1971 Season
April- Well that was impressive. We went 23-4 in April. The pitching has been real good, only SP Don Durham is scuffling a bit. Our lineup is mashing it. Bumbry is hitting .403, Simspon is .365/19/29. Good start to the season.
May- Wow. 46-10, 12 games up on the Mets. Tommy Johns 3.08 ERA is highest on the staff. We have five guys with over 40 RBI.
June- 66-17, 20.5 games up on the Cubs. George Brett went 1st overall in the draft to the Brewers. Keith Hernandez went 2nd to the Astros.
July- 83-26, RP Bill Zepp missed a couple of weeks with a strained knee.
I want to lock Dick Simpson up long term before he hits arbitration. I agree to a 7 year deal worth $295K per year. It's a big one for sure, but I anticipate him moving into the 4 hole at some point in the next few seasons and he's going to be the cornerstone of the next era so I pretty much had no choice. This pretty much ensures that McCarver and Hebner will be gone after this year as they each want well into the $150K range and that's just too steep.
August- 102-33, Don Durham missed a couple weeks with a hand issue. The level of healthy we've been is really a pleasant surprise. Ed Brinkman is having a remarkable year, he has a .296/26/106 line from the seven hole.
September- We finish the year 118-44, winning the division by 34 games over the Cubs. We'll rematch the Giants, who bettered the Braves by 8 games, in the NLCS.
In the AL, the Yankees won the East by 18 games over the Red Sox and the White Sox won a heated battle in the West by 4 games over the Royals & Rangers and 5 games over the Twins. So the Yankee and White Sox meet for the 3rd straight year in the ALCS.
Dick Simpsons 49 homers were 2nd in all of baseball to only Harmon Killebrew and his 129 runs were 3rd. Julian Javiers 197 hits were good for 10th best in the league. The rub is that everyone hit so well and divided up the counting stats that none of them made the leaderboards but we crushed it as a team. I'll take it.
Jenkins and Johns 22 wins were tied for 5th in baseball. Jenkins, John & Durham all had 2.59 ERA's to tie for 2nd in baseball. That's spooky.
One shitty note heading into the playoffs is that Al Bumbry has a bum ankle and will miss two weeks, so his postseason availability is low. Don't know how I'll handle the lineup with him out. We'll see.
Financially we did good. We lost $317K but it was much less than forecast thanks to big crowds all year. Our cash is getting lower though so it's not like I can rejoice and go spend, spend, spend, but that's to worry about later. Right now it's on with the playoffs.