How We Can Finish in 11th Place

Yes we can!

The Pickled Pecklers have been sitting in 12th place for virtually the entire season. I don’t have the week by week reports, but I’m pretty sure we’ve been buried alive in last place since the end of April. I can’t remember when we’ve had more than 30 points, or more than 8 hitting points. Until this month it looked like we would not make our innings, and as a result we’d lose our top two categories – ERA and WHIP.

It’s been an ugly, ugly year. We have 30 steals. How many NL players have more steals than the entire Pickled Peckler team? We got two of those steals on Wednesday, when Alex Gonzalez (lost to the AL) got his second of the season, and former base stealer Derrek Lee got his first of 2009, and immediately injured himself on the slide and hasn’t played since. 2008 NL ROY Giovanni Soto is hitting .219 (he’s available to you all at the bargain basement salary of only $11). JJ Hardy played his way back to AAA after hitting 26 and 24 homers in 2007-8. $41 for Alfonso Soriano (20/55/9/.241). $31 for Rafael Furcal (9/45/10/.268). Ugly, and self-inflicted.

Our pitching is not too bad, though. We finally have 2 well-priced closers (Street (19) and Marmol (21)), and with any luck, we’ll be able to say that in April, too. And we may have 3 – we have Brett Myers at 16. We’ve got a lot of young, cheap, decent pitching that is keepable for next year. It’s a start.

Yet day after day, week after week, we look at the standings, and we’re at 26 or 28.5 or 24.5, and we can’t even see the team in front of us. And in the daily allstarstats email, we literally can’t see the team in front, because the spacing for the last place team is somewhere intertwined with the text, 6 inches below the other 11 teams. It’s painful, and we’re not used to it. OK, we haven’t won the league, but we’ve only been out of the money once in the last 9 years, and only the Busch Leaguers can say that. Well, you can now make that twice in 10.

But now, with about 8 games to go, we can see the puffy rear ends of the Falkuhns, who have only 34 points. And really they only have 31, because as of this moment, they only have 964-2/3 innings. They’ll never make 1,075. The Pecklers are at 27.5. We can see the promised land. Here’s how it plays out.

First, we’re tied with the Bums in homers. If we pass them, that gets us to 28.

Second, there are WHIP and ERA points at stake. Our WHIP is a decent 1.345, and we are only a hair behind Any 9 (1.344) and the Old Rips (1.340). Our ERA is 4.02, with the Pounders just barely ahead at 4.01. We should make our innings today. So that’s another 3 potential points, which can get us to 31.

And then there are the clinchers – we’re not that far behind the Falkuhns in 2 categories, Wins (60-57) and RBIs (670-653). We have been so far behind everyone in RBIs for so long, we can’t believe we can see their tail lights. OK, there aren’t many games left, so it’s a stretch, but LDN has shut that team down to a grinding halt. Meanwhile, we actually led BABI in RBIs last week.

Larry says he doesn’t care. Lou says he’s bored. But the Pecklers are playing some baseball now, and we’re not as stupid as we look.

A coach turns to one of his players and says, “Son, are you ignorant or are you just apathetic?” The player answers, “Coach, I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

We care. No matter what the circumstances, the Pecklers play ‘till the whistle blows. Larry doesn’t care? Well he blows, too.