Despite 100 wins the Brighton Shadows got very little respect in the regular season. Much of it, at least in my opinion, stemmed from Ken Griffey Jr. He had a season for the ages, one most thought was an aberration, and most thought was the sole reason for the Shadows success. The thinking went, “once Griffey returns to normal, the Shadows will fall back to earth”. That never happened in the regular season, and with 94 wins per season in the resim, it didn’t happen here either. Griffey was never great again, I’ll grant you that, but the rest of the team more than made up for it.
In the resims David K made the playoffs all 20 times and captured the division title in 18 of them. They had the league’s 3rd best pitching staff and 13th best offense. They never won less than 84 games and their Max Potential was quite high at 110.
Designated Hitter Lou Gehrig was the key to the offense. He batted .283 / .368 / .586, with a .953 OPS, 48 doubles, 40 home runs, and 111 RBI per season. Griffey socked 40 out of the park and Alex Rodriguez added 36. Batting lead-off was the speedster Pete Hill (.352 OBP, 71 SB) while Buck Leonard quietly had good season after good season.
The rest of the offense struggled, hence the 13th rank. Ben Zobrist, Joe Tinker, Pete Reiser, and Darren Daulton were near the bottom of the rankings for their position and even sluggers Griffey and A-Rod recorded OBP’s below .300.
It hardly mattered. The Shadows topped 90 wins fifteen times thanks to their pitching staff. Every starter is listed below in the Sub 4.00 ERA section as well as 4 of their 6 regular relievers. Their park, 1992 Busch Stadium, was basically neutral so these results are a combination of excellent drafting and excellent defense. It’s quite a remarkable achievement once you realize David drafted batters with the first 5 picks. 7 of his next 8 selections were pitchers and the rest of the league suffered because of it.
Now some of you are getting tired of the “Defense First” strategy and while David was certainly cognizant of it, please also realize he simply drafted quality arms. In the Starter section below I added the 500 resim ERA’s for each player and they are all in line with the 20 resim results.
Congrats David on a superb team.
800 OPS Batters:
.935 – Lou Gehrig
Sub 4.00 ERA Starters
3.58 – Danny Haren (3.65 with bad defense)
3.62 – Dizzy Dean (3.73)
3.64 – Joe Wood (3.63)
3.76 – Silver King (3.97 with bad defense)
3.80 – Cliff Lee (3.80)
Sub 3.25 ERA Relievers
2.20 – Bruce Sutter
2.40 – Rafael Soriano
2.76 – Graeme Lloyd
3.17 – Rod Beck
(Plus Ron Reed had a 3.26)
Best Value Draft Pick
Rd 16 – Silver King (12-10, 3.76 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 209 IP, 197 H)
Bust Draft Pick
Nothing terrible, but Griffey at #3 had a .286 OBP
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5) 90 wins, John McDonald Fanclub
4) 90 wins, Sparta Hoplites
3) 93 wins, Manetheren Red Eagles
2) 94 wins, Brighton Shadows
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