4th Place is Good

I’ve finally been inspired to write something again. Of course, nobody is actually reading this anymore, but I’ll write it for myself.

What got the juices flowing again is this great race for fourth place in BABI. Somehow, your Pickled Pecklers are actually in the middle of it. It’s not that long ago when we were languishing in last place, in the 20’s. We decided to sell out, and even made two trades which got us virtually no stats for two of our stars – Kaz Matsui (keepable for Nick Johnson, a stupid, stupid trade) and Derrick Lee (for, essentially, Carlos Gomez, finally back from the DL, but not playing).

Had we not made those trades, we would probably be in the hunt for 2nd or 3rd. It was hard to imagine that being possible, when we had all of 5 pitching points, with an ERA over 5 and a WHIP over 1.5. Today we’ve got 25 pitching points, despite that Stan Laurel-like “1” in saves.

It was a delicate task to try to build for next year without actually completely giving up. The reality is, nobody was trading, mostly because the Bums seem to have built such an amazing dynasty team. So we kept tweaking our pitching staff, hiding Hensley and Pelfrey on our DL, picking up some quiet relievers to help rebuild our numbers, and then in the stretch drive, picking up the risky Doug Davis and Kevin Correia, and now, starter Carlos Villenueva, to get over the innings threshold (we’re still under it at 1037, but we’re close enough now). And that great stretch of scoreless innings by our one and only ace, Brandon Webb, didn't hurt. Our win points total has gone from 1 to 8, our ERA is under 4 and our WHIP under 1.37. Meanwhile, we've got a pretty good keeper list, headed by our young guys, Hunter Pence and James Loney.

Our competition is Kenny 9 and the Old Bat. This week all of us have been in 4th, in 5th and in 6th. We haven’t had a single static day with no change in position. The Lickers have been sneaking up, hitting 52 points despite offering to clear out their roster a few weeks ago, but I don’t think they can make it, though it is possible they could pass a team that suddenly falls.

We don’t know what Kenny 9’s been doing this year. He spent most of his money early, and has been ahead of us in the standings, so we’ve been beating him on the waiver wire. He still has Jose Reyes (he was never going to trade him) so he leads the league in steals by a mile.

Bats took half of the Cartel in a desperate attempt to get in the real race, but he’s ended up here, hoping for 4th. He’s got the fewest inexpensive keepers, so he really needs the payoff that 4th brings: just under a grand compared to about $500 and $200 for 5th and 6th.

Each team has been bouncing every day. We switch with Hobo for the league batting lead about 3 times per week. Barry lost a WHIP point to the Lickers yesterday. We’re one homer behind Kenny 9 and 3 behind the Pounders in homers. There is always risk in wins. We have real downside but no upside in steals. It looks like we passed the Pounders and Kenny 9 in RBI’s for good, but they are back and forth every day.

As for tie breakers, we’re all 4 and 4, though if we get that homer point from Kenny 9, we’ll move to 5-3.

It’s a great race. Who’s going to get hot these last 2 weeks?

By the way, Eric Byrnes may finish with 20 homers and 50 steals. That’s got to be a fairly small club. Hanley Ramirez is likely to make it too. He’s really been quite a star for us, and we need every one of those steals. Which brings us to this trivia question: In the history of baseball, only 2 players have hit 20 homers and had 80 steals in a season. Everyone is going guess Ricky Henderson, and they will be correct. The other one comes as a shock to me. Hint: He’s been in BABI.