The other day, I wrote about APBA leagues and what they are all about. As it turns out, today is the 28th which is the monthly due date for the Illowa APBA League’s stats to be turned in to the commissioner.
A little league trivia: The reason it’s the 28th goes back to the days before the Internet and we sent in our stats via postal mail (I remember typing up my stats on a old Smith-Corona). Making the due date the 28th gave the Post Office plenty of time to get them to the commish before the end of the month.
As usual, I’m getting my stats done just in time. Actually, I emailed them to my commissioner with five and half hours to spare (pretty good for me considering there were 39 games to compute).
Here are some highlights:
First, big kudos to Tyler Colvin who was the subject of a season long tongue-in-cheek feature I did last year. For those interested, he batted .148/.248/.198 with 16 rbis in 243 at bats for my team last year. I won’t have to feign his “contribution to the team” this season. With his 1-0-0-0-0 power numbers, he’s actually putting out some great numbers so far. In 24 games, he’s batting .355 with 16 rbis and 5 homeruns. Yes, he’s already matched his 2012 rbi total.
What to do with Reyes’ strange 3-5-6 power combo? What I’ve been doing is batting him second in the lineup behind Jason Kipnis. It seems to be working as he is second on the team in rbis with 21.
I had been going on about rookie OF Justin Maxwell and how great he had been doing. That was before I had done my stats. He is doing ok with five homers and 16 rbis but is hitting .244. He also has 30 strikeouts in 21 games. I think what had skewed my vision was a couple of clutch hits he had gotten during our league convention. Once we get an idea in our head, we just look for facts to confirm it. It’s human nature.
As for Albert Pujols, I know better to malign him or my friend Don S will get on my case about it. Pujols doesn’t have his best card in his career but let’s face it, he’s leading the Thunderchickens in homers (6) and rbis (24).
I do appreciate rookie pitcher Scott Diamond very much. He finally lost his first game in his seventh start against the Bamm Beanos. So far, he’s 5-1 with a nifty 3.15 ERA. In fact, he’s the only pitcher on our staff with a winning record. We’re 16-23 right now.
The Illowa APBA League is in the midst of its intra-division season right now so I’ll have a few division rivals to take care of in the next couple of months. That has its upsides and downsides. Down seven games below .500, we have a lot of work to do.
