Saturday, April 22, 2023

Dodgers Get 1st 5 of 6 Game Series vs Cards

In Statis-Pro Baseball, Clayton Kershaw and relievers Alex Vesia and Brusdar Graterol combined on a 1-0 win, then JD Martinez slugged the Dodgers to a 14-0 sweep in the nightcap.

The three Dodgers' pitchers in the opening game were all PB 2-8 (the second best, only make mistakes batters can try to drive for extra base hits on 9-12 dice rolls or cards - or only 10 of 36 rolls are mistakes).

Mookie Betts opened the game with a double. Because a lefty was pitching against the Dodgers, JD Martinez was hitting second and he singled in Betts to make it 1-0 after two batters, and no one scored again. In the 9th, the Cardinals Luke Williams pinch ran after a lead off single, but catcher Will Smith did not let him steal second. On the first attempt a "57" on the 2023 revised steal chart changed from a caught stealing to the runner simply not being able to get a jump to steal. In the game you can only attempt a steal once per batter, so after an out Williams attempted to steal second again and the 11-88 result this time was a "48," which is caught stealing even on the 2023 chart.

That was  2 games to 1 win credit for the Dodgers to increase their record in our game to 10-5 while the Cardinals were 8-7. 

The second game the Dodgers easily passed the threshold to get credit for a 3 games to 0 sweep by winning after a leading by more than 5 runs at the end of the 8th inning without using their top reliever. in this game. The No. 3 reliever Dakota Hudson was the top available reliever in the second game since Vesia and Graterol both pitched in the first game, and our rule is that each reliever can pitch in one game every two game series. Therefore the top "available" reliever in the second game is the one who cannot pitch until the 9th for the team to qualify for a 3 games to 0 sweep.

The Dodgers pounded out a 14-0 win by outhitting the Cardinals 15-1. The number 9 hitter for the game was Michael Busch, who started against the lefty pitcher, and hit 2-run homers his first two at bats. Note, we use players on the 40-man roster who are projected to play this season, even in a case like Busch where he has not had his MLB debut yet but has an OPS right around 1.000 in Triple A now and certainly good enough to play at MLB level this year but able to get a lot more at bats in the minors right now.

The credit for the sweep put the Dodgers in first at 13-5 ahead of the Braves, and dropped the Cardinals to 8-10.

Since we use Statis-Pro cards based on the 2023 projections, some of our seasons come closer to a team's previous year performance since that has the heaviest impact on projections, while other seasons are close to the current season due to roster changes. In this early season, the best NL team of last year - the Dodgers who went 111-51 - have the best record and the team tied for the best record this year - the Braves at 14-6 - have the second best record. The disappointment so far in our season has been the Milwaukee Brewers who are just 8-10 but are actually tied with the Braves for best record this MLB season though they were not that good last season and this is still a very small Statis-Pro sample of games.

 
Team     Wins   Losses    Games Back    Win%     Runs    Allowed
LAD13500.7226.73.3
ATL117-20.6114.51.7
NYM75-30.5833.32.8
PHI66-40.5002.02.8
SD66-40.5004.83.8
Chi810-50.4442.53.3
STL810-50.4443.55.3
MIL810-50.4445.05.5
Ari57-50.4174.85.8
CIN612-70.3333.05.8

Reminder Note: To play our own Statis-Pro Baseball games, click and print the batters cards here, then these pitchers' cards and finally the Statis-Pro rules which will have everything you need to play. Also note that we had one error in earlier notes - the adjustments listed at the bottom of some pitcher cards to the batters they face (changing a HR to Out or vice versa) must be used every time they pitch, not just in road games as previously listed. You may notice this season that our blogs are picked up by https://www.baseball-reference.com/ so when a player is mentioned you can link for their stats by clicking. The reference to our league rule in which we count each game as a 3-game series, which is only a sweep if the winning team led by more than 5 runs after 8 innings, is not necessary to the game - just a fun rule that makes it more likely better teams will win as many games as they would if you could play more games because run differential predicts future results, and teams have a 14% chance of winning by 5 runs and a 14% chance of sweeping a 3-game series.



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