1916 BBW Replay Week 17 Summary - July 30-August 6, 1916

Ed Walsh
Week Seventeen of the 1916 BBW Replay is in the books, and with two-thirds of the season now behind us, the teams can feel the end drawing near. We are firmly ensconced in August, with September soon to follow, but many of the teams have a seemingly inordinate number of games left to play. The games will get played; it might get tight, we'll have lots of tired players, but they have the whole off-season to recover.

In the AL, first-place Boston ended the week by losing three in a row to the occasionally surprising St. Louis Browns. The Red Sox still have a seven-game lead over second-place Detroit. Washington and New York have been rolling around in third and fourth place for several months now, and it doesn't appear likely they will be able to substantially improve their position by season's end. Behind them, the Chicago White Sox recently completed two series against Philadelphia and went 8-2 in those games. It may not seem like much, but these wins have allowed the Chicago to finally reach the .500 mark. And further behind Chicago, the Cleveland Indians are taking advantage of their games with Philadelphia and the week with a six-game winning streak, and they did that while Tris Speaker was nursing an injury and missed almost a whole week's worth of games. Cleveland is still fifteen games below .500, and, like Chicago, all of their remaining games won’t be against Philadelphia, so they might have dug their own grave already.

 

Miller Huggins
In the NL, Brooklyn lost on Sunday, but going into Sunday's game they had themselves a nice little seven-game winning streak, and ended the week with a twelve-game lead over second-place Cincinnati. The Reds have shown signs of unravelling over the past few weeks, and three teams are sitting right behind them, so unless Cincinnati can rebound from their recent doldrums, it can be expected that they will shortly begin to move a few places down the NL standings. Can Boston, New York, or Philadelphia make a serious run at Brooklyn with only eight weeks remaining? None of them have one-hundred games played yet, so it is possible, but I am thinking that Brooklyn will have something to say about that.

Philadelphia is the only AL team that hasn't played one hundred games yet, while in the NL, only two teams (Cincinnati and St. Louis) have passed the one hundred-games-played mark. In fact, the AL has completed fifty games more than the NL at the end of the current week, so everyone understands the challenge ahead of them. Is someone going to get hot and make a run for it? Which player is going to go on a hot streak and lead his team upwards? It happens every year, so let's go play!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

1916 BBW Replay - Preparation

Image
I completed my 1938 BBW Replay in December and have spent the winter months getting my 1916 BBW Replay ready to start. Retirement may have issues, but being able to spend my time playing APBA is not one of them. I had previously purchased the 1916 disk and card set last summer in anticipation of kicking this off. The disk has 400 players included on it, which means I had to add 127 additional players to complete the set. That is a lot of players. Why so many? There are several reasons:   There is always some level of churn every season with players getting their proverbial "cup of coffee" with the big club, and this season is no different. Many (most) of these players spent the majority of their summer on a minor league team somewhere, but for a few weeks, they got to ride the trains and stay in nicer hotels while at the top of the baseball food chain. There were various minor leagues, and they had agreements as to what level the leagues we...
Read more

1916 BBW Replay Week 3 Summary - April 24-30, 1916

Image
Philadelphia (NL) Manager Pat Moran Week Three of the 1916 BBW Replay is in the books, and it was another interesting week of baseball. In both leagues, the East Coast teams are still playing on the East Coast, facing their East Coast brethren, and of course, the Midwest teams are still moving about the Midwest to get their early games in. Unfortunately, the NL teams have had a streak of bad weather to contend with, and by the end of Week Three, they find themselves having played twelve fewer games than the AL. It is early, and this should be easy to rectify over the course of the upcoming season. Every team is eyeing the upcoming roster cutdown date, so while teams do have a regular starting lineup, managers are always looking to slip in a prospect or two to get them at-bats or a few innings pitched before making a final roster decision. Several players have been farmed out already, and several more are in the queue this coming week. Many of these players won't appear again at t...
Read more

1916 BBW Summary Week 5 Results - May 8-14, 1916

Image
Brooklyn Manager Wilbert Robinson Week Five of the 1916 BBW Replay is in the books, and it was another week dominated by pitching (as it should be). Shutouts, extra innings, and games coming down to the last at-bat … it all makes for a fun and interesting replay. In the AL, Boston still holds on to its lead in the standings, as it is second in both team hitting and pitching (but last in team fielding). Mostly, they just seem to know when they need the runs or when they can back off and rely on their strong pitching. Washington and Detroit remain right on their heels, and both would love to move into the top spot, but both have struggled to provide a consistent attack, whether with the bat or with their pitching.   In the NL, Brooklyn slipped past Chicago into first place as of the end of the Sunday games. Their lead is but a few more percentage points, with Chicago maintaining a 0.5 game lead. Brooklyn ended the week on a four-game win streak, and has gone 8-2 over their prev...
Read more