Week 8 Summary (05/29/1967 - 06/04/1967)

Week Eight of the 1967 BBW replay is in the books, and it was a busy week with several twists and turns along the way.  First of all, Tuesday was Memorial Day and there were seventeen games in total played that day. The rest of the week was busy as well and all teams passed the 40-games-played mark and most are well on their way to fifty, with most likely to reach there by the end of Week Nine. 

In the AL, Detroit and Boston now find themselves in a dead heat at the top of the AL standings. These two teams spend much of their time swapping places with the other, so I am looking forward to playing this out. The Red Sox have a team ERA of 3.80, which is not that bad, but they find themselves tied with California with the worst team ERA in the league so far. To that end, they orchestrated a trade this past week to pick up Gary Bell from Cleveland. Tony Conigliaro was returning to the lineup after an injury, so they had some spare parts to trade in Don Demeter and Tony Horton, and Cleveland had young emerging starters like Steve Hargan and Luis Tiant coming into their own the Indians needed to fill a hole at first base and a fourth outfielder/pinch-hitter to come off the bench. It was a good match for both teams, at least on paper. Will it work? Time will tell.

 

In the NL, it is a matter of streaks. Philadelphia went on a 10-game losing streak and within a period of seven days went from fighting with St. Louis for first to fighting with a bunch of teams for sixth place. Going the other direction, Cincinnati currently has an 11-game winning streak and has climbed into that mess which is the middle of the NL standings. As of Sunday morning, there were six teams in the NL sporting a total of twenty-four wins, all with a varying number of losses, but all right behind St. Louis who was in second place with twenty-five wins. St. Louis ended the week 0.5 games behind Atlanta, who celebrated having reached the top of the NL standings by going on a three-game losing streak.
 

I conducted a poll of NL managers, and the consensus was the team they feared the most was San Francisco. With that pitching - both starting and relief - if their offense, specifically Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, ever gets going they could be a real terror before this is all over. San Francisco did sweep a pair of doubleheaders over New York to end the week and outscored the Mets by a total of 37 to 11 in those four games.

 

The other thing that occurred over this past week is that there must have been about a dozen pitchers who made their first start of the season. They had all started the season in the bullpen, but now they were pressed into service in a starting role. A few of these were because of the holiday doubleheaders, but most look like teams, now having reached the 40-games-played mark, it was time to evaluate their early season plans and make adjustments for the remainder of the season. There is still plenty of player movement coming up this next week. Let’s go play some games!



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