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ST. JOHN’S JOINS THE 700 CLUB
1869 EDITION OF ST. JOHN’S BC BECOMES FIRST TEAM TO SCORE TEN RUNS PER GAME

PORTLAND, MAINE (Aug. 8, 1869) – Over their incredible history, St. John’s has led the Northeastern League in scoring nine times over the twelve years of the National Base Ball Organization’s existence. Going into this season, the Writers Pool had them picked to display more historically great offense after they brought back Anderson MacGyver, and St. John’s spectacularly proved the writers correct.

When Nelson Townsend scored in the top of the seventh innings of the team’s final game of the season, St. John’s became the first team in NBBO history to score 700 or more runs in the seventy-game season. The final score was 15-5 to St. John’s, bringing the team’s final run tally for 1869 to 701, just a touch above 10.0 runs per game (10.01 R/G).

St. John’s did not lead the NEL in Extra-base Hits, Batting Average, Slugging, or OPS, so how did they become the first team to cross the 700-run barrier? The same way they always have: patience at the plate and reckless abandon on the basepaths.

St. John’s batsmen drew 205 Bases on Balls this season (2.9 BB/G), which was not their record (229 in 1867) but still a full sixty percent above the NEL’s second-most patient team: Sons of the Ocean (128, 1.8 BB/G). The team also stole a mind-boggling 237 bases (3.4 SB/G), again not their best (249 in 1866) but still around 25 percent more than the second-fastest team in the NEL: Shamrock (188, 2.7 SB/G).

The St. John’s batsmen also struck out just 28 times all season, fifty percent less often than any other team in the NBBO, with Gotham the next-best team at making contact (42 K’s). That made St. Johns’ patience at the plate that much deadlier. The players know what pitches they want to hit, and when they see those pitches they almost always make solid contact.

Seven members of the St. John’s lineup hit over .300, five stole twenty or more bases, five had an OPS of .800 or higher, and they had three of the top six batsmen in the NEL in Bases on Balls drawn.

At 46-24 this was far from the best St. John’s team record-wise, given that they have won 50+ games five times and reached a high of 54 twice (1859, ’66). However, it can certainly be said that this has been St. Johns’ most exciting team to date.