BBFL Week 9: Pennant Race

Monday, June 07 2004 @ 10:42 AM EDT

Contributed by: Coach

Thanks to my front-running Toronto Walrus coming abruptly back to the pack the last couple of weeks, there are now eight teams within 10 games of first place in the BBFL Alomar division. Actually, my Delgado-less, Wagner-less club wasn't so bad this week; Scott's Austin Senators were simply better. The 8-2 final could have been worse — it was 11-1 for a while — so I'm grateful for "halving" two categories.

AGF, after trailing the SABR Magicians most of the week, pulled out a 6-6 tie on Sunday and is now looming large in my rear-view mirror, a mere two games back. The Eastern Shore Birds are third, only 4.5 games off the lead, after defeating the Thunderbirds 7-5. With a 12-0 whitewash of the melting-down Springfield Isotopes, the Moscow Rats made by far the biggest move of the week, from ninth to fourth. Red Mosquitos beat hannibal's cannibals 7-2 and are now tied for fifth with Mebion Glyndwr, who won a 7-5 decision over gashouse gorillas. Six more teams are within just four games of the final spot in the championship playoff bracket.

Here are the Alomar standings through 9 of 22 weeks:

  #  Team                      W-L-T      Pct    GB 
  1  Toronto Walrus           65-36-7    .634    --  
  2  AGF                      64-39-5    .616    2  
  3  Eastern Shore Birds      63-43-2    .593    4.5  
  4  Moscow Rats              61-43-4    .583    5.5  
  5  Red Mosquitos            57-45-6    .556    8.5  
  6  Mebion Glyndwr           58-46-4    .556    8.5   
  7  Baird Brain              57-47-4    .546    9.5   
  8  Chatsworth Halos         57-48-3    .542    10  
  9  hannibal's cannibals     52-46-10   .528    11.5  
 10  Billie's Bashers         55-50-3    .523    12 
 11  SABR Magicians           54-49-5    .523    12 
 12  Horse Field Hammers      54-50-4    .519    12.5 
 13  gashouse gorillas        49-54-5    .477    17   
 14  Austin Senators          46-52-10   .472    17.5 
 15  K-Town Mashers           44-56-8    .444    20.5 
 16  Springfield Isotopes     45-59-4    .435    21.5 
 17  Reykjavik Fish Candy     45-60-3    .431    22 
 18  Thunderbirds             42-62-4    .407    24.5 
 19  Garces_not_on_roids      39-67-2    .370    28.5  
 20  Jick's Rays              25-80-3    .245    42

There's another "race" this year — the one to avoid relegation — and it's not looking good for Jick's Rays, who were thumped 9-2 by the Horse Field Hammers and will need a torrid second half to dig themselves out of the cellar. 19th-place Garces_not_on_roids has been doing much better in the Roto stats than in Head-to-Head, so improvement there won't come as a surprise. On paper, before the season, the Thunderbirds' great pitching scared me, but Santana has been disappointing, Halladay missed a couple of turns, and now one of Justin's offensive stars (Chavez) is on the DL. Very tough luck. Our commissioner's team is still spinning its wheels in 17th after a 7-5 loss to Billie's Bashers.

I'm really not disappointed in the outcome of our matchup; these things happen. Albert Pujols' monster week was no surprise, but when David Eckstein's OBP is .750 and he slugs 1.000 against you, that spells trouble in the hitting rate stats. Greg Maddux tossed two games like his younger self, and my pitching, while not terrible, simply couldn't keep up. All I can do is tip my cap to the Senators; I'm not ready to blow up my team just yet. As with the Jays, the Walrus goes as Delgado goes, and if Carlos comes back healthy, we'll be fine. Also reminiscent of my favourite AL team, if we can endure this period of bad luck (coincidental slumps, injuries and hot opponents) there will be better days ahead. Maybe we can get back in gear this week, but Gwyn gets two starts from the new and improved Ben Sheets and has that Guerrero kid in his lineup, so I'll be pretty happy with a split.

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