It's 13 July, (Alt-)1925. The All-Star Game will be tomorrow, hosted by the reigning champions at Yankee Stadium. If there were Yankees doubters among any sportwriters or (anachronistic) hosts of wireless stations, they would presumably be silenced by now--after a 13-10 April the Yanks have gone 53-14, which is a 128-win pace. They are 1st or 2nd in basically every important batting or pitching category save extra base hits (4th), baserunning (8th), and home runs allowed (4th). They lead the Kansas City Packers, themselves on a 107-win pace, by 6.5 games.
There aren't as many Yankees on the batting leaderboards as you'd expect from that last paragraph. Eddie Collins is flirting with .400 and leads the AL in batting. Harry Heilmann is in 3rd, more about him in a bit. New acquisition Babe Ruth is only hitting about .300 but has a commanding lead in HR, SLG and RBI, along with a less commanding lead in runs scored and OPS. The pinstripes are all over the pitching leaderboards, though--four Yankees are in the top 7 in ERA, three are in the top 7 in WHIP, and Luque and Pennock are leading or near the top of many other categories.
The reason that there aren't more Yankees on the leaderboards has been the spate of injuries that has hit the team. Dazzy Vance had a pedestrian 5-4 record but was leading the league in strikeouts and K/9 before tearing an elbow tendon at the start of June. He'll be out for the year. Heilmann went down with a sore shoulder on June 24th, he's got another 3 weeks before he can return. Cobb missed 6 weeks and has of late been playing through a minor strain. Traynor missed most of May with a hip strain. Peckinpaugh missed 3 weeks. Others have had short or mild injuries. So, this is where the Yankees' depth really comes to the fore--Cy Williams and Oscar Charleston filled in for Cobb and now for Heilmann, with Williams mashing the ball and Charleston much closer to his old form than he was in 1924. Newt Allen and Tony Lazzeri ably filled in for Peckinpaugh and Traynor when they were both hurt, and since Traynor has been near replacement level this year they easily cleared a low bar. Vance's spot in the rotation has been itself in rotation--I went to a 5-man rotation this year after reading how it started to become dominant in 1925, but beyond Luque/Pennock/Fitzsimmons I've tried a few different folks. At the moment it's Rogan and Ruether, but they as well as Faber and Rixey have ERAs north of 5. Mendez, our ostensible closer, is also blowing a lot of saves, but he's been vulturing the wins. Since the Yankees have been scoring 7 runs per game, even ERAs of 5 will be OK much of the time.
Over in the NL, the Cardinals are on a 113-win pace and have an even bigger lead over their closest competitors (10.5 over the Orioles). They might be dominating the NL even more than the Yankees are dominating the AL, sitting in 1st place in practically every pitching/defense category while still sitting 1st or 2nd in most of the batting ones. The Cards, who look to be en route to their 4th pennant in 8 years (and second in a row), probably deserve a more in-depth post at some point looking at how they were constructed--other than Hornsby, Hoyt, and Combs, the rest of their major players were acquired by trade. Their minor-league system is ranked 14th of 20 (the Yankees are 1st), and the only name I recognize in their system is Lyn Lary (though Hoyt and Combs are both pretty young, and even Hornsby is only 29).
As far as the individual stats in the NL, Torriente's season is mirroring Ruth's: average around .300 but running away with the HR and RBI races. Al Simmons is above .400, and I don't think anyone has ever hit .400 in consecutive seasons. But it's Rogers Hornsby who leads the league in WAR and who's as good an MVP candidate as anyone in that league right now.
OK, time to post this thing!
