| Westside Reservation | Lafayette Park | Frenchtown Field | |||||||||
| 7/11 | 7/13 | 7/15 | 7/17 | 7/17 | 7/17 | ||||||
| AK | 2|2 | FS | 1|2 | AK | 9|8 | GD | 8|4 | WD | 12|5 | WD | 0|2 |
| WW | 3|1 | WW | 4|4 | CC | 0|0 | AK | 0|0 | AK | 0|1 | GD | 1|0 |
| Split 1-1 | WW w 2 | AK w 2 | GD w 2 | WD w 2 | Split 1-1 | ||||||
| Marquee Match-up: |
| July 17th | TBA | Frenchtown Field |
| Wiffling DeLoppes vs. Git r' Done |
The final day of the season. The top two teams in the league. The pennant at stake! Sure, other important games with a lot riding on them are on the schedule this final week of the season: Ass Kickers and Commandos will likely play for the sixth seed on Friday, and the Warriors and Squirrels come into the week tied and will battle for third on Wednesday. None of those, however, comes anywhere close to being as dramatic or climactic as a head-to-head showdown for the first ever WSEM pennant!
The stakes are obviously high, so let's look at the hands the teams will be playing. At 19-3 Git r' Done comes in with the high card: all they have to do is not blink, actually not blink more than once, and they walk away the with the number one seed. Their loss last Friday to the Commandos makes this finish much tighter, as the two games against the DeLoppes now shape up to mean everything. The DeLoppes at 19-5 cannot count on Git r' Done to lose anymore and need to win out, including most importantly both head-to-head games, in order to secure the number one seed and pennant.
On the field we know the hands these teams play: great pitching and bats that can throw up big numbers. As should be expected in a 1 vs. 2 match up we will see some of the best pitchers in the league; in fact Dennis Pearson and Cliff Comstock are the top two pitchers in the league with over 50 innings pitched. Pearson has both an ERA and WHIP of 1.46, a K/BB ratio of 2.30, and a 12-3 record. Comstock's ERA is right there with Pearson's at 1.50, as is his 11-3 record. Cliff's minuscule WHIP of 1.06 and fantastic 4.79 K/BB ratio, however, differentiate the two pitchers. Of course, there is also the unavoidable huge factor that Pearson does not allow hits; he has surrendered only 14 in 65 innings, compared to Comstock's 41 in 56.2 innings. Two very different yet cripplingly effective styles of attacking opposing lineups.
This match up also features seven of the top ten hitters in WSEM! Four DeLoppes: Joey DeLano, Comstock, Nick Snow, and Bobby Hoppe. Three from Git r' Done: Pearson, Dylan Braden, and Nick Braden. An incredible stat! That, friends, is how you put together 20+ win seasons. If you are not getting excited for how this is going to play out on the 17th, then you must be a prophet, psychic, or time traveler who has already seen the outcome and been WOWed to the point where everything is mundane, now.
DeLano is, by leaps and bounds, the best hitter in the league. With a ridiculous .567 AVG, 1.196 SLG%, 14 HR, 12 DB, 3 3B, 46 RBI, and 47 runs scored he leads every offensive category except for BB. Although looking at those numbers, pitchers might want to consider giving Joey a few more of those, too. I feel bad, because talking about Pearson's numbers, outstanding as they are, after DeLano's makes them seem trite by comparison. I beg you not to look at them that way! Dennis' .398 AVG, .780 SLG%, 12 HR, 9 2B, 44 RBI, and 31 runs scored are amazing numbers put up across the breadth of a season. When you add in Pearson's pitching numbers, these two phenomenal talents are easily the front-runners for 2011 MVP.
As a team the DeLoppes bat 30 points higher than Git r' Done: .385 to .354. They slug 60 points higher, .632 to .572, and have a similar 59 point advantage in OBP: .512 to .453. Git r' Done has more home runs, 27 to 23, but the DeLoppes have 39 more runs scored in just two more games played. It is when you combine the hitting and pitching and get the run differential that you see the truly differentiating stat: DeLoppes are +123, while Git r' Done is just +78.
The Wiffling DeLoppes look to be the better team on paper, but it is never as easy as that. Nick Snow said it best about the 'x-factor' in this series: Pearson is really hard to hit, and if you can't hit how are you going to win? Stats piled up, wild cards thrown in: that is why we play the games, and why these games are going to provide an amazingly dramatic finish to the inaugural WSEM season on the 17th! Could we have asked for a better way to bring this to a close?
The stakes are obviously high, so let's look at the hands the teams will be playing. At 19-3 Git r' Done comes in with the high card: all they have to do is not blink, actually not blink more than once, and they walk away the with the number one seed. Their loss last Friday to the Commandos makes this finish much tighter, as the two games against the DeLoppes now shape up to mean everything. The DeLoppes at 19-5 cannot count on Git r' Done to lose anymore and need to win out, including most importantly both head-to-head games, in order to secure the number one seed and pennant.
On the field we know the hands these teams play: great pitching and bats that can throw up big numbers. As should be expected in a 1 vs. 2 match up we will see some of the best pitchers in the league; in fact Dennis Pearson and Cliff Comstock are the top two pitchers in the league with over 50 innings pitched. Pearson has both an ERA and WHIP of 1.46, a K/BB ratio of 2.30, and a 12-3 record. Comstock's ERA is right there with Pearson's at 1.50, as is his 11-3 record. Cliff's minuscule WHIP of 1.06 and fantastic 4.79 K/BB ratio, however, differentiate the two pitchers. Of course, there is also the unavoidable huge factor that Pearson does not allow hits; he has surrendered only 14 in 65 innings, compared to Comstock's 41 in 56.2 innings. Two very different yet cripplingly effective styles of attacking opposing lineups.
This match up also features seven of the top ten hitters in WSEM! Four DeLoppes: Joey DeLano, Comstock, Nick Snow, and Bobby Hoppe. Three from Git r' Done: Pearson, Dylan Braden, and Nick Braden. An incredible stat! That, friends, is how you put together 20+ win seasons. If you are not getting excited for how this is going to play out on the 17th, then you must be a prophet, psychic, or time traveler who has already seen the outcome and been WOWed to the point where everything is mundane, now.
DeLano is, by leaps and bounds, the best hitter in the league. With a ridiculous .567 AVG, 1.196 SLG%, 14 HR, 12 DB, 3 3B, 46 RBI, and 47 runs scored he leads every offensive category except for BB. Although looking at those numbers, pitchers might want to consider giving Joey a few more of those, too. I feel bad, because talking about Pearson's numbers, outstanding as they are, after DeLano's makes them seem trite by comparison. I beg you not to look at them that way! Dennis' .398 AVG, .780 SLG%, 12 HR, 9 2B, 44 RBI, and 31 runs scored are amazing numbers put up across the breadth of a season. When you add in Pearson's pitching numbers, these two phenomenal talents are easily the front-runners for 2011 MVP.
As a team the DeLoppes bat 30 points higher than Git r' Done: .385 to .354. They slug 60 points higher, .632 to .572, and have a similar 59 point advantage in OBP: .512 to .453. Git r' Done has more home runs, 27 to 23, but the DeLoppes have 39 more runs scored in just two more games played. It is when you combine the hitting and pitching and get the run differential that you see the truly differentiating stat: DeLoppes are +123, while Git r' Done is just +78.
The Wiffling DeLoppes look to be the better team on paper, but it is never as easy as that. Nick Snow said it best about the 'x-factor' in this series: Pearson is really hard to hit, and if you can't hit how are you going to win? Stats piled up, wild cards thrown in: that is why we play the games, and why these games are going to provide an amazingly dramatic finish to the inaugural WSEM season on the 17th! Could we have asked for a better way to bring this to a close?
