Week 6 Summary (05/15/1967 - 05/21/1967)

Week Six of the 1967 BBW Replay is in the books, and it was another exciting and busy week. On the one hand, there were four grand slams hit this past week. On the other hand though, there were twelve games on Sunday and six of them resulted in shutouts. All teams have reached the thirty-games-played mark, and it is likely that a few teams will reach forty games by the end of Week Seven. Week Eight will feature a Memorial Doubleheader extravaganza, but we will cross that bridge when we get to it.

In the AL, the Tigers have a 1.5 games lead over Boston, as the Red Sox ran into a buzzsaw at the end of the week when they lost 3-of-4 to Cleveland. Cleveland has been in the top two in the AL in both pitching and hitting, but thanks to this past weekend in Boston only just managed to get their record over 500. Baltimore's pitching woes continued and they now know Jim Palmer will be out for an indeterminate time, but they finished the week tied for fourth with Cleveland. Chicago sits alone in third place with just enough hitting so far to keep them viable while their pitching continues to carry them.

 

Minnesota went 4-1 over the week and was able to move from ninth place all the way up to fifth. As of the end of Week Six their 14-17 record was only one game worse than their actual 1967 record (15-16). What this means is that the replay Twins are effectively mimicking their slow start of 1967. Several key players have recently returned from injuries, their pitching has been sorted out, and fortunately for Minnesota, in their slow start, they didn't dig themselves into too deep a hole. I am sure the rest of the AL is well aware of what the Twins have in mind over the final three-quarters of the season.

In the NL, thanks to a five-game winning streak St. Louis has climbed back into first place, even if only by a few percentage points over Philadelphia. The Cardinals' offense has been on fire these first few weeks of the season, but their pitching has been anything but consistent. Jim Bunning and Chris Short have carried the Phillies thus far, but with Short being unavailable for the next few weeks will the team be able to maintain. Atlanta has won eight of their last ten games and has been able to move above that morass in the middle of the NL standings. Both their pitching and hitting have been strong through this period, so the questions remain as to whether they can maintain.

 

1967 Minnesota Twins

San Francisco is struggling to stay above .500 as they lead the NL in pitching but remain last in hitting. Willie Mays (.166) has missed five games and Willie McCovey (.226) has missed nine games, and both have been limited to pinch-hitting duties several times as well. Similar to Minnesota in the AL, they are off to a rough start but a least they haven’t managed to bury themselves in the meantime.

 


Week Six would be the (kinda, sorta) quarter pole for a twenty-five-week season, but none of the individual teams have reached the (kinda, sorta) quarter pole of forty games played yet, so there is still a lot of baseball yet to be played. With that said, let's go play some games.

Special Note: Whitey Ford made his final appearance this past week when nagging arm injuries finally forced him to the bench for good.

 

In Memoriam:

 

Jim Hannan



















Al McBean




 













Jimy Williams













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