1916 BBW Replay Week 23 Summary - September 11-September 17, 1916

Week Twenty-Three of the 1916 BBW Replay is in the books, and the season continues to draw down. Boston and Brooklyn remain unthreatened atop their respective leagues, while chaos remains for the group of teams directly behind them. Most teams have brought up the Major League roster a couple of new players, but if you want to get appearances for the youngsters, then those appearances, batting or pitching, must be taken away from veterans, so many lineups are scrambled on a daily basis as the tryouts for roster slots next season are underway. Who are these guys? To be honest, most are people who will never be heard of again at a Major League level, but there are a couple - Burleigh Grimes, Howard Ehmke, Socks Seibold - all of whom will stick around for quite a while.

In the American League, Boston has a 9.0-game lead over second-place Detroit, and their Magic Number is now reduced to 13, and they only have fifteen games left to play. Detroit is well ahead of third-place New York, with Washington and Chicago trailing New York by 2.0 games. The White Sox have been the hottest team in the AL, and after fighting to get to .500 all season, they are currently six games over .500 with only twelve games remaining. Next, in sixth place is St. Louis, but they are only one game below.500 for the season, so it is not impossible for the AL to finish with six teams all at .500 or above.

 

In the NL, Brooklyn is on top by 11.5 games over second-place Philadelphia, but Philadelphia only has a 1.0-game lead over New York, who only has a 1.0-game lead over Cincinnati. Cincinnati has played over their head all season, and they may have finally decided to come down to earth here at the end of the season, but they remain dangerous. In 1916, New York was on win #11 of their 26-game winning streak at the end of the week, and in the replay the Giants are 8-3 during that same time period with John McGraw's reconstituted lineup following a series of late-summer trades. Regardless, New York has suddenly become a force in the NL, although they really don’t threaten Brooklyn at the top.

I had it in my head that there were only two weeks remaining in the season, but I was wrong; there are really three weeks remaining. Some teams have ~twenty games left to play, while some have only ~ten, so even though the pennant race is likely over (and has been for quite a while), many teams are still fighting to improve their position, and many players are fighting for a next season's contract, so all that means is let's go play!

 


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