|
The St. Paul Saints won the 1962 League Championship Series. Only the Arkansas Travelers, Lansing Lugnuts, Peoria Chiefs and the Biloxi Shuckers are left without a championship. The Shuckers and Chiefs are both expansion teams, while Lansing came close to winning one this season, losing to the Saints 4 games to 2. Pretty amazing that the Lugnuts found themselves in the league championship series, as they finished with the worst record in baseball in 1961.
Rube Waddell and Tris Speaker were the biggest names is this years amateur draft. Waddell comes into the league just as strikeouts are starting to blow up across the league. Figure it won't be long before we have our first pitcher to reach 300 strikeouts in a season.
As June 1963 begins, Al Oliver is 25 hits shy of 3000. Oliver is still starting for his team the Birmingham Barons, but he began the season hitting 9th in the order. He's worked his way up to 7th. Guessing his ratings are declining fast due to age.
George Hunter retired following the 62 season. At his retirement, Hunter is the International Leagues career win's leader. Want to say around 230 or 235. I need to check if Dave Brown is still starting. If he is, I'm not sure if Hunters lead will hold for long. Webster McDonald joined the 200 win club and he too will probably make a run at Hunter's lead.
Duke Snider is now a part of the 300 home run club. As of June 1st Snider has 307 career home runs.
Mel Ott is in striking distance of 500 home runs, but has move passed his recalc years, so the decline can and will come at any moment. So far he is still thriving though. Ott added another league MVP trophy to his long list of career achievements following the 1962 season. Debate around the league is whether the MVP honor should be renamed the Mell Ott Award following his retirement.
Frank Tanana is another new member of the International League. I'm a huge Tanana fan, so I was pumped to see him make his debut.
Still think something changed over the last version or two that decreased the numbers of modern day(current) players entering random debut leagues. I keep waiting to see these players start flooding my league, but so far the faucet is set to a very slow drip.
Still trying to decide when to expand and where to expand to. I will probably expand the draft size a season or two ahead of the expansion in preparation. I'm still using very high for all injuries, so I need the roster depth.
|