Take some pitches, Lou
I noticed two things about my stats in my 1966 NL replay (Basic Game, actual lineups, rotations) recently that gave me a reason to pause but after investigating they were mostly vindicated. As of now, I am just finishing up May with two more days left to play in the month.
1) Sandy Koufax’ arm must be falling off
| Pitcher | Team | Innings |
| Koufax, Sandy | LA | 96 |
| Veale, Bob | Pit | 87 1/3 |
| Sutton, Don | LA | 87 |
| Cloninger, Tony | Atl | 85 1/3 |
| Marichal, Juan | SF | 85 |
| Bunning, Jim | Phi | 81 |
| Gibson, Bob | StL | 81 |
| Osteen, Claude | LA | 79 |
| Short, Chris | Phi | 71 2/3 |
| Bolin, Bobby | SF | 71 1/3 |
I was perusing my leaderboards and saw my list of pitchers with most Innings Pitched. Yikes! Sandy Koufax already has 96 innings pitched in my replay as of May 29th. Needless to say, he leads the league. I thought that was inordinately high and maybe I was misusing him. Perhaps the bullpen was being ignored.
Well, I may be partially right but not as much as I thought. Using Baseball Reference, I found out how many innings Koufax had pitched by May 29th. It turns out he had pitched 82 1/3 innings by that point. So while it may be time to dial it down if I want to be realistic, I am certainly not out of the ballpark.
2) Do they teach bat discipline in St. Louis?
I’m almost rooting for the 1966 Cardinals in my replay. They can’t buy a win at 11-28. Looking over my team totals, I wonder if it’s because they can’t get on base. In 39 games, Cardinal batters have walked only 64 times in my replay. That’s 1.64 walks per game. I honestly worried if I made a mistake in my stat keeping but it all checks out. Leadoff man Lou Brock (with his one 14) is the worst offender. Though he’s batting .320, he’s walked just once in 130 plate appearances!
Again, checking Baseball Reference, I see that St. Louis had the least walks of any team in the NL in 1966 with 345 for the entire season. That works out to 2.12 BB/G, a little higher than my average but not by much. As for Brock, he walked 26 times in real life so he’ll need to learn to take some pitches to reach that mark.
There are just a few more games before I hit June. I’m planning on a big update.
I see this type of thing all the time. In my 1905 replay Hooks Wiltse was a starting pitcher who had drawn a lot of walks early in the season. I thought I was doing something wrong as he only had 1 14 on his card, but I started paying close attention and sure enough he was just lucky to hit it every game.
The end of May can produce some weird results that will usually even out over the course of a season. Bob Didier was hitting well over .300 for me at the end of May 1969, but June brought him down into the .260s. Pete Rose was on pace to score almost 200 runs, but is now (late July) on pace for 140-some. Still a lot, but not so insane.
I look forward to the big update!
Hi Tom!
Happy 4th of July..!…Really enjoying your replay!
Rollin’ Regards!
Jim