Tag: playoff race

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 142-144: Every Game Counts

Fresh off that surprising sweep of Hitmen 24×24, the Jack Bauer Squared squad headed to Atlanta Fulton County Stadium for another huge series against Piazza Blues. When you’re tied for the division with 21 games to go, every loss starts to sting. Not to mention those 21 one-run losses we’ve racked up through the season.

Piazza Blues jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the 5th inning of the series opener, and we never really had a decent look at the game. The 7-2 loss put us a game behind in the division race and kept us from hitting .500 on the season. 

Game 142

We came out in the second game with a run in each of the first three innings, and Mike Cuellar put up another strong start. Cuellar allowed 2 runs and 3 hits across 7 innings, which normally would be good enough to win.

Alas, the home squad tied it in the bottom of the 8th, and we went to extra innings. We broke it open in the 11th with a four-run inning, keyed by Bob Bailey’s two-run single, and went on to win 7-3. 

Game 143

Coupled with a loss by Steroids Make You Fast, we moved back into a first-place tie and again just one game below .500. The rubber game of the series would be yet another shot at reaching the even mark.

Things started off exceedingly well. Joel Youngblood homered to lead off the game, and Carlos Delgado hit a solo shot two batters later for a 2-0 lead. We added 3 more in the 3rd inning, keyed by Bobby Murcer’s two-run homer. (Fun fact: Delgado and Murcer both with exactly 24 HR and 97 RBI.)

Two can play at that game, unfortunately. Piazza Blues kept going deep, and going deep, and going deep … to the tune of six homers in all. We wound up losing 9-6 to slip yet again to two games under .500 but remained in a first-place tie. 

Game 144

JBS and Steroids are tied at 71-73, with our division opponents only 4 and 6 games back and still with a chance to get in there, too. The wild-card leader is at 75-69, which means there’s even some chance still of making the playoffs that way. 

With 18 games to go, we get a bit of a schedule advantage with back-to-back three-game series against the NL’s two worst teams. After that it’s four games each against our three division opponents, and that’s all that’s left. The playoffs are in sight, and you never know what can happen if you make it.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 139-141: A Wholly Unexpected Sweep

Do you believe in miracles? This Jack Bauer Squared team that seemingly had no business being in a division race enters the final 24 games of the 24×24 season just a game out of first place. But with 6 games on the road against the NL’s top two teams, would we just tumble back out of it?

Of course we started off against our nemesis, La Marr Hoyt, the not-so-worthy 1983 Cy Young winner I jokingly disparaged during the draft and then noted he’d probably beat me every time I faced him. First two times out, he did. Here in the heat of the pennant race came No. 3.

Pick your cliche. Third time’s a charm? Sure, why not? 

Kal Daniels opened the game against Hitmen 24×24  with a leadoff homer, his 17th, and Garry Maddox added a 2-run shot to back 7 scoreless innings from Bert Blyleven. That would be the Blyleven I drafted because I didn’t want to get stuck with Hoyt! 

For what it’s worth, Blyleven is 16-11, 4.74, and Hoyt is 16-13, 4.25. Joke is definitely on me, but at least we finally beat him. The 4-0 win kept us a game back and moved us one step closer to .500.

Game 139

Side note: Maddox has hit 6 homers for me, matching his real-life total, though his average of .271 is quite off his real .330 in 1976. I drafted him largely for his glove, however, his famously extraordinary range in center field for the Phillies matching his impossibly huge hair. I grew to admire his graceful loping through the outfield when his Phils met my Dodgers in the 1977 and 1978 playoffs.

The great quote about Maddox is still one of my baseball favorites: “Two-third of the Earth is covered by water, and the rest by Garry Maddox.” Yup, the man tracked down everything out there, it seemed. 

So far for me he has notched 19 “plus” defensive plays, which is definitely worthy though it ranks only 5th in the league among center fielders. And his 10 errors match the most of any CF, while his range factor ranks just 13th. … But I digress. The man could play mean defense, and I’m sticking to it regardless.

In the second game at Oakland Coliseum, Mike Cuellar gave up a run on two hits in the 2nd inning, and then he didn’t allow anything the rest of the way. Definitely the time to pitch like an ace, Mike!

Bobby Murcer swatted his 23rd homer, and Gene Tenace hit his 18th, and Cuellar went the distance in a 3-1 win. I’ve ripped Cuellar’s inconsistency, but I can’t complain about this outing in the least.

With a loss by Steroids Make You Fast, suddenly this JBS squad is back in a first-place tie. 

Game 140

In the series finale, no one scored until the 4th inning, but then the bats got going. Tenace hit his 19th and 20th homers as we built an 8-3 lead. Rod Beck came on in the 7th and gave up a pair of two-run homers to put Hitmen squarely into it again, however.

It stayed 8-7 into the 9th, and Bob Woodward came on in pursuit of his 33rd save and promptly put two runners on. But he retired the final three hitters in a row to close out a rare one-run win for us and a very surprising three-game sweep of one of the league’s top teams.

Game 141

The wholly unexpected sweep put us at 70-71, still tied for first, so close to .500 and yet with another daunting series ahead of us and no time to enjoy it. We need to keep it up against Piazza Blues next as we hit the home stretch of the season.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 136-138: Fighting for First

Dear Reader, I failed you in maintaining a real-time running story of this sim season and fell a bit behind. The present drama, however, argues for catching up when I can and keeping you informed to what is unfolding down the stretch. So the posts might not fit chronologically, but I’ll get it all here eventually.

So, with the miracle of getting into a first-place tie duly noted, we have to be realistic about where this Jack Bauer Squared team stands now. We have a 9-game road trip that includes the league’s two best teams coming up, and a slip back is certainly to be expected soon. 

That puts a premium on winning against anyone else as the season starts to run out of games. This home series against Royal Gamers definitely fit into that category. 

Teddy Higuera was up to the task in the opener, extending a run of strong starts with 1 run allowed in 7 innings. Higuera improved to 4-2 with a 2.92 ERA across his past 10 starts.

Bobby Murcer tied the game in the 2nd inning with his 21st homer, and then he drove in the go-ahead run on a 6th-inning single. That proved enough for a 2-1 victory and keeping pace atop the division. That made us 15-21 in 1-run games now, which still isn’t good but it’s closer to even anyway.

Game 136

The second game was the opposite of the opener, a true slugfest. The Mr. Hyde version of Mike Cuellar showed up for this one, as he allowed 8 runs in 5.1 innings. 

There is just no pattern to Cuellar’s runs totals recently. Working backwards, here are the runs he’s allowed: 8, 1, 5, 0, 7, 5, 0, 0, 3, 7, 2, 6. Sometimes he’s really good, sometimes really bad, and rarely in the middle.

Nonetheless, JBS rallied from a 9-4 deficit to tie it in the 7th, keyed by a 3-run double from Garry Maddox. Royal Gamers jumped ahead in the top of the 10th with 3 runs, and we threatened in the bottom of the inning before stranding two runners and losing, 12-10.

Game 137

That dropped us a game behind Steroids Make You Fast heading into the series finale. The Gamers jumped out to a 6-2 early lead, however, and we couldn’t put a good rally together until the 9th. 

Down 3, we loaded the bases with one out. But we failed to score and dropped the finale 7-4 and remained one game back in the division and just one game ahead of third place. We may be only 67-71, but if you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

Game 138

The toughest remaining piece of schedule looms now, a series at Hitmen 24×24 (85-53) followed by one at Piazza Blues (84-54), the two other division leaders in the NL. We have gone 4-5 against Hitmen thus far, and we need to get a win or two to keep from slipping.