Winning is fun but can it last?

Scott Fennessy asked me how things were going now that I’m in two leagues.  Well, so far, so good.  Both teams have winning records and I’m managing to keep up.  The Illowa APBA League which tends to play a good portion of their games during league get-togethers, is in a holding pattern but I’ll be playing a series against the Pittsburgh-based Three Rivers Gamblers on Thursday night.

The BBW-based Boys of Summer APBA League holds to a much tighter schedule thanks to commish Shawn Baier.  Two days to submit our rosters, lineups and rotation and three days for the home teams to play the games.  I admit it’s certainly different to not have your opponent across the table from me when I play them.  But I’m finally getting used to the nuances of .lpf files and the AIM features of Baseball for Windows.

A quick update for both leagues:

My Urbana Locomotives have gotten off to a quick start in the Boys of Summer League.  Until last week, we were 20-7 and my players were winning all kinds of awards.  In successive weeks, David Price, Garrett Jones, and David Price (again) were BoS National League Players of the Week.

After a week off, Jeremy Hellickson then won the award in Week 5.  In Week 6, we then took on Brad Stark’s Portland Microbrewers who were our first place brethren in the NL West Division.  Coming in with a 17-9 record, they provided us with some real competition.  It was a home series and boy, it was a tough one.

We ended up 3-3 against Portland.  Sometimes the game of speed in baseball is underrated but not by me… not anymore.  Portland’s Mike Trout, Coco Crisp and Jason Kipnis ran on me like it was 1908.  Example:  I lost the first game 1-0 in the 10th inning on a steal of home by Kipnis.  Twice in the series, a runner stole second and then promptly stole third (Coco Crisp tried to steal home but we got him… just wish we had gotten Kip).

All in all, a good series against Portland and a dose of reality.  It was a tough week for reigning Player of the Week Jeremy Hellickson, though.  He gave up one earned run in 16 1/3 innings and still went 0-2.

Season stats for assorted Locomotives (through 33 games and using 2012 season)

• Adrian Beltre .346, 7 HR, 26 rbi, 24 runs
• Carlos Ruiz .337, 6 HR, 18 rbis
• Garrett Jones 9 HR, 25 rbis
• David Price 6-1, 2.57 ERA, 58 K in 49 IP
• Colby Lewis 4-0, 1.78 ERA
• Hiroki Kuroda 5-2, 3.66 ERA, 48 K in 51 2/3 IP

At the Illowa APBA League draft weekend, we all played 30 games each.  To be honest, after the Twin Cities Thunderchickens draft, I wasn’t feeling too positive about the 2014 season.  The guys really came though  with some good series.  We swept our commish Mike Bunch and his Green Rock Bombers 6-0 and went 4-2 against the Nick Tegeler, the “new guy”.  If only we hadn’t gone 1-5 against Marcus Bunch, we could have made it an epic weekend.

Jason Kipnis leads the IAL right now with a nifty .382 batting average.  He’s our big offensive star.  Albert Pujols who has the worst card in the history of his career, has interesting stats.  He’s hitting .321 in 53 at-bats but 0 homers and just five rbis.  Adam LaRoche has been spelling him a lot but not doing the job (.145).

But we’re doing it with the pitching.  Strasburg (3-1, 1.46), Joe Kelly (2-1, 0.79), Ryu (3-1, 2.29), and yes, even Scott Diamond ( a DRZ with a 1.35 ERA) are all contributing.  Our team ERA is 3.06 which is about .3 lower than the second lowest in the league.

We’re set to play Todd Ventresca and his Three Rivers Gamblers on Thursday and you can see how big that series is already. They’re right below us in the standings.  A lot can happen in nine games so we can see if that 17-13 record is indicative of how good we really are.