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The half-way point is upon us, and the Frogs are riding one of their better pitching seasons in franchise history to a 60-21 mark (+190 RDiff). With a 19.5 game lead in the division, I think the Frogs can start printing playoff tix. The Parish WhoDats have a 1.5 game lead for top playoff seed. The WhoDats and the Frogs have already completed their season series with the WhoDats taking 4/6.
What a difference an Ed Walsh makes.
Walshie--as I've taken to calling him in my head--was just ok after being acquired part-way through the season last week. But, he's having a Cy Young caliber season this week: 13-1, 1.24 ERA, 2.34 FIP, and 5.4 WAR already in the bank. Leads the conference in wins, ERA, and WAR. So I guess I'm gonna keep him.
The team as a whole has allowed a conference-best 227 runs (2.92 starter's ERA, 1.62 bullpen ERA). The pitching has been supported by a league-best defense in both EFF (.716) and ZR (+26.1) despite having somewhat elevated ballpark factors. The pitching has been so tight that I've actually been able to reduce down to a 5-man bullpen for the first time ever. There just weren't enough innings to go around for 6 guys.
Bringing gold Richie Ashburn back has helped enhance the defense (115 in LF) and he's also batting .324 as a bonus. Garry Maddox was having a bit of a down year in CF, so I subbed Lenny Dykstra back in as a platoon-mate and Nails' bat has gotten hot for a change (.369/.419/.500). The defense goes without saying (106 in CF). SUPER ICHIRO is doing his thing in RF (117 DEF) so I'd imagine almost no baseballs are falling in for hits out there.
Luke Appling has reached 71 DEF at 3B after already being maxed at both SS and 2B. So the INF defense is improving as the season goes along with Chipper (88 DEF at 1B), newcomer gold Frankie Frisch (90 DEF at 2B), and the old faithful platoon of Boudreau/Pesky at SS. The team's also rolling with Lava/Pena at catcher and the pitching staff seems to like it.
After whiffing on a MINT Buck Ewing, I bought a John Henry Lloyd which also had stats. Mr. Lloyd joins Mr. Ewing back in the AH. It's getting to the point where I'm not even sure I want to use the AH at all..."pack only"? Maybe so. Thankfully there was no diamond pack sale to accompany the latest batch of missions, so people are spending their hard earned PP on my wares instead of those infernal 20K packs. Doing brisk business!
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