Jul 3, 2020

Approaching the All Star break. As usual, defensive teams are heavily under-represented in the All Star voting.

On a less discouraging note, we lead the Division by 8 games, 4th place overall (48-32 .600). Early projections: Pessimistic Projection Model™ says LPP ends the season with 92 wins, Remaining Schedule Model™ projects 101. Obviously the margin of error in both cases is still enormous.

Position training continues. It’s possible that we could rotate the infield (and start everyone in on training a new position) in early August.

1st in AC for Runs Allowed, 9th in Runs Scored. Pretty typical of a well-functioning run prevention team, to this point.

Ichiro had himself a 5-for-6 game in June, and we had a 4 DP game (of course). The outfield had several Gunning Them Down games (OF assists). Coco Crisp is (arguably) the best run-producer on the team at this moment @ 3.3 WAR, he takes walks and steals bags and has surprisingly good pop for a Defense Guy. Geronimo Pena is having an excellent year with the bat, apparently he’s been eating his Wheaties and has the best ISO on the team so far (.238, .519 SLG).

Nearly all of the pitchers are having career years, of course, given the boost from the ballpark and the fielders vacuuming up the base hits. Shane Bieber and Bucky Walters are both solid 1-2. But the relief staff has been simply stellar, five with ERAs under 2. Taylor Rogers has 27 saves, which projects to 55 by end of season and leads the league.