A dozen observations for Strat at 28 games

The season is off to a fast start! At this pace it’ll take only 1.5 years to play Season 3 - (as opposed to the 2 years it usually takes). Bj, sounds like you need to plan a trip to Dallas in the summer of 2017 for the next draft! LOL. Having all 3 commissioners playing probably speeds things up a bit. Here are my observations at this point:

  1. Surely Grand Rapids can’t keep up this torrid pace. For a team that is projected to hit in the upper .280s - (actually the lowest projected batting average in the league!), they have a batting average as a team of over .300 - (ranked 5th). They were expected to be the best homerun hitting team, with somewhere around 200 HRs. They are on pace to hit 266! And note that so far neither Joe Morgan or Stan Musical have even hit 1 yet! The 19-9 start is impressive. It’ll be interesting to see if that can be maintained.
  2. The Trappers were projected to have the worst league ERA. They are 5th. Even more startling are the Warriors. Projected second to last in ERA. They lead the league! By nearly a quarter of a run per game over the second place team - (Vegas) - and nearly a full run over the third place team - (St. Louis)!! However, currently 3 of the 8 pitchers on the staff are injured. They’ll need a waiver wire pickup, at least temporarily.
  3. Rickey Henderson is tied for 3rd in the league in walks with 21. Not surprising for the man who walked more times than anyone in history - (except for The Cheater). What is notable is that his team - (New Orleans Hurricanes) - have only 68 total walks. Last in the league. Henderson accounts for over 30% of the teams total number of walks!
  4. Babe Ruth is on pace for 185 RBIs. (Still not record pace….holy crap Hack Wilson in real life!)
  5. Cochrane on pace for 70 doubles. No way that keeps up as he is not a noted doubles hitter. Greenberg on pace for 75! While 75 certainly won’t be maintained, he is a good doubles hitter and probably can make a run at 50+
  6. Cobb and Gehrig both on pace for almost 30 triples. Cobb’s got a decent shot at hitting 20+
  7. Mays, McCovey, Ruth, and Bench all on pace for over 50 HRs. All but Bench are potentially capable.
  8. Addie Joss accounts for fully one-quarter of the Explorers’ decisions. He’s 5-2. Walter Johnson and Johan Santana each account for the same quarter of decisions for the Osos. McGinnity has the same for the Spiders.
  9. #8 reveals an overall trend in the league where starters are accounting for far more decisions than they did last year. So far starters have 77% of the Win-Loss decisions. In Season 2 it was just 67%. Last year Cy Young - (fittingly I suppose) - had the most wins of anyone - (24), and he was a middle reliever! The starter with the most was Joss at 20. Currently 10 pitchers are on pace to have over 20 wins - (including laughably Mariano Rivera who has racked up 4 wins already!). My guess is that is a result of the rule change allowing many starters more innings per season.
  10. I can’t shake the feeling that we are hitting more triples. Yet that is not so. The league is on pace to hit 498 triples this year. Last year there were 471 hit.
  11. The rules were changed to try and lessen the homefield advantage since real life baseball sees about 53% home winning percentage, and last year we saw about 58%. This year it is up to over 62%! Oops.
  12. That homefield advantage rule change was expected to result in more offense. But maybe not this much! Last year a total of 6,977 runs were scored. This year the pace is heading towards 7,793. Over a 10% increase!

And a bonus observation:

  1. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, Mickey Cochrane has had a hit in EVERY game so far. Every single game to start the year! And he’s now exactly halfway to the hallowed 56! (Last year Greenberg had a 31 game streak)

And a bonus bonus:

  1. Even though it is not a Strat observation, check out Trevor Story. The 23-year old rookie SS for Colorado. 7 HRs in his first 27 major league ABs! That’s not a typo. On pace for 189 for this season! And over 2,000 if he plays as long as Babe Ruth! Can’t wait until we make his strat card. LOL!