[trman73]

With only one team in the playoffs this week it’s time to focus attention on the Warlocks, who finish 104-58 in Bronze 211 and win 15 straight before losing the regular-season finale. In anticipation of the playoffs, we make a couple upgrades with our accumulated PP to beef up the offense.

OUT: CF 1971 Al Oliver (75)
IN: CF 1961 Vada Pinson (84)

OUT: IF Live Gavin Lux (79)
IN: 1B 1958 Joe Cunningham (86)

Simple switches. Pinson is both a better offensive player than Oliver (although Oliver was better than I expected), and a better defensive center fielder. He can also play against lefties. Cunningham is 78-74-75-92-83 against righties and plays a decent enough first base. He pushes Howie Kendrick to a utility role and makes Lux expendable.

We face a division foe, the Denton Doompincers, in the Division Series. They’re good, with mission players everywhere (Ichiro, Bagwell, Klein, etc.). Offensively, they are way better than we are. My pitchers will be challenged. They went 92-70 in the regular season and won our season series, 10-9. I consider us slight underdogs here despite winning 12 more regular-season games.

Game 1 is all Warlocks as Mike Mussina tosses a six-hit shutout and we rack up 14 hits in a 10-0 win. In Game 2, our 18-game winner, Mike Caldwell, has nothing and we go down 10-1 after six, falling 10-6 as they bang four homers. We fall meekly to Eddie Plank in Game 3, 7-0, and face a must-win in Game 4 with Cal Eldred on the mound. And he answers the call, giving us seven shutout innings as we win 3-1 to force a Game 5. We sent Moose to the mound again, and he’s excellent again, giving up just a solo homer in seven innings, and we win 3-1 to advance to the Sub League Series.