Who's Up, Who's Down

Welcome to what will (hopefully) be a new weekly installment here on the blog: Who's Up, Who's Down. The basic idea is to highlight a team (or two) from each league that's played well in the last week (3 weeks of WIS, so about 18-20 games) and a team or two that hasn't been playing well. Since we wrapped up interleague play this week, the first installment will concentrate on the best and worst of interleague play.



First of all, congratulations to the National League for winning the overall series 100-92. Broken down by division, the NL claims victory in the East (26-22) and in the West (29-21), and the AL won the battle in the South (27-21), with the NL North and AL North playing to a 24-24 tie.



Who were the champs and the chumps of interleague play? We'll start with the NL, where there was a tie for both the best and the worst interleague records.



Arizona Diamondbacks (10-2 in interleague play)

Key Series: 3 in a row against Las Vegas, Colorado Springs, and Vancouver. The Snakes rattled off 9 wins in a row, sweeping all 3 series.

Key Stat: SP Brandon Small pitched 16 innings in interleague action and gave up exactly 1 run.



Salt Lake City Shakers (10-2 in interleague play)

Key Series: Taking 2 out of 3 at Anaheim (41-35), one of the AL hottest teams.

Key Stat: CF Lynn Abernathy drove in 14 runs in the 12 games.





There were two teams that were as bad as the D-backs and Shakers were good.



New Orleans Voodoo (2-10 in interleague play)

Key Series: Getting swept by last-place Durham (29-47)

Key Stat: Scored 47 runs in 12 games for less than 4 runs a game and had more than 1/4 of those in one game (13-3 over Witchita- if you take out that game they averaged 3 runs a game).



Boise Buckskins (2-10 in interleague play)

Key Series: Tough choice: is it worse to get swept by Colorado Springs (30-46) or to lose 2 out of 3 to Vancouver (16-60)? I'll take losing 2 out of 3 to the worst team in all of baseball.

Key Stat: Gave up 20 runs (or 6.67 runs a game) to a Vancouver team that is scoring less than 3.2 runs a game for the season.





In the American League, there were fewer surprises, as the best team in baseball proved its dominance and the worst team in baseball demonstrated its ineptitude.



Monterrey Sultans (9-3 in interleague play)

Key Series: Sweeping 3 from New Orleans. Yes, New Orleans was tied for the worst interleague record, but the signifcance of that was it gave them a 5-game winning streak.

Key Stat: 11. As in 11 straight wins. Monterrey took that 5 game winning streak from interleague play and has continued their great play back into intraleague action, sweeping 4 in a row from the West-leading Chiles and taking the first 2 from a decent Kansas City team. They once again look like the best team in baseball.



Vancouver Fighting Moose (3-9 in interleague play)



Key Series: Losing 2 out of 3 to the Salt Lake City Shakers to start interleague play. Granted, Salt Lake City is much improved over last year, but they had Salem and Arizona to close interleague action. If they wanted to have any hope of playing well in interleague, they needed to play well against the Shakers. Taking more than 1 would have been a lot to ask from a team that wins at a .208 clip, however.

Key Stats: 29, 10,and 11. The 29 represents how many runs they were outscored by in interleague play (74-45), which amounts to about 2 1/2 runs every game. The 10 represents their total offense against Salem and Arizona (I know, tough tasks, but 1.7 runs per game?). The 11 represents their current losing streak, which started by losing the last 2 to Salem and then getting swept at Arizona. Their losing streak closely mirrors Monterrey's winning streak.