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Week 5 Summary (05/13/1957 - 05/19/1957)

Week 5 is in the books and the excitement continues. Several teams have reached the thirty games played mark and all will be there before the end of this upcoming week. The early season roster cutdowns are complete but teams continue to jockey their lineups, looking for a winning combination. Several teams are working around injuries and there are still trade rumors floating through the ether. This has been quite an exciting replay so far and it really does look like the fun is going to continue.

1957 Cleveland Indians
The White Sox are playing .800 ball behind the pitching of Billy Pierce (6-0, 2.53), Dick Donovan (5-0, 3.27) and Jim Wilson (4-0, 4.15) plus they are third in the AL in hitting, mix in a couple of clutch hits to ice some of those wins, and they find themselves well on the top of the standings. New York, Boston, and Detroit are all playing well too but keep falling farther and farther behind. All three know that Chicago won’t be playing .800 ball all season so they know they just need to take care of their own business for now and be ready when the White Sox do cool off. Hint: Most of the White Sox games so far have come against teams at the bottom of the league (they are 10-0 versus Kansas City and Washington).

 

However, the talk of baseball is the NL pennant chase. St. Louis slipped past Philadelphia and Cincinnati into first place late in the week and have maintained a tenuous hold on to the position since. The next four teams in the standings are all one-half game behind the team in front of them. I don't think I could have arranged that deliberately if I set out to do so.

 

Cleveland Manager Kerby Farrell
The team of the back of these five is Milwaukee who finally climbed over .500 this past week and now find themselves only two games out of first, albeit in fifth place. Hank Aaron has seventeen homeruns already this season and has done his best to carry the Braves so far this season. Brooklyn leads the NL in pitching and fielding but still languishes in seventh place, right behind Chicago, as the Dodgers have scored the fewest runs of any team so far. This too will not last.

 

Stan Musial leads the NL in hitting (.424) and hits (50), and currently has an active twenty game hitting streak. Hank Aaron leads in runs scored (33), RBI's (40), and homeruns (17), as he and Musial are in almost every offensive top ten, often these two at the top. Warren Spahn and Brooks Lawrence are 6-1 to start the season, and Don Drysdale (0.89) and Lindy McDaniel (0.94) lead the league in ERA. Drysdale  (2-2) has the league lead in lowest run support per nine innings (1.4), just another sign of the Dodgers offensive woes so far.


Just as the NL has their dynamic duo of Musial and Aaron the AL has Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. Williams lead the AL (.413) in batting average, a single point ahead of Mantle (.412), but in on-base percentage, the situation is reversed, with Mantle ahead by a single point, .539 to .538. Williams leads in runs scored (29), ahead of Mantle (27), and both have 29 RBI's to lead the league. Gil McDougald leads in hits (41) ahead of Mantle (40) and Williams (38). Roy Sievers leads in homeruns (11), ahead of Vic Wertz (10), but Mantle and Williams are not far behind. The White Sox pitchers mentioned previously have been the driving force behind their quick start.

 

The replay is going well so far. Every game is an adventure and the pennant races are beyond exciting.  Even the teams at the bottom of the standings have the capability to reach out and bite those in front of them when you least expect it. Baseball greats are playing great as you would expect but it also the relatively unknown players that often make the difference in a game, so who are tomorrow's heroes going to be? Week six ready to get underway and we will find out shortly.

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