Week 5 Summary (May 16, 1938 - May 22, 1938)

Week Five of the 1938 BBW replay is in the books, and after both pennant races tightened up in the previous two weeks, this week began the churn where tightly entangled teams each took their turns moving up and down past their peers. I fully expect that some will continue to rise and some will fall, but in the meantime, this is the fun part of an APBA replay. 

In the American League, while it took a while, the week ended with New York in first place. The Yankees, missing Joe DiMaggio due to a holdout, got off to a slow start, but once DiMaggio returned it wasn't a case of if but of when the Yankees would rise to the top. New York has a very slim though, as their lead over Detroit and St. Louis is just a few percentage points behind. Even after having spent most of the first few weeks of the season in first place, St. Louis seems the likely candidate to move down the standings, but they have remained resilient and so far have refused to sink.

 

Detroit got off to a good start, slowed down for a few weeks, but then roared back this week, mostly behind the bat of Hank Greenberg. In Week Five, in a six-game span, Greenberg went 15-for-23 (.387), hit a double and four homeruns, and most importantly, he collected 18 RBI's in the short span. This gave Greenberg 46 RBI's through the first five weeks of the season and was well on the way to setting records.

 

St. Louis (NL) Manager
Frank Frisch
In the National League, Pittsburgh and New York have spent the past several weeks fighting for the top spot in the NL standings, but at the end of this week, it was Chicago that had moved up past both of them. The Giants might have been considered the favorites for the NL in 1938 (their third consecutive NL pennant) but Chicago and Pittsburgh were expected to fill out the rest of the top of the NL standings, so it's not like these two are a surprise, but can either one of them truly surprise New York in the end? It's why we play the games …

The 1938 season is kind of like a 1930-lite kind of season. Runs can come in bunches and come quite quickly, but perhaps just not to the level of the teams in the 1930 season. It makes for fun games, but I am leery of using up all my relief with a month remaining in the season, so this is something I am keeping an eye on.

 





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