Roger's 1930 APBA Replay

Philadelphia A's (104-50 / 102-52 / +2) The A's got off to a bit of a sluggish start, partially because they had a lot of games early with Washington and the Nationals got off to a really fast start (Washington finished 13-9 versus the A's), but once the A's kicked it into gear there was nothing that could stop them. The A's featured a great defense, a powerful offense, and Lefty Grove anchoring another wise OK pitching staff. This is a case where a great defense improved the pitching staff, and when in doubt, the A's offense stepped in to lead the way. Offensively, the A's finished second to New York in team batting average (.301 to .302) and in homeruns (150 to 158) but managed to outscore the Yankees (989 to 986), both teams falling just short of 1000 runs scored. The A's led in On-Base Percentage (.374) with a total of 643 walks. Second baseman Max Bishop led the league with 142 walks and finished fourth in runs scored with 133,...

Now that the 1930 Replay is finished it is time to review what happened, what went right, what went wrong, and what changes do I need to make to my process before starting a new replay. There are several different areas to cover here, so let's see if I can put these in some semblance of order. Replaying the 1930 season is something I had considered for a long, long time, but with other family and work obligations, something had to give. I decided to energize around doing this in late 2017 and started putting together a detailed plan of attack. The first decision - cards and dice, or computer (BBW)? I do prefer dice and cards as I really feel like I am much more involved in the game at hand. The BBW version is much more sanitary in that regard, but by taking care of all the post-game paperwork it became obvious to me that BBW was the way to go. Since BBW was the answer, I started investigating ATMgr. I had heard of it but had never used it, and it was a great benefit -...

Lou Gehrig - .418 BA Week 24 is finished and the 1930 regular season is complete. The Philadelphia A's had clinched the AL in the previous week, and the St. Louis Cardinals wasted little time this week in clinching the NL pennant. On Monday St. Louis won and Chicago lost, reducing the magic number to one. The Cardinals then won their game on Tuesday, and the NL pennant was theirs. The Cardinals played very well down the stretch but were helped by key injuries to opposing teams that negatively affected their performance at this most crucial time. So it's the Philadelphia A's and St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. We will get these games played over the next few days and a follow-up blog post will document the results. I am going to cut this write-up short and in the upcoming weeks will include a fuller final team-by-team commentary and a fuller final stats review as well. Chuck Klein - .415 BA Suffice it to say this replay has been great fun. It was...

Monday, September 22, 1930 The last week of the season has a slow start - two games on Monday, four on Tuesday, and three on Wednesday, with no AL games at all until Wednesday. The final big road trip is over and teams are returning to their home region to finish up their last games and close out the 1930 season. George Sisler Boston (NL) (H) 6 Chicago (NL) 4 (10) The Cubs led 3-1 after the top of the seventh, only to see the Braves Randy Moore hit a two-run pinch-hit homerun to tie the game at 3-3. The Cubs regained the lead in the top of the ninth but again failed to hold the lead when Boston tied the score at 4-4 in the bottom of the ninth.  In the tenth inning, Wally Berger hit a two-run homerun (#35, 117) and sent the Boston fans home happy. Note: Future Hall-of-Famer George Sisler made his final ML appearance today St. Louis (NL) 3 Philadelphia (NL) (H) 1 The Cardinals strung together a collection of hits and scored three runs in the third a...