Week 5 Summary

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