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HALFWAY THROUGH THE APBL SEASON
CONFERENCES MUCH CLOSER THAN INAUGURAL SEASON; ST. JOHN’S & GOTHAM ARE LEADERS

NORTHEASTERN U.S.A. (June 28, 1872) – Due to its late start, the second season of the APBL hasn’t reached the midway point until the end of June, with the teams currently halfway through the eighth week of action.

Here is a look at the standings after 45 of 90 games have been played:

COLONIAL CONFERENCE

		 W	 L	GB	  RD
St. John’s	27	18	--	 +32
Flour City	24	21	 3	 +33
Niagara		22	23	 5	 -16
Mass. Bay	22	23	 5	 -26
Shamrock	21	24	 6	 +12
Alleghany	19	26	 8	 -35

METROPOLITAN CONFERENCE

		 W	 L	GB	  RD
Gotham		29	16	--	 +30
Knick		27	18	 2	 +33
American	22	23	 7	 +44
Orange		22	23	 7	 +31
Kings Co.	18	27	11	 -69
Excelsior	17	28	12	 -69

This was how the standings ideally would have looked midway through the inaugural season. While there is some separation between the top two and the rest of the Metropolitan Conference, the conferences don’t have clear leaders that appear to be pulling away from everyone else, and none of the twelve teams has fared better than 7-3 over their last ten games.

St. John’s continues to win with a formula they’ve never used before. They are still stealing far more bases than any other team, but St. John’s is 6th/12 in the APBL in Runs, 3rd in Bases on Balls, 4th in Average, and 4th in OPS while being either 1st or 2nd in every defensive metric. That they are in first place even though they have two regulars hitting below .210 – Ben Gagliardi at .209 & George Pugatch at .194 – says everything about how different this version of St. John’s is.

Gotham continues to lead the Metropolitan Conference with the league’s best offense – #1 in Runs, Average, On-Base, & OPS. Royal Altman has cooled off but is still batting .393 (.908 OPS), while Babe Johnson has raised his average to .385 (.924 OPS) and William Theriault is hitting .346 (.752 OPS).

Shamrock’s season has been derailed by an injury to superstar CF James Burke. He injured a leg muscle on June 1st, and during his twenty-day absence Shamrock was 5-12. Their main hope for the second half is that, since St. John’s hasn’t been as dominant as they were last season, there’s still plenty of time to catch up.

That Knickerbocker is in 2nd place is surprising given that Edward Huntley is having the worst season of his career. Through 45 games, Huntley is batting .255 (.612 OPS) with just ten Extra-base Hits. He hit .329 (.833 OPS) with 41 XBH in the APBL’s inaugural season. He has never hit below .300 and never had an OPS below .700. Still, Huntley has 33 RBI & 24 SB, and thanks to his sterling fielding at Third Base he remains on pace to finish the season with a WAR of nearly 3.0.

American remains the most confounding team in the APBL – 22-23 with a league-best +44 Run Differential. When they win they win big, but when the stars in their top-heavy lineup don’t all deliver it leads to meager losses. Franklin Petty has been a bit of a disappointment, while their best player has been the seemingly ageless Willie Davis.

Jim Creighton is doing the best he can (12-10, 2.94, 71 K, 4.5 WAR), but in spite of their efforts to improve the roster over the winter Excelsior once again has a struggling offense and a league-worst defense. On paper, the Excelsior defense grades out as one that should be in the middle of the APBL, but it just isn’t performing as it should.