June 1st, 1934 - The Story Thus Far

1934: The Story Thus Far

With the completion of April and May games, I thought it might be in order to take stock of the season thus far.

The National League

The National League is, in some ways, proceeding according to script. The Cubs took the early lead, but the Giants are beginning to pull away with a 3 game lead over the Cubs, and are leaving the Cardinals and the rest of the league in the dust. In real life, the Pirates, Cubs, Giants and Cardinals all dueled pretty closely up until this point. The Pirates have faded a little prematurely, but their recent success in Chicago shows that they stilll have enough offense, if not pitching, to be a real factor in this pennant race.

The biggest surprise has been the failure of the Cardinals to keep pace. They are 5 games behind where they were at this point IRL. First baseman Rip Collins has seriously underperformed (SLOB of .834) vs his IRL 1934 stats (SLOB of 1.008). But the real story here is Dizzy Dean.

Dean was the NL MVP in 1934, with a W-L of 30-7 and ERA of 2.66. In the replay he is 2-6, with a 3.72 replay. The most significant factor appears to be significantly more walks (2.8 / 9 innings a game in replay and 2.2 IRL). Dean will have to start pitching truer to form if the Cards are going to pick it up. In the meanwhile, veteran Jesse Haines in helping to pick up the slack (4-0, 3.26 ERA), but he has pitched 30 of his 90 innings already, so he will not be able to carry the team on his back.

Another surprise has been the Boston Braves, who were 20-16 at this point IRL, and would finish over .500. In the replay, they're stuck at 14-22, and don't show much signs of life after their fast league leading start.

Right now in the NL, the Giants look good, the Cubs are within striking distance, and the Bucs and Cards are hanging around with plenty of games left to make their move. The Cards have a nice mixture of pitching and hitting, whereas the Bucs are hitting oriented. If the Dean brothers can start pitching up their potential, they'll challenge the Giants and the Cubs.

The Giants probably appear stronger than they really are. They've gotten a lot of timely extra base hits from faily weak hitters like Hughie Critz. That won't last. Likewise, their stars are also "overperforming" (Mel Ott is hitting .404/.497/.689 and Carl Hubbell is 9-1 with a 1.62 ERA).

In short, the Giants have gotten the good dice rolls to date and the Cards haven't. The question is whether this will continue or rectify itself in the remaining 113 games or so (told you there's still a LOT of games to be played!!!).

Here are the leading candidates for MVP so far:

Mel Ott

Bill Terry

Gabby Hartnett

Chuck Klein

Joe Medwick

The American League

In the American League, things are pretty wild. The A's and Nationals have continued to be very strong, while the Red Sox, IRL a .500 team, looked unbeatable for a while, but have now faded. The Tigers are 1 game ahead of pace at 22-17, while the Indians are 4 games behind theirs at 17-18. The other team we need to take a closer look at, however, are the New York Yankees.

The 1934 AL race in real life was mostly between the Tigers, Indians and Yankees. The Yankees are now only 2 games behind their pace at 20-18, but they needed a big streak to catch up. At one point, they were in 7th place at 11-16. They have won 9 of their last 11, have finally appear to have righted the ship. Like Dizzy Dean, Yankees ace Lefty Gomez got off to a slow start, but has now caught fire.

One big reason that the Yankees are back in the hunt is Lou Gehrig:

Batter Avg AB H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB K OBP Slug OB+Sl

L.Gehrig .366 153 56 9 2 16 59 21 4 4 .443 .765 1.208

To give you a sense of perspective, 59 RBIs at 38 games comes out to 239 RBIs after 154 games! This would SHATTER the current MLB record of 191, set in 1930 by Hack Wilson. Gehrig is also on track to hit 63 HRs, which would break Ruth's 1927 record of 60. We'll keep an eye on Gehrig throughout the season, but the RBI record appears to be in real trouble!

Here are the leading candidates for AL MVP so far:

Lou Gehrig
Jimmie Foxx
Earl Averill
Charlie Gehringer
Bob Johnson

June 1934 begins tomorrow! Stay tuned...