We’re headed into Memorial Day Weekend. The 3 summer holidays play a bit of a mile-marker role in baseball:
- By Memorial Day, it’s no longer “early”. For some teams it might even be getting “late”
- By the 4th of July the contenders and pretenders have usually separated, the All Star game is getting close, and we’ve seen about ½ the season unwind
- By Labor Day the playoff races are in full swing, and any major intrusions into the upper reaches of the standings are the work of hot streaks and/or collapses...
So, consider this an open thread about baseball...I prefer to concentrate on MLB, but anything funny from the minors, college, school, little league is fair.
(Anything grim, I guess too. It’s a real world out there…)
Rays — yeah, they are playing well, perhaps better than many thought. But the team has been in the mix consistently for most of the last 15 years...for me one of the major surprises so far has be
*** THE BALTIMORE ORIOLES
Just a couple years ago I was in awe as this storied (and tortured) franchise continued a pace of losing 5 out of 7 game for most of a season. Man that’s some bad ball to deal with. The tables have turned, and 50 games into 2023 the Orioles are 33-17, currently 2nd best in MLB.
How are they doing it? Looking at the team stats it seems they are hitting and fielding well, and pitching is not terrible. Definitely a nice change for the fans in B’more...I hope they have staying power for the season and at least a few more.
!!! THE OTHER SIDE OF SURPRISE
Woe to the Oakland A’s fan, if there are many left. It seems very likely this team is moving to Las Vegas soon (next season?) and management is letting the on-field product rot. The team is a horrible 10 wins and 42 losses so far, a pace to lose 131 games. I wish I could say that they have to get a little better, but they could challenge the MLB adage that every team wins and loses 40 games and the other half of the season is what separates the good from the bad.
Why is Oakland so bad? Oh Lord, I’m a little scared to look at the team stat page...well, the hitting is...not good. There is a glimmer of hope with some speed stats — stolen bases and triples. But otherwise they are about 12th of 15 American League team.
Pitching and fielding are really bad. Pitching especially so.
/// THE “SENIOR” CIRCUIT
Being a Tampa Bay resident I follow mostly the Rays and hence the AL...but MLB is more “mixed” than ever, so I have to pay attention a little to the “other side”:
- only 5 of the 15 teams are above average in runs per game (Dodgers, Braves, Diamondbacks, Cardinals, Cubs) — Arizona is a surprise, as are St Louis and the Cubs (for the wrong reasons)...but St. Louis seems to be righting the ship after a horrible start.
- Pitching runs against per game is more evenly distributed — the Braves Dodgers, and Cubs are in this category and the better than average scoring teams. So this makes the Cubs floundering (22 wins, 27 losses) a bit surprising.
- The San Fransisco Giants are on a little bit of a good run (8 wins in their last 10 games) and are now at an even record with 25 wins and losses. At least all the baseball in the SF Bay isn’t terrible.
\\\ THE AMERICAN LEAGUE “BEAST” DIVISION
So far this season the AL East teams are winning about 2/3 of the games they play against teams outside their division. All 5 teams are over .500.
Then again, the AL West isn’t looking too much different if you ignore the Elephant (the Oakland A’s mascot)...and the Texas Rangers are hitting as well as the Tampa Bay Rays and have a very similar run differential. In fact, the Rangers have a better “expected” winning percentage based on runs for versus runs against than the Rays.
My main sources of data for this are Baseball Reference and the standings as presented at MLB.com.