[powerpress]
Alright, now some things are starting to happen. Still looking at small sample sizes, but I’m just going to have to live with that for now.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are still leading the AL East with the biggest lead over 2nd place with a 3.5 game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays and also the biggest lead over the last place team in any division with the New York Highlanders being 6 games back.
Over in the AL Centreal it’s a tight race where the 1904 Washington Senators only up by a half game over the second place Cleveland Naps and 1.5 games over the Kansas City Royals. Even the last place White Sox are only 3.5 games back.
The AL West also has a tight race, at least at the top of things, where the Houston Astros have only a half game lead over the California Angels. But things really spread out from there.
In the National League East the Florida Marlins and New York Mets are tied for first with the Montreal Expos sitting 3 games back. My Braves are stinking it up sitting 5 games back of first place.
The NL Central has another tie at the top this time between the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds with the Brewers being right there only a half game back in 3rd.
The NL West finishes the Division Lead Tie Trifecta, where the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies both hold a 1.5 game lead over the Superbas and 2 game lead over the Padres. The Giants are stinking it up with a 3-9 record.
Otto Velez is proving that he might be good at baseball by leading Fake League Baseball in home runs, on base percentage, slugging, WAR, and total bases.
We have a new leader in batting average, where David DeJesus is hitting .489 beating out Louis Gonzalez and his .467 average. Lou Brock is somehow not leading the league in stolen bases anymore, only having 7 steals compared to the 8 that Heinie Smith, Eric Young Sr, and Billy Sunday all have. Jose Altuve leads in hits right now with 23, but also has the most at bats with 56.
On the pitching side of things we’re still pretty clumped up. 5 different pitchers all have 3 wins, while at least 7 pitchers have 4 loses. At least in ERA you have a clear leaders in Howie Reed who holds a slight edge at 0.55 over the .056 ERA that Cap Crowel and Byron McLaughlin have. Jesus Sanchez is leading the league in strikeouts with 25, while Tom Cheney is giving out free bases like crazy with his 16 walks.
Overall I can’t really say that I’m surprised with how things are going. I expect this Marlins team to be tough to beat over a season where they don’t have a post World Series winning fire sale. I expect that some of these teams are just true stinkers and will still finish way behind in the standings even when they’re only playing what might be the worst competition.
I’ll give it a couple weeks before I start to worry that my Boston Braves are just flat out bad though.
There It Is by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4519-there-it-is
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/