With a 4-5 series loss against Marcus Bunch and his Moline Upperdeckers this weekend, my Twin City Thunderchickens have concluded the 2018 Illowa APBA League (10-team, Basic Game) season with a 75-87 record. As late as July, the T-Chicks had a winning record and were very much in the playoff race but the All-Star weekend games did not give us much of a boost and we fell from there. Official standings for the year are not yet released but as of December, Twin City was firmly in seventh place with little chance of moving either direction.
Focusing on the positive, we had a lot of successes. Eric Hosmer whose card was 1-5-6 with a 55-7 and a 15-10, somehow found a way hit 40 homeruns. It seems to me that most of them were on his 11-5. Hosmer led the team in EVERY (positive) stat except triples, HBP, walks, OBP and stolen bases. He hit .294/.562/.360 with 115 runs scored and 113 rbis. Interestingly, Hosmer’s doubles total almost matched his homer output; he had 38.
For that, Eric Hosmer is Twin City Thunderchicken’s 2018 Player of the Year.
At the beginning of the year, Kris Bryant was asked to take on the leadoff role. He was not used to this role but performed admirably. He led the team in walks (93) and OBP (.388) as well as even stealing 8 bases. His power (30 HR) may have wasted a bit (69 rbis on 30 HR) but he did what he was asked to do.
Other notable offensive performances:
- Yasiel Puig 28 HR, 83 rbis
- Asdrubal Cabrera .255, 18 HR, 65 rbis
- Jose Reyes 21 steals
Which brings me to J.D. Martinez and Kyle Schwarber. Both are slugging outfielders for Twin City but their APBA cards are very dissimilar. Take a look…
Any right-minded APBA manager would love to have a card with power numbers 1-1-1-6-6 even with all the 24s, right? And as for Kyle Schwarber, his 31-13 leaves a bit to be desired.
Well, Martinez just could not get going in the first half. At all. It got to the point that I took him out of the lineup (which was good because he had to rest about 40 games anyway).
Schwarber picked up the slack and did very well. In fact, his .506 slugging percentage was second on the team behind Hosmer. Despite almost 100 at-bat less than Martinez, he almost matched his homerun total (Schwarber’s 26 to Martinez’ 29). Martinez’ slugging percentage dipped below .500 during the very last 9-game series of the season and he ended up at .492.
That said, hitting Martinez’ 33-1 and even the 44-6 sure was nice when it happened. I will say that J.D. magically picked it up in the second half. His stats were markedly better. Once he hit better, he stayed in the lineup.
Let’s face it, we didn’t have the pitching to go all the way. Many of us categorize APBA pitchers as “graded” meaning they are not Grade D pitchers. I had plenty of “graded” starts and “graded” innings. But truth be told, almost all of them save Stephen Strasburg (AXYZ) and rookie John Brebbia (A*XZ) were C inning. Kevin Weber, if you are reading this, pay attention. When you are setting up your new team in the APBA League you are in, please understand how much better Grade B pitchers are compared to Grade C pitchers. There is a huge difference.
Junior Guerra, Lance McCullers, Tanner Roark, Eduardo Rodriguez, Antonio Senzatela all Grade C pitchers on the Thunderchicken staff, ended up with ERA over 5.00.
However, Kyle Freeland (also a Grade C pitcher) did well. He went 8-8 with a 3.70 ERA. I even nominated him early on for our All-Star Game team. However, Stephen Strasburg found his groove and while he couldn’t fully recover from his mediocre season start, he had a fine season. Strasburg led the team in wins (11), strikeouts (193) and ERA among starters (3.09). He has the honor of Twin City Thunderchicken 2018 Pitcher of the Year
Rookie John Brebbia did what I expected of him. He saved 25 games with a 2.63 ERA.
I will end this analysis with something that I noted to Marcus during our Skype session this morning. To me, it seemed that when my team hit homers, we won. No, that isn’t a McCarver-esque statement. What I mean, is that it appeared that a high percentage of our runs came from four-baggers. We weren’t the type of team to string of bunch of hits together in an inning. Rather, we were the “a walk and a homer” type of team. We had three hitters with at least two first column 1s and two more with power numbers 1-5-5. The ironic thing is that none of those five hitters led our team in homers (nice going, Eric!).
Congrats Marcus!
Finally, I would like to congratulate my January opponent Marcus Bunch. You may have seen the photo from the Illowa All-Star weekend above. I have used fancy technology to almost stab a red arrow in Marc’s forehead so you know who he is.
While not official yet, he has reached a 100-62 record with his 5 game series win over me. That will give him the first place in the 2018 Illowa APBA League standings. Aside from being a great manager, Marcus is a standup guy.
Congrats, Marc!
