Week 3 Summary (04/29/1957 - 05/05/1957)

Week three is in the books and the 1957 replay continues to be a topsy-turvy affair. The White Sox continue to sit atop the AL, but two losses on Sunday have them only percentage points ahead of a streaking Boston team and the Yankees and Tigers are nipping at their heels as well. In the NL Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh have all found themselves both in and out of first place over the past week, including one day where all three were tied with exact same win-loss record. That, plus Milwaukee and St. Louis are starting to play better right behind the top three, and none of these teams can forget that Brooklyn, despite its early season struggles are still a force to be reckoned with.

 

I have been looking at why I am consistently behind in sacrifice hits, stolen base attempts, and intentional walks, all three of the stats I have direct control over. If this is something that I can correct it needs to be done now, early in the season, rather then wait until the final third of the season and try to squeeze all of these in.

 

I track these numbers in a spreadsheet already, so I played around a little with my results so far to try and find where I "should" be. In the AL if I had fifteen more sacrifice hits, fifteen more stolen base attempts and five more intentional walks my numbers/projections would be right in line. In the NL it is ten more sacrifice hits, ten more stolen base attempts, and they are actually slightly ahead of projections in intentional walks. That is not a lot when spread out over a three week period, but here we are.

 

Lou Boudreau, Manager,
Kansas City Athletics

My goal of one sacrifice hit and once stolen base attempt every game seems to be within sufficient maintenance levels but with another 20+ games per league every week I still need to make up for the lost ground I have accrued already. Of course, this doesn’t have to be fixed in one week, but it's just something I need to remain cognizant of and continue to push. The challenge here is to play the game as it occurs and not to otherwise force these things into a game just for the sake of forcing them in.

 

On the other hand, error totals for both leagues are already about thirty behind where they should be if I wanted the projections to be on track for the actual year-end total, but that's another discussion.

 

One more thing - I will start reviewing league leaders next week (Week 4). I find it rather pointless to do it sooner, but by then we will have enough games played that these things will start to matter.

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