Week 15 Summary (July 25, 1938 - July 31, 1938)

Week Fifteen of the 1938 BBW Replay is in the books, and another outstanding week it was.  In Week 14, weather issues disrupted the AL schedule, so the AL teams still have a great deal to make up, but you can only do it one day at a time. Doubleheaders are starting to appear and mixed in with the normal attrition in healthy pitchers towards the end of the season, which means teams are dependent on drafting a reliever to make a spot start as necessary. For teams in the pennant race, this becomes doubly problematic when they are struggling to put together some sort of surge in the final two months of the season.

Dizzy Dean and Chicago (NL)
Manager Gabby Hartnett
This week saw the schedule transition into August. All teams have reached the 80-games-played mark (even the White Sox), and many teams have moved past the 90-games-played mark. The White Sox had the games (or games) of the week when they hosted a doubleheader versus New York on Sunday. The offense-deficient White Sox won Game One by the score of 17-1, but the Yankees responded with a 16-4 win in Game Two, a game that included five homeruns by the victors.

In the AL, the Yankees remain atop, with a comfortable 7.5-games lead over the second-place Red Sox. After missing the first ten games of the season with a salary holdout, Joe DiMaggio had been routinely pounding out hits and driving in runs. Bill Dickey has been doing the same, and batting between them is Lou Gehrig, and if he should ever get on a hot streak, then the pennant is effectively locked up.

 

Boston star hurler Lefty Grove leads the AL in wins (14), but he recently hurt his pitching arm, so it isn't clear how much more he will pitch this season. Jimmie Foxx and the Boston offense have been hitting strong, but without Grove … they might be doomed. Washington sits alone in third place, just behind Boston. The Nationals are hitting an amazing .335 as a team. If teams are saving their best pitchers for New York and Boston, the Washington gets to face second-tier (and worse) hurlers, and the Nationals' lineup is feasting on these "bad" pitchers.

 

Detroit is a very dangerous team, but inconsistent pitching has condemned the Tigers to a middle-of-the-pack existence. Cleveland is still trying to climb out of the second division and has been toying with .500 for a few weeks now. St. Louis is another dangerous team - they swept a home doubleheader from Boston in the middle of the week, but the pitching that was so good during the opening two months of the season has just fallen apart.

 

Note: It is my unscientific observation that the 1938 cards are not overpowered, but rather the pitching needs some help. 1938 is not a revised set, so the pitching grades are what they were from the original set. In my pre-season evaluation, I decided to not regrade all the pitchers … I think I probably should have done so. The AL is hitting .300!

 

1938 Chicago Cubs
In the NL, the Pirates are putting on a rush, trying to build up a large lead to be able to ride on it through the end of the season. Pittsburgh manager Pie Traynor has used a single lineup in almost every game for the past two months, and while it has worked to date, there is still two months of the season remaining. Cincinnati remains in second place for the second week in a row. The starting rotation of Paul Derringer (18-4), Johnny Vander Meer (13-2), and Bucky Walters (12-8) got off to a poor start, but they have picked the Reds up and carried them on their respective shoulders over the past two months as the Reds moved up from last place to second place.

 

Note: Did the pitching actually get better and the teams improve, or did the team itself kick it into gear, and the pitching is just along for the ride? I am voting for the former, as Manager Bill McKechnie had to sort through players to determine his lineup and rotation.

 

The Cubs are right behind Cincinnati, but Gabby Hartnett has been the manager for two weeks now and they haven’t undergone any kind of surge, just yet anyway. New York went on a surge in July, but that balloon just popped as the Giants are languishing in a four-game losing streak.

 

When we resume, we will be in August, with July in our rearview mirror. Once next week is completed, the schedule will be at its two-thirds point, so we are beginning to see our endpoint on the horizon. Can the Yankees hold on? How about the Pirates? The Cubs actually won the NL in 1938 - can they overtake Pittsburgh in these final two months of the season? There is only one thing to do - let's go play!





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