We moved on to Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, a homer haven, for the final series of the first half.
The first inning started us off well as we parlayed a single and three walks into a 3-0 lead. Piazza Blues rallied to tie it, however, and through 8 it was still 3-3.
Bill Freehan put us ahead with a pinch-hit double, and another pinch hitter, Butch Davis, singled him in for a 5-3 margin. Bob Woodward nailed down the win with a perfect 9th for his 17th save.
Fulton County lived up to its reputation in the next game, as the hosts hit four homers against Mike Cuellar and another against Rod Beck. All were solo shots, however, and Jack Bauer Squared was able to tie it in the 9th inning with a two-run rally.
Alas, the hosts didn’t need a homer or even a hit to create a walkoff rally. They combined two walks and a sacrifice fly to win it 6-5.
That set up the rubber game of the series and a chance to end the first half on a positive note. It didn’t happen. Piazza Blues chased Bert Blyleven in the 6th after scoring 7 runs and hitting three homers. We were never in it and lost 7-2.
So the first half ends with a 36-45 record, now 7 games out of first place and in third in the division. We are “only” 5 games behind the wild card leaders, but it’s a pack we’ll have to move through first. There are two teams tied 41-40, two more 40-41, another 39-42, then us and one other team at 36-45.
The second half will begin with our third straight road series, at Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula at, of course, Detroit’s old Tiger Stadium.
Jack Bauer Squared headed on as tough a road trip as we could imagine to end the first half, playing the two best teams in our National League back to back. First up was a visit to the Oakland Coliseum to face Hitmen 24×24.
The first game was tight and low-scoring, as Mike Cuellar and Dennis Eckersley dueled to a 1-1 tie that went into extra innings. Unfortunately another error by Bobby Bonilla (his 16th) helped the hosts score in the 11th and win 2-1 and extend our losing streak to four.
The second game was a case of karma coming back to bite me, as I had made light mockery of the opposing pitcher, La Marr Hoyt, during the draft. So of course he held us hitless through 5 innings as Hitmen took a 7-0 lead.
We picked up a few late runs to make it a little close but lost 7-3, our fifth straight setback. To say the least, not the direction we wanted to be heading.
We needed one win just to avoid a second straight sweep now. In the 6th inning, we racked up four runs on five hits to take a lead, but Hitmen closed the gap. In the top of the 8th, however, we picked up another four, including a three-run homer from Ryne Sandberg.
Sandberg has been light on first-half highlights, and this was just his 4th homer. But we’ll take the 9-4 victory and the end of the five-game slide for now.
The halfway point of the season is fast approaching, and Jack Bauer Squared has largely pulled out of the deep hole we started in. We might have been a bit too optimistic about getting to .500 by the 81-game mark, but we definitely needed to keep moving closer.
Entering a three-game series at home against Royal Gamers, we needed to win two to keep the forward progress. It didn’t happen. Alas, we folded.
In the opener, Bobby Bonilla hit a two-run homer in the 1st inning for a promising start, but we didn’t score again. A couple errors, one by Bonilla, hurt our cause as we watched Royal Gamers rally for a 5-2 victory.
Mike Cuellar took the mound for the second game, and it’s worth noting that he’s turning his season around nicely now. Cuellar allowed 3 runs (2 earned) in 7 innings, marking the 9th time in 10 starts he allowed 3 earned runs or fewer — a far cry from what he was doing earlier in the season. His ERA over those 10 starts is 3.00, so he’s dropped his season ERA to 4.79, the lowest it’s been all season.
Alas, it wasn’t enough to secure a win. The game went to extra innings, and again Bonilla made a costly error that helped Royal Gamers put up 3 runs in the 10th inning. Their 6-3 win left us badly needing a win to avoid a sweep.
It didn’t happen. Our old enemy, the one-run loss, came to play again as we fell victim to the three-game sweep, 3-2. Another error led to what proved to be the winning run, and defensive woes cost us in a big way in this series.
Dropping to 34-41 wasn’t the worst part. It’s looking at the next two series on the schedule and seeing the top two teams in the league back-to-back, and both on the road. We’re going to need to play respectably in these six games to avoid losing all the gains we’d made to get into the race.
If we don’t, we might be looking at a really long second half.
I’ve fallen a couple of series behind on my recaps due to a busy week. In our first series, against Tulo? More Like Too High, we needed a good showing to keep pushing for the division lead and a wild card spot.
We didn’t start off well, though. For just the second time all season, Jack Bauer Squared was shut out. It didn’t help that Burt Hooton got shelled for 8 runs, but even if he’d only allowed 1 we still were coming out on the wrong end. An 8-0 loss means not much went well.
The second game of the series didn’t look promising either as we fell behind 4-1 early. The offense came alive, as both Kal Daniels and Carlos Delgado had three-hit games including homers as we charged back to win 8-4.
That set up a rubber game for two teams fighting for respectability. Once again we trailed and came back. Daniels and Delgado had three hits apiece again as we rallied for 2 in the 8th to win a rare one-run game, 3-2. Bert Blyleven pitched well, allowing 2 runs in 7 innings, but he was gone before the rally and didn’t earn the victory.
That earned us a series victory, and we need as many of those as we can get. We’re now 34-38 and inching toward .500 still. Our six-game homestand at Olympic Stadium continues next with Royal Gamers coming to town.
Our series opener with Block Chain started out well, with a leadoff homer by Kal Daniels to open the game. It was Daniels’ 10th of the season, and he’s slashing a very fine .298/.410/.535 leading off against right starters. No complaints there.
We still led 2-1 into the 7th, but the ever-maligned Mike Cuellar gave up a three-run double to flip the script. In 1969, Cuellar went 23-11 with a 2.02 ERA for the Orioles. Even normalized because of pitching’s edge in that time, his ERA is still 2.08. He really should be much better than 5-7 with a 5.01 ERA.
We got within a run in the 9th and had the tying run on 2nd with no outs, but we couldn’t budge him and fell 4-3. That makes us 7-13 in one-run games now.
The offense rebounded in the second game of the series, fortunately. Bobby Murcer hit a three-run homer, his 8th, as we opened up an 8-1 lead and cruised to a 9-4 win.
Bert Blyleven notched his 10th win to lead the team. He’s 18th in the league in ERA, too, and again he was drafted as the 4th starter!
That brought us to the rubber game, and it would certainly have been nice to come out of this series a step closer to .500. Alas, Block Chain broke a 1-1 tie in the 6th inning with a pair of solo homers off Teddy Higuera, then tacked on three more runs off Rod Beck in the 8th to pull away for a 6-1 win.
At 32-37, Jack Bauer Squared remains 5 games out of first place and 3 behind the wild card leaders. To reach my goal of .500 at the 81-game mark, we’re going to need a really nice run now.
Next up: our first series with Tulo? More Like Too High since the season’s first three games. Always tough going against my friend NebHusker, whose team is also fighting to compete at 34-35. This is one of the teams I need to pass in the wild card chase, plus there is potential for trash talk if we can put up a good showing.
The first game of the series with Throw the Spitball, Gaylord had a few highlights … for them. For Jack Bauer Squared, it was a forgettable 9-1 loss featuring poor starting pitching, relief pitching and hitting.
We fell behind 5-1 early in the second game back in Olympic Stadium, but we chipped away with two in the 6th and then exploded for six runs in the 7th. Six consecutive hits produced the rally, and it left enough cushion for some shaky relief so we emerged with a 9-7 win and a split.
That was enough to make a small move in the division race, though, as the teams above and behind us got swept. So after 66 games, we sit 31-35, 5 games out of first place and 2 ahead of third place.
There are four teams ahead of us in the wild card race, all bunched at 32-34 or 33-33. We are definitely in the race now though, as we head to Shea Stadium for a three-game series against Block Chain.
Coming into this series with $24 and Some Change, Jack Bauer Squared had a chance to move into 2nd place in the National League West with a sweep. A tall order, sure, but we’ve started seeing results more in line with expectations. Sights are set on getting to .500 and contending for the playoffs.
The opener featured perhaps our best pitching performance of the season, as Burt Hooton allowed a single hit over 8 innings. The sixth-inning triple by Pete Rose (he did get a lot of hits, after all) broke up the no-hitter. Carlos Delgado hit his 10th homer and drove in three runs in a 4-1 victory.
As in our previous post where we looked at the start breakdowns of two other members of the rotation, let’s look at how Hooton has fared. His record of 4-6 belies how effective he’s been, posting a 3.42 ERA in 15 starts.
0 runs: 1 time
1 run: 6 times
2 runs: 2 times
3 runs: 1 time
4 runs: 2 times
5 runs: 1 time
6 runs: 0 times
7 runs: 1 time
8 runs: 1 time
What jumps out is giving up 1 run or fewer in almost half his starts, and he’s keeping us in nearly every game he pitches. Coupled with Bert Blyleven in what is supposed to be the back half of the rotation, these two have been closer to our aces.
Nothing is truly contagious in a sim, but we’ll take any explanation for a good start by Mike Cuellar. Buoyed by a grand slam in the 1st inning by Garry Maddox and a two-run shot by Gene Tenace, Cuellar allowed just 1 run on 2 hits in 7 innings.
That’s only the second time Cuellar gave up 1 run or fewer, so we can only hope it’s the start of a trend. Maddox finished with 5 RBI, and we sailed to a 7-1 victory. That puts us in a tie for 2nd place with $24, so this final game of the series will put someone there by themselves.
Despite falling behind 2-0 in the 1st inning, JBS battled back to score in each of the first four innings. Kal Daniels and Tenace homered to back Blyleven, who gave up 3 runs in 7 innings.
Bob Woodward came on to pitch the 9th and recorded his 15th save in 15 tries and kept his ERA at 0.00. It’s unusual to see a pitcher not give up a run this deep into the season, even if he has only pitched 14 ⅓ innings. (Psst, forum jinx, you didn’t hear me say that.)
The three-game sweep did indeed put us alone in second place at 30-34, 6 games out of 1st but only 3 behind the current wild-card leader. Each league’s three division winners make the playoffs, plus the second-place team with the best record as the wild card. Since no one else is running away with this, we’re right in the thick of it now.
It’s also worth noting that our expected winning percentage continues to climb and is now at .520, and only the three division leaders are that high. That means we “should” be 33-31, which is exactly the record of the wild-card leader. We can easily point at a 7-12 record in one-run games and 1-5 in extra innings as the culprits. Those may even out yet.
Next up is a single quick interleague series against Throw the Spitball, Gaylord, starting off with our one visit to Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field to kick it off. Let’s keep it going, lads!
Let’s take a serious right turn for a few minutes (or hours). I promised tangents and detours, so here comes one.
Fundamental to the concept of playing a simulated game is the understanding that there is a real game of baseball that is and has been played by real people in real places, and the statistics gathered from those events generate these outcomes I’ve been recreating (or reshaping, perhaps).
Lately, however, I started watching some videos and reading articles about the nature of reality. And what consciousness actually is. It’s quite a rabbit hole that science can take us down, and once these ideas get into your head you start to examine this human experience differently. Thanks to the YouTube algorithm, I’ve gone from curiosity about outer space to the question of whether space and time even exist.
I have long understood that our minds are incapable of grasping all the levels of what we experience as reality. We get glimpses of a different level sometimes, and we might label these as spiritual or intuitive or transcendental, because we need words somehow even when they do not suffice. I’ve known people who see auras or ghosts, for instance, and who am I to suggest they’re not? Maybe they can just tune into wavelengths I can’t.
Research has led Donald Hoffman, a professor of cognitive psychology at UC Irvine, to doubt our strongest held beliefs about what reality and consciousness are. I find his discoveries mind-bending but still compatible with my sense that we know only the tiniest fraction of reality anyway. Check out his TED Talk, “Do we see reality as it is?” and see if you can appreciate where he’s headed with this:
Intrigued by that talk, I let YouTube guide me to a conversation with Hoffman and Deepak Chopra. In my 20s, I read a couple of Chopra’s books and found they made a profound impact on my perception of reality and spirituality. My own exploration of spiritual teaching through a Jewish framework has led to this fundamental concept: We are spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe this can mesh with what Hoffman’s trying to prove with science, too.
The discussion with Chopra gave me added insight into Hoffman’s research and deepened my fascination. He’s arguing, essentially, that the way we believe we experience the world is no more the actual reality than double-clicking an icon on your computer desktop reflects the actual reality of how that file exists. He uses this interface model to show that what we experience and perceive is nothing more than a representation that conscious agents use as icons that mask reality. He doesn’t get into religion, but that rather jibes with spiritual beings having a human experience to me.
If reading a short interview will help grasp this better, check out “The Case Against Reality,” an interview in The Atlantic from 2016. He’s also written a book with that title since, and I suspect I’ll be ordering it shortly.
All that emboldened me to watch a 2 hour, 24 minute one-on-one interview Hoffman did called This Scientist Explains Why Our Reality Is False, because I wanted to get even greater insight into this way of thinking. I confess that I’m beginning to be rather persuaded that he might just be right, which then leads me to wonder what that means for us.
At a Jewish spirituality retreat a couple years ago, I made this note in my notepad: “If God is a spiritual being, and we are created in God’s image, then we are not physical beings at all.” That notion predates pretty much all of what we know in modern science and psychology. I’m amazed that here I am seeing that on a clearer level after listening to a scientist explain how he’s proven mathematically that our reality is false. And people think science and religion are incompatible?
Yet, whatever we believe or perceive as reality, we do still experience reality in this way. I just ate a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and it was as delicious as ever, even if it’s possible to prove that there’s no such thing as taste or peanut butter or chocolate or my own senses. I might eat another one just to be sure, though.
If you’re intrepid, feel free to give this one a watch, too. I see several more out there on YouTube that will soon enough be recommended to me. I’ll no doubt revisit this rabbit hole, because it’s pretty mind-blowing to think there is not only no computer that I’m typing this on, there is also no one out there reading any of this, nor do any of the people I think I’m playing sim games against exist, nor does the game of baseball, nor the servers that are out there recreating games.
Of course, it’s possible all that is wrong, too, so just in case I’d better set my lineups and rotations for my next set of games. And even if I’m only a conscious agent living a simulated existence playing simulated games, I might as well try to win.
Jack Bauer Squared needed a rebound after the sweep in Dodger Stadium, and though you wouldn’t generally think a trip to Yankee Stadium is a way to make things better … well, in this case it worked out well enough.
The opener saw Mike Cuellar do typical Mike Cuellar things for us. He gave up 5 runs in 6.2 innings. In his 16 starts now, here is a breakdown of runs allowed (earned and unearned combined):
0 runs: 1 time
1 run: 0 times
2 runs: 1 time
3 runs: 2 times
4 runs: 3 times
5 runs: 4 times
6 runs: 3 times
7 runs: 2 times
That’s pretty much how you end up with a 5.35 ERA and ongoing scorn in these posts. When 75% of the time you give up at least 4 runs, you are not helping your team win games. The underlying code that represents our maligned Mr. Cuellar is better than that, otherwise I wouldn’t have drafted him in the second round. He’s doing worse than pitchers who aren’t as good, so he’s suffering some bad luck. In theory, the law of averages should catch up and he should fill the top half of that list up as the season progresses. In theory anyway. The reverse jinxes aren’t helping any, clearly.
As it happens we pulled out the series opener anyway with a couple runs in the top of the 9th on Kal Daniels’ RBI double and a wild pitch. That gave us a 7-5 win and the end of the little three-game losing streak.
The second game featured an excellent start from Bert Blyleven, who despite being drafted as a fourth starter has performed the best so far. He pitched 7 shutout innings to improve to 8-4 with a 3.21 ERA. We won 5-0 to take the first two games of the series.
Seems like a good time to compare Blyleven’s 15 starts to Cuellar’s:
0 runs: 3 times
1 run: 3 times
2 runs: 2 times
3 runs: 1 time
4 runs: 2 times
5 runs: 3 times
6 runs: 1 times
7 runs: 0 times
In contrast to Cuellar’s only yielding 3 or fewer runs in 25% of his starts, Blyleven has done in 9 out of 15 times, or 60%. I think my inner geek is showing a bit here, so let’s move on.
The final game of the series started with each team scoring twice in the 1st inning and then zeroes until A Rod broke through with two more in the 7th. We squandered scoring opportunities in the 6th, 7th, and 8th and couldn’t get a run home. So the 4-2 loss ended the road trip and left us at 27-34, 8 games out of 1st place but only 5 games out of the wild card.
Next up: Another divisional battle against $24 and Some Change, who sit just above us at 29-32. A good showing here could put us a step closer to contention. At this point, the first goal is to get to .500 on the season, hopefully by the halfway point in 20 games. We’d have to go 14-6 to do that, but that’s possible to be sure.
Dear Reader, I left you hanging with my preview post about my World Series matchup on Sim Dynasty earlier in the week. Alas, it was not yet Brooklyn’s time to rise to the top.
We were matched up against the three-time defending champion Cleveland Badgers, who won 124 games in the regular season to our 106. While we had to battle through a five-team race to get into the playoffs, the Badgers cruised and clinched in August.
In Game 1, Cleveland sent ace Gary Weaver to the mound and he didn’t disappoint. The Badgers cruised to a 6-3 opening victory.
Game 2 was scoreless through 7 innings, giving hope we might pull off the road split if we could just squeeze across a run somehow. Cleveland struck first with a run in the 8th and sent closer Kid Edmondson to the mound to seal it. The Bats rallied to tie, however, and sent it to extra innings.
In the top of the 10th, we stranded runners on 2nd and 3rd, our best chance to pull off the win. In the bottom of the 11th, the Badgers got a walkoff homer from Pete Ripple to win 3-1.
That sent the series to Brooklyn’s E-Bats Field for Game 3, where Ripple immediately did damage with a first-inning, three-run homer in a 5-run inning. The Bats rallied with a pair of homers in the 2nd and got 4 runs back. But no one scored again until Cleveland tacked on one in the 8th and held on to win, 6-4.
Disheartened, Brooklyn couldn’t summon any attempt to come back in the series. The Badgers put us out of our misery with a 6-0 win in Game 4 and a sweep.
That gave the Badgers four straight titles, and now they’ll try to become the first team to win five in a row. We will try to get back to the Series and thwart that effort if we can.
