Week 3 Summary

Week 3 is completed and the pennant races are all quite close. Most teams are right around the twenty game mark with others right behind. The number of homeruns is still high but are slowly but surely leveling off somewhat. Batting Averages and ERA's are still high also, but like the homeruns, they are leveling off as well. The pitching continues to recover after their Week 1 thumping as there were eleven shutouts in Week 3, including a pair of 1-0 games.

In the three weeks completed there have been thirteen instances where a player has homered twice in a game, ten times where teammates have hit back-to-back homeruns, five grand slams, and six pinch-hit homeruns. This week saw the Giants Bobby Thomson, Willard Marshall, and Walker Cooper hit back-to-back-to-back homeruns off Pittsburgh's Bob Muncrief, although Muncrief shut down the Giants the rest of the way and Pittsburgh came back to win the game.

George Kell

In the AL Boston remains on top with their powerful offense leading the way. Their pitching has lost a few games for them already, but everyone knew that was going to be Boston's weak point in 1949. Cleveland has four losses just like Boston and is in second place. New York leads the AL in hitting and is last in ERA as Tommy Henrich leads the offense while Joe DiMaggio is still out. Philadelphia is hanging around .500, as has Chicago, although the White Sox have started to sink recently. St. Louis got off to a horrible start and has played .500 since. Detroit is stuck in seventh place, but their pitching has started to come around and they should be able to move up quickly.  Washington won three games this week, giving them four wins on the season.

In the NL Pittsburgh moved into first place early in the week and has stayed there since. Right behind them are four teams with eleven wins though, just waiting for the Pittsburgh bubble to burst. St. Louis has the best ERA in the NL and is a half-game behind in second place, but they have had some injury problems recently. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia have proven to be tough opponents. Brooklyn has started to show signs of life and currently sits in sixth place. They had a couple of blown saves this past week or they would be even better off. Cincinnati and Chicago remain in the cellar.

Eddie Stanky

Red Schoendienst is leading the NL in hitting (.391), but he has missed most of the past week. Jackie Robinson (.375) is single-handedly leading the Brooklyn charge and is second in average behind Schoendienst. Ralph Kiner has 18 runs scored, ahead of three players with sixteen and another three with fifteen. Robinson now has 30 hits, just ahead of Kiner's 29. Hank Sauer leads with nine homeruns and 24 RBI's with Andy Pafko right behind with seven homeruns and 20 RBI's. Harry Brecheen and Warren Spahn (both 4-0) lead the NL, with Sheldon Jones right behind at 4-1. George Munger has 1.25 ERA in limited usage, just ahead of Spahn's 1.43.

George Kell is the last remaining .400 hitter, coming in at .439. There are eight AL players hitting between .378 and .387. As you might expect Boston dominates the runs-related stats, with Ted Williams (23), Vern Stephens (20) and Johnny Pesky (18) leading in runs scored, and with Bobby Doerr (26), Stephens (20) and Williams and Tommy Henrich with 19 RBI's. Bob Dillinger leads with 33 hits, just ahead of Ferris Fain (31) and Phil Rizzuto (30). Stephens (6) leads in homeruns, ahead of five players tied with five. Ellis Kinder (4-0) is the only AL pitcher with four wins, and he leads the league as well with a 0.93 ERA.

George Munger

All in all, a good week. Many close games, come from behind victories, blown saves, and sprinkle in a couple of blow-outs and it's baseball in 1949. The error totals project out to coming in below the target, but it is my perception there are still a lot of errors being committed. I believe APBA adjusted strikeout ratings and after just three weeks the number of projected strikeouts well exceeds the target. I pushed quite a bit on sacrifice hits and stolen base attempts this past week and made a dent.

I have found several instances where the ATMgr lineups don't sync with the Baseball-Reference.com lineups. I only found two such discrepancies in my 1930 replay, but have seen four already in 1949. While I do review lineups and substitutions before every game, I haven’t been doing an in-depth player-by-player lineup verification, meaning that usually somewhere in the middle of the game I detect the error. I know I could just kill the game at hand and start over with a corrected lineup but after many years of draft league BBW that is just an anathema to me. I have already altered my process to start reviewing lineups more carefully before the game starts.