There's just a week left in the 2005
season, but there's still plenty to be decided. We asked a panel of
baseball experts what they think is the biggest story of the final week
of the DMBL season!
Gary Bettman
NHL Commissioner
In the NHL we have the Presidents' Trophy. In the DMBL, the equivalent is
the Commissioner's Cup, awarded annually to
the team with the most wins. This year, for the fifth straight season,
the cup will go to either the Newark Sugar Bears
('01, '03) or the Arkansas Golden Falcons
('02, '04), who have been neck-and-neck
all season long, headed for what appears to be a fourth straight World
Series
showdown. Newark (104-53) currently holds a 1-game advantage over
Arkansas
(103-54), but the Golden Falcons appear to have the easier schedule --
they
have four games at 14th-place Phoenix, while Newark is hosting four
games
against 11th-place Tijuana. Coincidentally, Newark and Arkansas each
has
a 7-1 record against their respective final opponents.
In addition to a nice shiny trophy, the best regular season record also
means
home field advantage throughout the playoffs. But that doesn't
guarantee
post-season success -- in fact, 2001 was the last time that the
Commissioner's
Cup winner also won the World Series.
By the way, we'll also have to see how this week shakes out to see who
finishes with the league's third-best record -- the Vancouver
Iron Fist have a magic number of 2 with four games remaining (all
against 6th-place Stanhope, which can't move up or down in the
standings). And the battle for the No. 4 seed -- which is important,
because the fourth seed gets home-field advantage in the first round --
is currently a tie between the Honolulu Sharks and
the Philadelphia Endzone Animals. The Sharks
have four games left, one against Newark and three in Columbia; Philly
has five left, one at Hillsborough and four at Westwood. The Sharks
need to win outright, because Philly has the tiebreaker by virtue of
their 8-4 record against Honolulu this season.
Fabrice Morvan
Rob Pilatus
aka Milli Vanilli
First of all, we would like to point out that "Girl You Know It's True"
was No. 1 on the U.S. charts and had four hit singles, so it hardly
qualifies as "worst record." What about Devastatin'
Dave The Turntable Slave? That's a truly awful record!
But we're talking about the DMBL's worst record. Finishing dead last
doesn't guarantee you the chance to draft Zach Duke,
but it does give you the most balls in the hopper for the No. 1 pick in
the lottery draft, plus the first pick in every subsequent round. On
the other hand, there is the ignominy of being the league's biggest
loser, the damage to your all-time team winning percentage, the shame
of having to return your Grammies...
Er, anyway, back to baseball. The contenders as we head into the final
week of the season are the Hillsborough Deductions,
now third-worst with a 61-97 record (.386), followed by the Westwood Deductions at 58-99 (.369) and finally
the Phoenix Dragons at 56-101 (.357).
Hillsborough has four games left, a home game against Philly and then
three games in Hoboken. The Cutters were just eliminated from the
post-season but still have a chance for a winning season, so they're
not going to roll over for the Destroyers. The Ducks wrap it up with a
game against Phoenix and then four against Philly, which needs the wins
in order to stave off Honolulu for the league's fourth-best record. And
then there's Phoenix, which has the one game in Westwood and then four
against the mighty Golden Falcons, who need to pile up wins in order to
pass Newark for the league's best record. So it looks like everybody is
up against top-notch competition with something to play for! It could
go right down to the wire to see who is worst this year. Westwood has a
slight edge in that they were awful against Hillsborough (1-11) and
Phoenix (4-6), so they'll finish behind them in the standings if
they're tied with either team; but Phoenix and Hillsborough split their
12 games this season so that could be a real headache if they finish
tied for last.
Jim Eisenreich
Former DMBL record holder
I've had a rough season, thanks to Phoenix's Ichiro
Suzuki. First, he passed my 32-game consecutive
game hitting streak record -- by one lousy game! Then, he broke my
DMB Era (1997-present) record for most hits in a single season -- I had
238 in '97,
the same year as my hitting streak, and Ichiro has 261 and counting.
(Ichiro
would have to have 34 hits in Phoenix's final seven games to beat the
all-time
record of 295 hits in a season, set by Deion
Sanders
in 1993.)
They say misery loves company, and I love that I'm not the only guy
getting erased from the record book this season. Newark's Bobby Abreu has scored 175 runs, easily breaking
the all-time record of 163 shared by Arkansas's Chuck
Knoblauch (1997) and Barry Bonds (2002).
The DMB Era record for triples (20 by Phoenix's Juan
Uribe in '02) also fell, as Las Vegas's Carl
Crawford already has 22 with four games to go in the season. No one
will forget that Sanders had 62 triples in '93, so the all-time record
will continue to stand, no doubt forever. The DMB Era record for
strikeouts also was shattered: Hillsborough's Adam
Dunn has whiffed 238 times
this season, beating the record set in 1999 by Newark's Mark McGwire. But don't worry: Rob Deer's all-time record of 357 strikeouts with
Waikiki in '93 remains unchallenged.
In addition, there are some records that will likely fall unless
players have some truly awful final weeks. Newark's Carlos
Guillen appears destined to break one of the all-time records Neon
Deion set in '93, highest single season batting average. Guillen is
hitting .399 with about 5 games left in the season, which means unless
he hits under .200 the rest of the way, he'll still beat Sanders's
all-time batting mark of .384 in '93. And Guillen could go hitless the
rest of the season and still set the modern record for batting average
(Arkansas's Frank Thomas, .365 in 1998). But
Guillen needs a hot week -- something like 9-for-20 (.450) -- to
achieve the seemingly impossible mark of hitting .400 over a full
season... If Abreu can avoid getting caught stealing the rest of the
way, his .964 SB% (27-1) also will set a new all-time record for
highest stolen base percentage (.964), beating Hillsborough's Matt Lawton (32-2, .941) in 2000.
Another record likely to fall is Bonds's .522 on-base percentage in '03
-- but the name will stay the same. Bonds has a .538 OBP this year, a
new all-time high.
There's only one all-time pitching record being challenged this season.
Westwood's Steve Trachsel has
20 losses (7-20, 6.99 ERA), and -- unless he gets benched -- at least
one more start this season. That gives him a chance to tie the all-time
record for most losses (21), shared by Chris Bosio and Rick Sutcliffe, each in '93. |