THIS WEEK IN FIGMENT BASEBALL
May 9, 1938
WOLVES FAIL FIRST TEST IN BATTLE FOR CA SUPREMACY
The Toronto Wolves have been the surprise team of the Continental Association in the early going this season as a rejuvenated offense led by veteran pickup Fred McCormick has the team leading the CA in batting average and tied for first place in the standings. The 28 year old McCormick (.422,2,10) has been everything he was advertised to be as he and teammate Nick Wallace (.418,1,16) are 1-2 in the CA batting race. There were some concerns that the Wolves pitching would be too thin after trading several quality arms to St Louis to acquire McCormick but Chick Wirtz (4-0, 1.75) and Art Blake (2-0, 3.81) have started well to give veteran manager Hank Leitzke options beyond young ace Joe Hancock (4-1, 2.68).
The Wolves entered a key series at home against Brooklyn yesterday with a 1-game lead on the defending champs atop the CA standings. The game ended with the 2 clubs tied for top spot as the Kings prevailed 7-4 with Toronto starter Chuck Cole (2-3, 5.35) suffering through his third poor outing in the past four starts. The Wolves have two more tries at the Kings beginning today and the clubs will meet for 3 more games next week in Brooklyn but this is a key opportunity for the Wolves to prove their quick start to the season is not a mirage.
If the Wolves are to be taken seriously they likely will need to upgrade their pitching but that can be done internally as Jim Morrison certainly looks ready and in a late announcement the Wolves did indeed decide to promote him this week. Morrison, a 22 year old taken out of Indiana A&M 16th overall in 1936 with a pick the Wolves acquired from Brooklyn, had a very good spring and some felt he should have joined the team to start the season but instead was dropped off just shy of the Peace Bridge to begin the season with the Buffalo Nickels. All Morrison has done in Buffalo is throw three very good ballgames, posting a 2-0 mark with a 2.37 era. Expect to see him make his big league debut this week.
It is a big week ahead in the Federal Association for the other surprise team of the league. The Detroit Dynamos, much like Toronto in CA, are battling for the lead in the Fed with the Chicago Chiefs. Last season Detroit fans were ecstatic about a 10-10 start only to see the club go on to lose 64 of its next 83 games over the ensuing 3 months (yes 19-64 .228). This year the club has started 13-7 after 3 weeks but the memories of last season still linger in their minds...and managements too. The club finished the '37 season with a 34-17 record and combined with this years start have gone 47-24 since around August 8th of last season.
Detroit and Chicago have already met this season at Whitney Park with the upstarts from Michigan taking two of three games in the series. They will play 3 times at Thompson Field coming up this weekend and another series victory for the Dynamos could go a long ways towards convincing them, and their fans, that this Detroit club is for real.
Yes the Chiefs are loaded with both the best offense and stingiest pitching in the Fed to date, plus with some other strong teams a pennant seems highly unlikely for the Dynamos this time around. However, there likely stands a good chance of a number of titles in Detroit's near future. Sal Pestilli (.306,5,12) seems on the cusp of becoming the greatest player in the sport and Red Johnson (.310,1,7), Leon Drake (.325,3,12), Elmer Nolde (.320,3,12), Clem Bliss (.361,1,8), Ed Stewart (.310,3,18) and Frank Le Miex (.274,0,10) are a terrific supporting cast. The pitching staff is likely what will hold them back this year but they have looked surprisingly strong so far and that is with Stumpy Beaman - a favourite of scouting guru Rufus Barrell - off to a rough start.
QUICK HITS
- The Federal Association batting average leaderboard looks like it's just a copy of the Chicago Chiefs lineup. The top 4 hitters in the Fed and five of the top six are Chiefs with catcher Tom Bird leading the way with a .420 average. Pete Layton, Cliff Moss and Hank Barnett are the next three before the Keystones Bobby Barrell breaks up the party.
- What a couple of weeks for Chicago Cougars veteran hurler Milt Fritz! He was named CA player of the week and his last 3 starts have been amazing: 27 IP, 11 hits, 2 unearned runs. On the season Fritz is 4-1 with a 0.82 era. His ERA+ is unsustainable all season but just amazing at 519. Just too bad for Cougars fans so many of his teammates are struggling out of the gate this year.
- Detroit's Leon Drake, who has been an incredibly steady outfielder and one of the few who is capable of delivering a 20/20/20 season (doubles/triples/homers) something he has done twice already and narrowly missed a third time. The 29 year old is headed down that path again this season with 8 doubles, 3 triples and 3 homers thru his first 19 games and he was named the Federal Association player of the week for the past 7 days.
- One of the things Detroit skipper George Theobald has been quietly trying to change in Detroit was their hitter's walks-strikeouts ratio and to raise the teams OBP. Last year Detroit batters struck out 679 times compared to only 503 walks and were last (again) in OBP at 321. While it’s early we are seeing improvements in those areas. Detroit's walk to strikeout ratio is 79-72 and their OBP is in a virtual tie with Chicago Chiefs and Boston at .359 in the FABL. It’s early but so far so good
- Washington hurler Karl Johnson is continuing last year success by forging a 5-0 record with a 2.61 ERA in his first five games of the season. Johnson was 20-9 a year ago. Totally the opposite of #2 starter Eddie Quinn, an 18 game winner last season but he is 0-5 with a 6.03 ERA so far this year and looking very much like this year's version of Bill Anderson for the Eagles. Speaking of Anderson, who was outstanding two seasons ago before melting down in the first half of last season, he is back in the pen after a rocky 1-2, 8.90 start this year. Anderson's unpredictability has confounded the Eagles brass as big things were hoped for from the 29 year old after he tantalizingly seemed to regain his form with a terrific September. Mike Knight, who missed much of last season with injury after being a regular in the Washington rotation in 1936, will take Anderson's spot in the rotation. The hope is the demotion to relief duties will give a surge to Anderson just as it did last year. The Eagles still holding in the tight race with a 10-10 record, despite the fact the offense has had some inconsistent performers such as the middle infield duo of Andy Carter (.263,0,4) and Jim Beard (.165,0,7). Expectations were high at the beginning of season in DC and attendance is up substantially but that may be more due to a ticket price cut than the team record.
- This paper does get on the Gothams a lot and with good reason at the big league level as they are positively putrid. But the system is stacked and it should only be a matter of time before they turn things around. One big piece of the Gothams future is 2B Roosevelt Brewer. The 18 year old Chicago native was named player of the week in the Class B COW League. He's at .422-3-10 for the season. Brewer and Falcons teammate and fellow top 20 prospect 1B Walt Messer (.326-4-13) are looking at promotions to single A Albany in the near future. Also expecting a train ticket will be AA SP Bunny Edwards (2-0 1.66) who appears to be ready to take on AAA hitters at Toledo
- The Cleveland Foresters are worried Dean Astle may have some lingering elbow problems since being pulled in the 2nd inning of his first game. He is currently 0-3 since and has given up 16 runs in that timeframe. The 28 year old, who is 80-56 in his FABL career, has been pretty much injury free but has been nicked up a couple of times already this season.
- The Philadelphia Keystones have been on a roller-coaster ride to start the year. Taken in 7-game increments, the boys on Broad Street went 2-5, 5-2, and now 1-6, to stand at 8-13 with a run differential of +3. The starting pitching has been an issue in the season's first three weeks. Gene White and Art Myers are the only starters with ERAs under five. Ed Baker and George Brooks are off to particularly perplexing starts.
Offensively, the top half of the lineup are all getting on base and getting driven in. The problem is the bottom half of the lineup is something close to anemic. The team OBP was at the top of the Fed last week at .360, but the team dropped 17 points to fall to 6th in the circuit (.343).
The next week will have two home games apiece against the vaunted Chiefs and the upstart Dynamos, as well as a weekend series against the Miners. A .500 week would be helpful, but moving back to .500 for the season is too tall an order for now.
- The Montreal Saints are reeling. After starting the season 5-2, the Saints have dropped 10 of their last 13 games and sank to the bottom of the CA. The bullpen has struggled and not done them any favours but one has to think that much of the slump is just bad luck - Montreal is 1-8 on the season in games that either went into extra innings or were decided by just 1 run. The Saints have the second highest run differential in the CA at +11 and their Pythagorean record is -3, worst in the CA
- There is no hotter hitter at any level of the sport than outfielder Reginald Westfall of AAA Buffalo. The 24 year old who was acquired by the Toronto Wolves 3 seasons ago after originally being a 1932 7th round pick of the Cougars, is hitting .519 (27-52) thru 11 games with the Nickels this season. He leads all hitters at any level with at least 50 plate appearances in batting average but he may not be getting any more opportunities to face AAA pitching. The Wolves have decided to promote Westfall and he is expected to be in the dugout later today in Toronto when the Wolves meet Brooklyn in a showdown for top spot in the CA.
The Week That Was
Current events from the week ending 05/08/1938
- Pope Pius XI calls it "a sad thing" in reference to the display of the Nazi swastika throughout Rome during Adolf Hitler's visit to meet with Italian dictator Mussolini. Mussolini's newspaper Il Poplo d'Italia responds in an editorial warning the pontiff it was "very dangerous to speak of and wave the cross of Christ as if it were a weapon."
- Britain and France, fearful a German-Italian deal to give Hitler a free hand in Czechoslovakia, have asked Prague to make upmost concessions to their Nazi minority and to warn Germany against committing any acts of violence against the central European republic.
- An all out thrust by Chinese forces has led to a seven-mile advance on the southern Shandong front, focal point of the war, and Chinese dispatches claim Japanese lines have buckled completely under the Chinese onslaught.
- New York City police, on orders of Mayor LaGuardia, have been pressing an intensive investigation into all Nazi activities in the city.