Skip to main content

Week 17 Summary


Week 17 is in the books, the week of twelve doubleheaders as all of a sudden teams are putting on a rush to get those games played. The New York Giants now find themselves with the fewest games played (85), but they have three doubleheaders this upcoming week. In the AL, Chicago and Detroit have played their twenty games against each other already, as have Cleveland/Milwaukee and Philadelphia/Washington. It looks that in the AL there are plenty of cross country road trips left to be completed. The NL schedule is a bit more balanced than that, but all teams are down to ~50 games remaining and everybody seems to be fighting for something.

Nap Lajoie
Chicago leads the AL in ERA, are second in hitting, and lead in fielding. They are glad to be done with Detroit though - the Tigers won five of their final seven outings over these past two weeks. Boston remains in second place, but only by percentage points over Detroit. The Americans swept a doubleheader on Thursday and Chicago lost, a game-and-a-half swing, although they turned around and gave it all back the following day. The Tigers pitching has been red hot over the past month or so and they now have a better ERA than Boston, but I don’t think either is going to catch Chicago. Baltimore is still holding onto fourth place, but fifth-place Philadelphia might be starting to show signs of life after a mostly poor showing this summer. The Athletics lead the AL in hitting but their pitching comes in last and that is a difficult way to succeed.

Pittsburgh remained atop of the NL with the league-best pitching and they are second in hitting. They are temporarily missing two of their main starters but have continued on unbowed. Philadelphia remained a strong second as they lead the NL in hitting and are third in pitching. The two teams do have seven games remaining against each other, so nothing is guaranteed. Brooklyn has been pretty uneven over the past few weeks, but they remain a strong team and are not to be overlooked. Somehow New York has climbed into fourth place by dint of strong pitching and a run of timely hitting. Boston would like to be able to get back up into the upper half of the NL, but being last in hitting and last in runs scored is tough to overcome, even if your team is second in pitching.

Cy Young
Nap Lajoie (.435) is still well over .400 and now finds himself almost 50 percentage points ahead of second-place John Anderson (.386). Lajoie leads in runs (83), RBI's (102) and in hits (157) and is second in doubles (35) to Anderson's 46 and is second in homeruns (12) to Pop Foster's 13. There are three other Athletics batters in the top ten in hitting: Lave Cross (.371), Harry Davis (.348), and Socks Seybold (.337). Cy Young (21-6, 1.26) … I am going to have to research each of these six losses. They weren’t all shutout losses, but it probably wouldn’t require that many carefully placed runs to see Cy with no losses.

The New York offensive surge has been keyed by outfield duo Kip Selbach (.392) and George Van Haltren (.388), with Jesse Burkett (.388) sandwiched in between for the batting title. Topsy Hartsel leads in runs (80), Ed Delahanty leads in RBI's (78), Burkett leads in hits (161), and Selbach leads in doubles (29). Sam Crawford leads the NL in homeruns (10), just ahead of Burkett (8) and six others with seven. Christy Mathewson (18-11, 2.11) continues to try and drag New York up to the top of the league.

Ban Johnson, AL League President
There are ten doubleheaders this upcoming week so everyone will be over 90 games played in a few days and several will reach the 100 game mark before weeks end. Injuries are going to have an effect, as some key players will be getting healthy soon while others will come up lame. Detroit is the hot team right now, but did they peak too early? Who will rise and who will fade as the season winds down.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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 i...
Post a Comment
Read more

1901 World Series and Finale

World Series Game One, Tuesday, October 8, 1901 The heat of the long hot Chicago summer had broken just in time for the commencement of the inaugural World Series and it was a beautiful Tuesday afternoon at South Side Park in Chicago. The home team, the Chicago White Stockings, had not played an official game in ten days, but were happy for the time off and were happy to have catcher Billy Sullivan back and able to play after his finger injury in the last week of the season plus pitcher Roy Patterson had rejoined the club after he had been allowed to return home before the end of the season. The visitors, the Pittsburgh Pirates, had just completed their regular season two days previous, but were happy for the day off on Monday and were ready to go as well. South Side Park, Chicago IL There was a concern as to whether this event would ever happen as both the leagues were still at war with each other, but both leagues, both teams, and the players all saw an opportunit...
1 comment
Read more

Week 11 Summary

The pennant races in both leagues really tightened up last week and this week they became even tighter. In the NL, Pittsburgh and Brooklyn took turns knocking each other out of first place over the past week and at the end of the week, they both found that someone else was in first place. Philadelphia has been on a tear and has won its last nine consecutive games and currently sits atop the NL, but only by the slimmest of leads. Chicago is in fourth place in the NL, but has lost their last four and they are four games under .500 - someone out of those bottom five teams are going to go on a hot streak here eventually, but I don't think any of those teams are going to challenge the three at the top. 1901 Milwaukee Brewers In the AL, it is one of those anomalies where Boston has the better winning percentage but is one-half game behind Chicago in the standings. These two have been trading the top spot for the past two weeks, but if either of them should falter a red-hot Balt...
Post a Comment
Read more