OOTPhight Historical Sim: The end of the regular season

Catch up on August’s results here.

September

Things stayed close down to the wire, albeit in different ways: The Central was nearly in a three-way tie after game 162, the West basically stayed a three-or-four-horse race until the last week, and John’s team finally completed its pursuit of 100 wins with only a couple days to spare.

And though we didn’t have a three-way tie in the Central, we did have a two-way tie, and David and Phrozen needed a Game 163 to decide who would claim the second playoff spot out of the Central. In that game, David jumped out to a 7-0 lead after the first inning and never looked back, winning 8-3 and clinching the last playoff berth.

The playoff seeds are as follows:

1. John (102-60, East1)
2. Eric (94-68, West1)
3. Jay (91-71, West2)
4. Smarty (85-77, East2)
5. Matt (82-80, Central1)
6. David (82-81, Central2)
7. Paul (90-72, WC1)
8. Ryan (85-77, WC2)

Hitter of the Month: 2004 Bobby Abreu (Paul)

.422/.559/.678, 5 HR, 14 RBI

Doesn’t quite carry the sparkling HR and RBI totals of previous monthly winners, but a .559 OBP for a month is shiny enough to make up for that.

Pitcher of the Month: 2017 Pitcher of the Month:

Pitcher of the Month: 1997 Curt Schilling (Jay)

5 GS, 42.1 IP, 68 K, 12 BB, 1.91 ERA

A monster from beginning to end, Schilling finished this season with 507 strikeouts. Obviously, there’s some other setting(s) I need to look at to make sure this doesn’t happen again, because that’s ridiculous, but I’m kinda glad it happened here!

League Leaders

Best Single-Game Performance (Hitter)

2009 Ryan Howard (Terry) on September 20

Ryan went 2-for-2 with 2 HR, 5 RBI, 5 R, 3 BB in a 16-2 win over Paul.

Best Single-Game Performance (Pitcher)

2013 Cliff Lee (Terry) on September 17

8.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 14 K in a 4-0 win over Ethan.

You can view a full spreadsheet of player stats through the end of the regular season here. Awards will be revealed after the champion has been crowned.

Facts & Figures & Miscellany

• 2008 Brad Lidge managed to save 29 straight games, the longest streak in the league by 18
• 7 of the top 10 stolen base totals were put up by Jimmy Rollins seasons
• 4 hitters struck out 300+ times: Two Jim Thomes and two Ryan Howards
• The league average BABIP was .354, and I cannot for the life of me understand why, especially with a league fielding percentage of .986
• There were 201 complete games and 82 shutouts, totals that haven’t been hit in a real MLB season since 2002
• The durabilities of pitchers from different eras made for some crazy deadball-like numbers on pitching leaderboards; 9 pitchers made 40 or more starts

In all, it was hardly a perfect first-run of a regular seasons. Some numbers are totally broken, but on the whole, the league seemed to end up falling toward some realistic means. Which, hey, it’s imperfect but in a lovable way.

We’ll run through some playoff action next week.