Week 5 is in the
books and league play is in full swing in both leagues. The Midwestern NL teams
have just started their first swing through the east and the AL east coast
teams will be making their first trip west this coming week. All the teams are
still jockeying for players and injuries are having an impact as well. You can
start to be able to identify the haves and the have-not's in both leagues, the
difference being the teams that have multiple good pitchers.
1901 Cincinnati Reds |
In the AL, Boston
sits atop the pack after just completing four wins in a row versus Baltimore,
last week's leader. Boston has shown good pitching and good hitting up and down
the lineup, and mostly, they have been able to avoid disasters along the way. Chicago
and Detroit both beat up on Milwaukee and Cleveland pretty good their first go-round, although the games were much closer the second time. Baltimore is
currently reeling but should level off, while the remainder all suffer from
inconsistent starting pitching and hitting. It is still early and the gap
between the top and the bottom isn’t that great, so it is still possible for
the bottom teams to make a move, or, failing that, hurt somebody else's
chances.
Pittsburgh and
Philadelphia have dominated the NL so far and have been swapping the lead back
and forth over this past week. Both teams feature strong hitting and pitching
(they are one and two in both team categories) and so far have been the cream
of the crop. Cincinnati is a bit of a surprise and St. Louis is on a winning
streak, but Boston and Brooklyn have both been a bit of a disappointment so
far. Chicago and New York are both struggling and that may yet be their fate in
this replay.
Cincinnati Manager Bid McPhee |
Pittsburgh's Ginger
Beaumont (.407) leads the NL in batting average, just ahead of Ed
Delahanty (.402), but Delahanty also leads in runs (23) (tied with teammate
Roy
Thomas), RBI's (22) and hits (37). Kip Selbach
leads in doubles (7), Jimmy
Sheckard and Elmer Flick
both have five triples, and Sheckard and Dan McGann
both have three homeruns. Doc White
(6-0) and Jock
Menefee (5-1) lead the NL pitchers in wins.
In the AL, the
Athletics have three hitters hitting over .400: Nap Lajoie
(.449), Dave
Fultz (.412), and Lave Cross
(.403), but the A's are still mired in sixth place because of pitching woes.
Milwaukee's John
Anderson checks in at .419, but leads in runs scored (23), hits (39), and
doubles (12). Detroit's Ducky
Holmes still leads in RBI's (25), there are six players tied for the lead
in triples (4), and Baltimore's Jimmy
Williams leads in homeruns (3), ahead of eight with two. Cy Young
(6-1) and Detroit's Joe Yeager
(5-0) and Ed
Siever (5-1) lead in pitching wins.
It is interesting to
watch the better pitchers begin to assert their authority as games have started
to tighten up over the past few weeks. The runs scored are still way down, but
the ERA's are slightly up while the league batting averages are actually quite
close. Currently, half the players have a third error number on their hitting
card, while the remainder have two error numbers. Maybe that should have been 4
and 3 … I will never even get near the actual number of errors. I have too many
games with no errors committed. At this point, I am not going to go through and
redo batting cards, but it would be interesting to see this set if APBA should
ever do a re-release of this season (or any of these much older seasons).
League Park, Cincinnati |
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