Mets Shocked; Lorenzen's Return Keeps Reds in Playoffs for Now

New update and photo below, 1st place Mets stunned by relegated Pirates.

Our league rules dictate the only player cards we do not use are players not on the roster or players on the 60 day DL or who appear are in the process of missing 60 straight days.

Those rules helped the Reds against the Nats. Strasburg had a rehab set back making it apparent he would make 60 days without pitching, meaning in the game the Nats had to start Corbin as their No. 2 pitcher after Scherzer against the Reds. On the flip side, Lorenzen had missed most of our statis-pro season on the 60-day DL, but came back to pitch an inning qnd score the winning run (then pulling his hamstring).

In our game Lorenzen's return was key for the battered Reds bullpen, as he threw a key scoreless 8th inning to back up Gray's 2-0 win over Scherzer. Lorenzen also singled at the plate.

The Nats did beat their old teammate Doolittle 5-4 in the bottom of the 9th of game 2 that left the Reds in the playoff picture at 40-38- while the Nats are 38-40.

NL Northwest                   NL Southeast

Milwaukee 42-30  ---        New York  50-34  ---

Los Angeles 43-35 -2        St. Louis     39-33   -5

Chicago        43-35  -2        Cincinnati  40-38  -7

Arizona        39-39  -6        Atlanta      40-38  -7

San Diego     35-37  -8        Washington 38-40  -9

Wild card if today: StL at ChC and Cin at LAD

Braves Bullpen Blows Chance at Revenge on Colorado in Pederson Debut

The Braves pen blew two chances to move into a playoff spot in their series against Colorado, where the all-star game was moved.

In their first Statis-pro series after Acuna's season ending injury (we leave players on 10-day DL in game but not if they hit 60-day DL or will miss the season), and the first game since they acquired Pederson of the Cubs.

Albies hit 2 homers and more shockingly Jackson hit 2 triples, and the Braves led 9-3 after 7 innings, needing only a scoreless inning or to hold the Rockies to 1 run, but Minter failed to wrap it up for the 5-run sweep credit, so they just received credit for a 2 games to 1 win.

The second game they wasted 7 scoreless innings from Ian Anderson in a 2-1 10 inning loss. The Rockie likely heading somewhere else in a trade in the week ahead, Trevor Story, homered int he first game ti start the rally of Minter then went 4 of 5 woth a double, and drove in the winning run in the 10th.

Marquez not only went 8 innings allowing only one run, but also doubled at the plate.

NL Northwest

Milwaukee 42-30  ---        New York  48-30  ---

Los Angeles 43-35 -2        St. Louis     39-33   -6

Chicago        43-35  -2        Cincinnati  37-35  -8

Arizona        39-39  -6        Atlanta      43-41  -8

San Diego     35-37  -8        Washington 35-37  -10

Wild card if today: StL at ChC and Cin at LAD

Last Hoops Before Baseball: Nova 2018 Tops UVa 2019 for Title

 The day after the end if the NBA Finals, the 2018 national champions from Villanova and the  2019 champs from UVa played to a 62-62 tie in our title game with 5 minutes to play. At that point Nova had led only twice, briefly at 22-20 and 60-58.

Nova's NBA Finals duo of DiVincenzo and Bridges had both been playing with four fouls for a while by then.

Brunson hit a 3-pointer, then Bridges hit two 3-pointers to make it 71-62 Nova with 3:23 to play.

UVa's Hunter finally drew the 5th foul on Bridges seconds later and hit both free throws, and then Guy hit a 3-pointer and Hunter his final basket to finish with a game-high 23 points and pull UVa to 75-69 with 2:20 to play.

However, Crosby-Roundtree came in for Bridges to give Nova a big size advantage along with Paschall and Spellman and they finished out a dominant 38-27 edge on the board and 78-69 win.

It was only the second upset in our 8-team tournament. 5-seed Louisville upset 4-seed Wake Forest 2005 (Chris Paul) by one point, then the better seed won five straight until this game with the 2-seed Nova winning the championship game upset over 1-seed UVA to make the better seed 5-2 for the tournament.

Next blog will be back on our Statis-pro season with Joc Pederson's debut with the Braves.

We showed how to shuffle and stack the fast action cards to play. We used another option for the title game, putting them in a salad bowl and randomly pulling a card our for every play.

Suns' Bridges, Bucks' DiVincenzo Lead Nova Past Wisconsin, to Finals

 The Bucks' Donte DiVincenzo (19 points, 3 steals) and Suns' Mikal Bridges (18 points, 5 rebounds) led their 2018 Villanova team to an 84-58 win over the Suns' Frank Kaminsky.

Nigel Hayes kept Wisconsin close most of the ways, scoring to cut the deficit to 60-53 with 7:03 to play, but Nova pulled away late. 

Nova's unstoppable offense will face the toughest defense inbthe tournament in the 2019 UVa Cavaliersz so something has to give.

Giannis Bucks teammates Diakite (UVa 2019) and Nwora (Lville 2020) Star in Semifinal

There is a link between the championship celebrated by my UVa friends in my native Virginia, and the championship team being celebrated in my beloved college town of Milwaukee - and he has orange hair for easy identification, and had one of the greatest 6 seconds in March Madness history.

During breaks of the Milwaukee Bucks' Game 6 triumph and first NBA title in 50 years, we pitted two of their players in our Value Add Basketball Game. In real life the two Bucks' in our VABG game watched from the bench as their teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo ("the Greek Freak") delivered Milwaukee's first NBA title in 50 years with one of the greatest NBA Finals performances in history.

Mamadi Diakite did get in the TV screen coming off the bench with his orange hair as several Bucks' playfully tried to keep Chris Paul from getting to the ref to argue an out-of-bounds ball. In the Value Add Basketball Game he had 5 blocked shots, a steal and 7 rebounds to lead a 1-seed UVa defense that simply shuts everyone down, winning 71-58.

Jordan Nwora already led his 5-seed Louisville 2020 team to a 1-point upset of the 4-seed Wake Forest 2005 with Chris Paul. In the VABG he had a team-high 15 points, the only Louisville 2020 player in double digits as UVa forced 17 turnovers while only giving it up 8 times.

UVa's unmovable defense will either get the Villanova 2018 unstoppable offense, or the 2015 Wisconsin team that shocked the Kentucky team that was being called the best of all time. The 8 teams in our tournament are the only 8 in our game with a player in the NBA Finals. Villanova is in due to the Suns' Mikal Bridges, and Wisconsin due to Frank Kaminsky.

All-Star Game 2 Scoresheets and Statis-Pro Results

 Trout, LaMahieu and Judge had three hits each, including Judge's 2-run homer that gave the AL a 5-3 win and sweep of our 2-game All-Star series. (the results of Game 1 of our 2-game All-Star series are here, while the free player cards and games are here).

Like the first game, it ended with Chapman striking out all three that he faced in the bottom of the ninth.

The NL utilized their speed on the bases to execute the hit and run to perfection - going 2 of 4 and advancing runners the other two times including Posey's RBI single in the third and RBI groundout in the 5th. Betts drove in the third and final NL run with his second double and third hit of the game.

Overall there were more than twice as many hits as in the AL 1-0 win in game 1. In that game both teams had just five hits, but the AL outhit the NL 13-8 in the second game to sweep.

We joke about the "statis-pro gods" making things happen sometimes, and we had one if those funny moments. The AL Commissioner put Rays close Nick Anderson on his AL roster, even though I had left him out of my interleague play because he tore something in his elbow early in the season and has been out for months. I left him in the pen for the 1st all-star game, but in the second game brought him in after Ohtani's 5 innings. The very first card was a Z-play, and the result was Anderson had to leave the game before facing one batter. The official z-play was an ejection for arguing balls and strikes, but im considering it an injury. The AL's four relievers who stepped in went four scoreless innings, and in real baseball Anderson is throwing off a minor league mound for the first time in months, so hopefully he returns.

The AL does not have as long a winning streak in Statis-pro as in real baseball. The NL did win 1-0 last year, when we used the pb 2-9 cards that were too strong mathmatically. However, the AL did dominate our 2019 game 5-1 and won on back-to-back Astros homers in my first year back in 2018, making the AL 4-1 since i resumed playing.

All-Star Game 1 Scoresheet and Statis-pro Results

 During deGrom's perfect first three innings, the speedy NL put five runners on base, and Acuna has two of his three stolen bases. However Bieber stranded runners in scoring position in all three innings, aided by Judge throwing Betts out trying to go from first to third.

Because we chose to play an All-Star doubleheader, we set the rules to allow starting pitchers to go up to five innings, and the only runner deGrom allowed of the 16 batters he faced was a double by Trout.

However Verdugo greeted Kimbrel with a homer in the top of the 8th, then Iglesias and Chapman were untouchable to close out the 1-0 win in the 8th and 9th.

The only contact in either inning was a weak grounder to secind base by Turner off Iglesias, but he struck out the other two NL batters and Chapman blew away all three batters innthe bottom of the 9th - despite the NL saving Bryant and Baez (who both kill lefthanded pitching) to face him.

Game 2 will feature Ohtani vs. Burns. The line-ups will be the same except for rotaring catchers, and Ohtani also hitting as DH.

Apologies, originally posted the al scoresheet twice - here is the NL.