at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Three Yankees have been selected for the starting nine--Louis Santop, Harry Heilmann, and Ty Cobb. Riggs Stephenson, the 1921 AL Rookie of the Year, will be making the start at second base, Pete Kilduff of the Athletics ran away with the voting for AL shortstop, and the other three position players are all from the Red Sox: Larry Gardner, Tris Speaker, and of course Babe Ruth. Bill Force of the Spiders will be making the start for the AL.  Eight teams have contributed to the 18-man All-Star roster, with the Browns and White Sox unrepresented.  

Rogers Hornsby had the most votes on NL ballots. He's joined by two Giants, two Robins, and two members of the Buffalo Blues (including the shockingly bearded rookie phenom Lou Gehrig). Jimmy Johnston of the Phillies and Heavy Johnson of the Rustlers round out the NL starting nine. Nobody from the Reds or Orioles is on the team. 

The AL leads the series 3 games to 2, with each league undefeated in its home park. That would seem to point to the NL having the advantage, in theory. 

Meanwhile, despite having three All-Stars, the Yankees are in a pretty deep hole. At this writing, with their game finished but the other MLB games yet to occur, they find themselves in 3rd place-- 8 games behind Boston and a game behind Newark. They followed up their terrible 13-16 May with a good-but-not-amazing June (15-11) and are an uninspiring 3-5 in July. They're on a 90-win pace, which could end up putting them 10 or more games back at the end of the season.  The Red Sox, meanwhile, ripped off a 12-game winning streak in June to put themselves very much in the AL driver's seat. 

At first blush, the problem seems to be the pitching. The team sits atop most batting categories, per usual. However, it's down in 8th or 9th place in a lot of the pitching categories including ERA, opponent's batting average, and (shockingly!) home runs allowed.  This last one is particularly dismaying since the Yankees hit so many home runs there wouldn't seem to be that many left for the other teams to hit. 

I think some of this is a park effect, though. The Yankees are only 3rd in OPS in road games and only 6th in OBP. Meanwhile, they're 4th in road ERA and OPS against. So, not terrible?  Meanwhile, they're dead last in home ERA and 9th in OPS against. Nevertheless, the Yanks are a very good 27-13 at home and a really not good 22-26 on the road. 

Looking at individual players, there are a few folks who I think would be drawing the ire of the fans. Most obvious is Pete Alexander, who is looking like he might finish below replacement level and has been relegated to mop-up duty. Meanwhile, the players the Yankees traded to the Phillies for him are doing just fine: Hank Robinson is on track for a 20-win season and Jesse Barnes is doing a perfectly credible league-average job. The pitching staff as a whole is suffering, too--only George Mogridge has an ERA+ higher than 100 (and he's only at 104). Faber's looking at a 4-WAR season, but this has not been a good season for the staff.

Among the batters, Cobb has the most obvious drop off, though that's because he hit an insane and historic .428 in 1921. He still is projecting to 6+ WAR. Heilmann's WAR is projected to be 7.6, which is even better than 1921 when he also hit over .400. Peckinpaugh is also projected at this point to have a better 1922 than 1921. The biggest real drop is Eddie Collins, who's spent a lot of time on the IL. There are some other small drops among the hitters, but this seems to be on the pitchers.

Once the All-Star break is over, there will be about 74 games left. Winning 2/3 of them will get the Yankees to 98 wins, which seems unlikely to be enough without the Red Sox cooperating. Winning 3/4 would get the Yankees to about 104 wins, which could be enough but might not be. We'll have to see if I can get the Yankees going in the second half or if it'll be an October 1922 spent listening to baseball on the wireless.