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.
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