THIS DAY IN SP78 HISTORY
April 27, 1988

At the kitchen table of my SNB apartment in San Bernardino, the first seven Reds batters of the game reached base, three Reds batters – Dan Driessen, Ken Griffey, and George Foster – connected for home runs, and Tom Seaver (2-2) pitched a 5-hit shutout as Cincinnati rolled to a 12-0 win over the listless Mets. Cincinnati bunched ten of their runs over the first four innings, including six in the first, and were backed by a 4-for-5 night from Griffey, four runs scored by Foster, and three RBI apiece from Foster and Driessen. Mets outfielder Lee Mazzilli, batting in the lead-off spot, had four of New York’s five hits.  (Game #265,  4/30/78)

September Preliminary Report: Braves

• With a record of 52-79, the last-place Braves have the worst won-lost total in the National League, and at 25½ games back with 31 games remaining, have a slim-to-none chance of claiming the NL West pennant. They’ll play out the season string and assume the role of spoiler against the front-running Dodgers, Padres, and Giants, playing 14 games against them during the first half of September.

• The starting pitching will remain the same as it did in late August, with a 4-man rotation consisting of Phil Niekro, Larry McWilliams, Preston Hanna, and Frank LaCorte. Manager Bobby Cox plans to use Mickey Mahler, Eddie Solomon, and Tommy Boggs as spot starters.

• Slugging outfielder Dale Murphy, who was moved up to the clean-up spot in the lineup on August 26th, will remain there when the season resumes September 1st. Though batting just .233 for the season, Murphy leads the club with 28 home runs and 61 RBI.

• Players from the AAA Richmond Braves who will be making their SP78 debuts during the September call-ups include relief pitchers Mike Davey and Duane Theiss, and outfielder Eddie Miller.

• Shortstop Darrel Chaney is currently the only Braves player hitting over .300, with a .303 average over 121 games played.

• After spending seven years out of baseball, and returning to start seven games for the Braves in June and July of the SP78 season, veteran pitcher Jim Bouton has announced his retirement, effective after the Richmond Braves end their regular season on September 4th. Bouton will not be included on the Braves 40-man roster, and will end his month-long major league comeback stint with a record of 2-4 and an ERA of 4.89.

• The Braves will open the month with a scheduled doubleheader against the Pirates in Pittsburgh, part of a four-game weekend series at Three Rivers Stadium. All four games will be televised in Atlanta on WTCG 17 and nationally on C-SPAN.

TWISP Notes #83

TWISP Notes
March 16, 2024

• The month of August has ended, with 372 games played — including rainouts and exhibitions — between August, 2014 and December, 2023. Overall, there have been 1,767 games played over 43 years, with 352 regular season games remaining in September before the postseason begins in October.

• Also, I played just 26 SP78 games in 2023, exactly half of the 52 I played in 2022. The low number can be attributed to the schedule having just a few dates remaining for August, limiting the amount of games available for me to play before the year was out.

• The much-anticipated fourth and final match-up of the year between Ron Guidry of the Yankees and Jim Palmer of the Orioles ended in anti-climactic fashion, after Guidry was ejected in the sixth while protecting a 1-0 lead. The O’s then bombed three NY relievers for six runs over the next two innings, good for a 6-1 final and a sweep of their 3-game month-ending series. With the win, Palmer took the head-to-head series against Guidry two games to one, with one no-decision.

• In the same game, hot-hitting O’s outfielder Carlos Lopez extended his hitting streak to 17 games, connecting for a single in the sixth off Yankees reliever Sparky Lyle. It’s the ninth longest streak in the AL this season, and 15th longest overall.

• Rosters for each SP78 team will expand up to 40 players beginning September 1st, with some call-ups delayed several days due to post-season games being played in the International League, the American Association, and the Pacific Coast League.

• A Barry Evans triple with nobody out in the last of the ninth scored Dave Winfield from first with the winning run, giving the Padres a 3-2 victory over the Expos and allowing them to wrap up August in a first-place tie with the Dodgers in the NL West race. Not far behind are the dark-horse Giants, at 3½ games out.

• The Cardinals finished August with a record of 19-10, by far their best monthly won-lost mark of the SP78 season. Only a 5-hit shutout performance against them by Cincinnati’s Fred Norman on August 31st, good for a 2-0 win, kept them from a milestone 20 wins.

• With his next strikeout, Astros ace J.R. Richard will be the first SP78 pitcher to reach 200 K’s this season; during the actual 1978 campaign, he finished the year with 303, leading both leagues. He’ll make his next start against the Cubs on September 3rd.

• Gaylord Perry of the Padres is also closing in on a milestone strikeout: with five strikeouts in his last outing, Perry is now just nine away from the 3,000th of his career.

• September preliminary reports for each team will begin posting this month, starting with the Braves and wrapping up sometime this summer with the Blue Jays.

Attention Fans!
Be there when the Braves and Pirates open the month of September
with a Friday night twinbill at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh!

Game Site History Added: CA2

It’s been nearly 40 years since my friend Steve P and I traveled to Oakland to attend the 1987 All-Star Game, and just as long since we played our last SP78 game there, at a small motel south of of the Bay Area. Click here to read about that game, and the site where it was played.

And So Ends August

On New Year’s Eve, with his game-ending catch of a soft pop-up off the bat of Twins batter Willie Norwood, Tigers shortstop Mark Wagner brought SP78’s month of August to a close, exactly nine years and five months after the Cardinals and Cubs opened the month back in 2014.

Now, it’s time for several months of preparations for September, the final full month of the SP78 regular season. The first item on my long list of stat work is to finalize each team’s August and current season statistics, which I was able to get a head start on when a handful of NL teams closed out their August schedules one day early, on the 30th. The stats for those teams—the Braves, Cubs, Dodgers, Astros, Mets, Phillies, and Giants—are now complete (save for rankings, league leaders, and monthly awards), and can be checked out under the ‘Statistics’ heading on the main page.

Also, for the first time, I’ll be compiling season stats into an Excel spreadsheet (a July sample can be seen above), which will not only allow me to track a few new stat categories, such as plate appearances, slugging percentage, pinch-hitter batting average, and catcher caught stealing percentage, but to also post current league leaders to the blog site on a day-by-day basis, instead of week-by-week.

A few other items on my list of chores include: prepping the blank team pages for September for both my laptop and blog site, creating 25-man post-season rosters, calling up minor league players for the 40-man roster expansion on September 1st, updating lineups and pitching rotations for each team, creating a ‘Current Injuries’ box for each team’s stat page, and adding 75-100 new header photos to the top of the blog’s main page.

And what will September bring? A schedule that will see 352 games played, pennant battles involving ten teams over three divisions, more than 75 first-time SP78 player call-ups from AAA (including Ron Oester, Jim Fregosi, and former Padres legend Tito Fuentes), a record-shattering 97th stolen base from Julio Cruz, the possibility of a 500th career home run from Willie McCovey, and finally, the last game of the regular season, between the Rangers and Mariners at the Kingdome in Seattle, which will likely be played about ten years from now.

But in the meantime, over the next month or so, watch for the next edition of TWISP Notes, some new site histories (first up: a look back at a one-shot location from 1987), and the initial wave of September team reports, which will lead off with an inside look at the Atlanta Braves.