The 2073 Daily Keg - Week 6

May 22, 2073

Six teams turned in 5-1 weeks over the stretch, but nobody matched Santo Domingo, which won five of six to push its record to 31-7, a league-best .816 that has the Rum Runners running away with the Lager and sitting atop this week’s Power Rankings at 154.9 points, comfortably ahead of Los Angeles (129.5) and Pittsburgh (126.1). Indianapolis was right there with the week’s hot teams too, climbing to 21-17 and into second place in the Ale, five games behind an equally hot Pittsburgh club that improved to 26-12 behind Camron Rispoli, who hit .464 with eight RBI on the week. Los Angeles also went 5-1 to build its Bock lead to 27-13, while Montreal, Wilmington, and Batavia rounded out the week’s hot teams, each climbing back toward or above .500 in the Lager and Stout races. On the other end, Baltimore and California both endured 0-6 weeks and are riding six-game losing streaks; California’s collapse was the sharpest turn in the league, falling from within shouting distance of first to last place in the Bock over the course of six days.

Monday brought the week’s hardware: Dallas first baseman Devon Terry won the Domestic Player of the Week after hitting .474 with three homers and 13 RBI, and Los Angeles first baseman Levi Lane took the Import honor with a .400 week that included four homers, seven RBI and his 700th career extra-base hit. Elsewhere it was a rough Friday in Windy City, where a brawl in the Toronto series drew a six-game suspension for Windy City’s Allen Oates and a twelve-game ban for Toronto’s Holden Ritchey, though Windy City’s Nigel Torres kept his bat hot in the same series, running his hitting streak to 20 games. Rispoli’s big week included a 6-for-7 day against Carolina with a double and three RBI, Philadelphia’s Brian Van Hook picked up his 2,000th career hit, and Phoenix’s Lucian Goldsmith went 5-for-9 with a homer and five RBI against Dallas.

1) Santo Domingo Rum Runners (154.9, o)
2) Los Angeles Sharks (129.5, +)
3) Pittsburgh Millers (126.1, -)
4) New Orleans Voodoo (108.0, ++)
5) Indianapolis Clowns (106.5, ++)
6) Washington Bats (104.9, -)
7) Montreal Exports (100.8, ++)
8) Denver Bulls (100.5, +)
9) Phoenix Roadrunners (98.5, -)
10) Toronto Canadians (97.5, --)
11) Philadelphia Freedom (93.5, --)
12) Batavia Muckdogs (92.3, ++)
13) Dallas Drillers (87.7, o)
14) Wilmington Wildcats (87.5, ++)
15) Maine Guides (87.0, --)
16) Hartford Whalers (86.0, --)
17) Seattle Sasquatch (85.2, +)
18) Windy City Blues (82.5, -)
19) Pawtucket Patriots (68.8, -)
20) Baltimore Bulldogs (59.8, --)
21) Carolina Tobs (59.5, +)
22) California Kodiaks (57.3, --)
23) New York Cyclones (56.0, -)
24) Syracuse Snappers (26.0, o)

Performance of the Week

1B Devon Terry, DAL - Terry was the week's top performer, punctuated by a 3-for-4 day on May 19th that included a home run, two doubles and a walk, with two runs scored and six RBI in a 10-5 win over Seattle that pushed Dallas's winning streak to six games and earned him Player of the Game honors. Over the full week he went 9-for-19 (.474) with three doubles and three home runs, good for a 1.689 OPS, and the performance earned him the league's Domestic Player of the Week award. The 21-year-old first baseman is hitting .377 with five home runs and 17 RBI in just 16 games this season.

Prospect of the Week

P Brendan Broderick, IND - The 19-year-old right-hander improved to 4-1 with a 2.53 ERA at Single-A after a five-inning, one-run outing against Frederick on May 19th in which he allowed six hits and struck out five without issuing a walk. Broderick has given up more than two earned runs just once in six starts this year, and his groundball approach and a fastball that sits in the 93-95 mph range give him a chance to keep climbing after a rough introduction to full-season ball in 2072. A 2071 second-round pick, he's shown sharp swing-and-miss stuff early in 2073, striking out 24 against just three walks over 32 innings.

Five Things We Think We Think

1. Friday's Windy City-Toronto brawl came with a twist once the play-by-play settled. Holden Ritchey had just served up a solo homer to Nigel Torres, his second longball allowed on the night, and drilled Allen Oates with the very next pitch. Oates charged the mound and both benches emptied, but it was Ritchey who caught the harsher penalty, an enormous twelve games to Oates's six, a reminder that a pitcher who starts it with a baseball gets treated as the aggressor even when the hitter is the one throwing punches. Ritchey still walked away with Player of the Game honors for his final line (5.2 IP, 2 ER, 4 K), and Toronto rallied past the whole mess to win 4-3 behind a Scott Stone homer and a go-ahead John Mabry single.

2. The zone rating numbers back up most of what the standings already tell you, with a few exceptions worth watching. Carolina and New York are the clearest case, both stuck in the bottom three defensively and the bottom three in the win column, a pairing of bad gloves and bad results. Pawtucket’s defense is nearly as rough, second-worst in the league, yet the Patriots are sitting at 16-23 instead of the cellar, so their issues are coming from somewhere other than the field. Syracuse is the strangest one: the league’s worst record by a mile, but a defense that grades out almost exactly average.

Up top, it’s no accident Santo Domingo and Pittsburgh own the two best records in baseball while both ranking inside the league’s top ten with the glove, and Los Angeles isn’t far off either, fourth in defense and third in the standings. New Orleans and Phoenix have the best defense in the league and still sit around .550, a reminder that leather only takes a team so far. Washington is the true outlier, a 23-15 club playing bottom-five defense and winning anyway on offense and just enough pitching.

3. Not every ERA tells the whole story, and the gap between ERA and FIP flags who's riding good fortune and who's due for better days. Santo Domingo has one of the two widest gaps in the league in either direction, outperforming its FIP by 0.65 runs, trailing only New York's own extreme mark on the unlucky end. That's remarkable given the Rum Runners already own the best raw numbers in baseball; if that gap closes at all, they're still going to be excellent, just less historically dominant. On the flip side, New York owns the league's worst luck, an ERA nearly two-thirds of a run worse than its peripherals suggest it should be, salt in the wound for a team already sitting at 14-26. Washington, Hartford, and Montreal are the more interesting cases, each posting an ERA notably higher than its FIP while still holding a winning or near-.500 record, meaning all three could be better than their record shows if the pitching results start matching the underlying numbers.

4. Los Angeles isn’t just running away with the standings, it’s running away on the bases too, piling up a league-best 48 steals at a 75% success rate for the top wSB mark in baseball (+3.22). Montreal (33 steals, 76.7% success, +2.79 wSB) and Batavia (39 steals, 73.6%, +2.26) are the only other clubs within shouting distance of that kind of value, and all three have made stolen-base efficiency, not just volume, the separator. Montreal’s number looks great on paper but masks the league’s worst overall baserunning value (-11.32 UBR), a reminder that swiping bags well doesn’t always mean running the bases well.

The bottom of the list carries a surprise. Santo Domingo, the best team in baseball, has been one of the worst on the bases, just 14 steals at a shaky 48.3% success rate for the league’s second-worst wSB (-3.13), a rare soft spot for an otherwise dominant club. Philadelphia owns the actual bottom mark at -4.74, built on a league-high 23 caught stealing against just 23 successful attempts, a coin flip that’s cost the Freedom real runs. Denver tells a similar story of aggression without payoff, 32 steals but a 59.3% success rate, though the Bulls still grade out as the league’s best team on non-stolen-base baserunning plays (+1.98 UBR), suggesting the issue is specifically about when to send the runner rather than raw speed.

5. What’s on tap?

• Santo Domingo Rum Runners (31-7) at Pittsburgh Millers (26-12), May 25-28 —
  The two best teams in baseball collide, with Santo Domingo carrying its league-best mark and a 17-5 road record into Pittsburgh, which is 19-3 at home. Camron Rispoli enters after a Performance of the Week showing, hitting .355 on the year, third-best in the league, while Santo Domingo’s Xavier Gunter has been unbeatable so far at 5-0. This is as close to a measuring-stick series as the league offers right now.

• Washington Bats (23-15) at Los Angeles Sharks (27-13), May 25-28 —
  Two division leaders meet as Washington, 9-4 on the road, visits a Los Angeles club that’s 13-6 at home and riding a two-game winning streak. Levi Lane is fresh off an Import Player of the Week award, and Los Angeles counters with Mitchell Kovich, unbeaten at 5-0, and Collin Edson, who owns the league’s second-best ERA at 1.58.

• Toronto Canadians (21-17) at New Orleans Voodoo (22-18), May 22-24 —
  Toronto, 8-11 on the road, and New Orleans, 11-8 at home, sit tied for second in the Lager, ten games behind Santo Domingo but very much fighting each other for position. New Orleans brings a three-game winning streak into the set, while Toronto has dropped its last two. Watch Toronto’s Regis Bryant, hitting .354 and among the league’s top five in average, against New Orleans starter Seth Summitt (4-2, 4.11 ERA).

• Denver Bulls (21-17) at Los Angeles Sharks (27-13), May 22-24 —
  The lead-in to LA's big week, with Denver, 8-11 on the road, opening a stretch that has Los Angeles hosting two of the Bock and Stout's top clubs in the same week. Mitchell Kovich gets the ball for LA in the opener, still unbeaten on the year. Denver counters with Joell Kanada, who owns the league's fourth-best ERA at 2.30, and brings some momentum of its own after Branden Clifton stole his 100th career base last week. It's a lopsided matchup on paper in the power rankings, with Los Angeles sitting 2nd overall at 129.5 points to Denver's 8th at 100.5, but the two teams are separated by just a handful of games in the standings.

• Pittsburgh Millers (26-12) at Maine Guides (20-20), May 22-24 —
  Pittsburgh, 7-9 on the road, opens the week in Maine before its showdown with Santo Domingo, a get-right spot against a Maine club that’s dropped its last game and sits well back in the Ale. Willie Frizzi (3-1, 4.15 ERA) faces Maine’s Deondre Ivy (4-3, 4.99 ERA), and Camron Rispoli’s bat will be the one to watch before the marquee series looms.