[trman73]

2023 Playoff Pushes

All three of our teams entered Saturday with a decent shot of making the playoffs. Two got the job done, and the other fell apart.

Hammers - Playing Sunday for the First Time
The Hammers rolled in September in Bronze 219, going 20-8 to run away with a Wild Card berth. Almost all of our new additions made major contributions, led by Albert Pujols, who looks like he’ll walk away with an MVP. Pujols, Ichiro, and Yelich finished 1-2-3 in the batting race, and Albert led in OPS (.980) and WAR (6.8). He, Yelich, Ichiro, and Bill Bradley all won a Batter of the Month Award. Overall, we go 95-67 and qualify for the playoffs for the first time, where we will play a division rival, the Welland Weirdos, to kick the festivities off tomorrow.

Warlocks - Watching From Home
The Warlocks were my only team to make the playoffs in each of their first three seasons, but they did not make it four straight. We entered the day just a game back of the Wild Card and proceeded to go 12-15 in September, including a 1-9 stretch that basically knocked us out of it. We rebounded at the tail end of the year and finished 85-77. Not bad for our first year in Silver, and we’ll be in Gold next season, where I can’t imagine we’ll do that well. Still, we built up good PP and completed the Pirates mission for Jason Kendall, a player we already had and could therefore sell for 5,000 PP (4,500 to us). This allowed for two moves:

OUT: DH Bobby Abreu (79)
IN: DH Special Edition Check Klein (93)

OUT: RF Hank Bauer (76)
IN: RF Special Edition Frank Robinson (88)

OUT: SP Bob Friend (88)
IN: TBD

This prepares us for next season in gold a bit better. The RF platoon of Verdugo/Bauer wasn’t going to cut it, and Abreu had basically topped out in Silver. Our offense was middle of the pack this year and we needed these upgrades for Gold.

Frogs - Sunday Baseball Is Back
Finally, the Frogs cruised to a division title in Bronze 223 with an 18-9 September. We rebounded after a bad year last year to go 93-69 and completed seven missions in the process this week. I thought this team would win its division and make the Sub-League Series, and that may very well happen. This is a balanced team that isn’t really great at anything but is slightly above average at everything at the Bronze level. We finish third in our conference in runs scored and fifth in runs allowed.