Happy Birthday, Mr. Bench!

LA’s Smith First to Reach 100 RBI

With his 41st home run of the season, a two-run shot off Phillies right-hander Jim Lonborg in the third inning of an August 17th game at Veterans Stadium, Dodgers slugger Reggie Smith became the first player in either league to collect one hundred RBI during the SP78 season. It was the second time Smith has achieved that coveted plateau in his career; he last reached the mark in 1974, hitting an even 100 as a member of the Cardinals. He’s also the SP78 single-game record holder for runs batted in, having collected ten in the first game of a doubleheader against the Cubs at Wrigley Field on July 16th.

No other National League player is even close to one hundred (George Foster of the Reds is in second place with 86), and with a league-leading 41 home runs and a robust .366 average, Smith is a serious contender for the Triple Crown award, with just under a month and a half remaining in the season. It would be the first Triple Crown in the major leagues since Boston outfielder Carl Yastrzemski won the award in 1967, and the first in the National League since Joe Medwick turned the trick for the Cardinals forty years earlier, in 1937.

What makes this particular RBI milestone even more amazing is that Smith has missed three weeks of the season due to injury; if he stays healthy, he’ll still have a whopping 42 games remaining in the LA schedule to add to his total. At his current pace of one RBI per game, he’d finish the 1978 campaign with 142 (and at one HR hit every 2.4 games, he’d break Roger Maris’ home run record of 61 by one). The question now is, will he remain healthy?

Said Smith in the locker room after the game in Philadelphia, “Oh yeah…I’m done with all this injury crap.”

And Now, All AL Statistics Are Current!

Like I’d done with the National League a month ago, I’ve updated the stat pages for all fourteen American League teams so that they’re current (for the first time since 1989, I might add) through August 16, 1978. So now, stats for my entire SP78 season are completely caught up!

Okay, not quite: since I began work on this massive update, I’ve played all but one game for the August 17th slate, so now I have all of those new scoresheet numbers to plug into the stat pages. So realistically, though I don’t like to admit it, I’m now behind again…but just by a Statis Pro day!

Anyway, as before, these updated season stats can be found by clicking the ‘Statistics’ drop-down on the main page header, hovering the pointer over an AL division and team, then clicking on ‘Current Season Stats’. You’ll find that some stats and stat totals are blank; those will remain that way until the end of August. Right now, figuring out those numbers game-by-game is much more time-consuming than I’m willing to commit to.

So now I’ll begin typing statistics for the August 17th games into SP78 Stat Central (my HP Mini laptop), then I’ll begin the process of plugging them into the blog site as well. And then, I’ll play the final game of the 17th—a critical AL West match-up between the Royals and Twins—next week on Halloween, which will be the first SP78 game to be played on the scariest of holidays since 2011. And then…more work on the new league leaders spreadsheets, which I hope to have up and running by September 1st of the SP78 season. When I’ll find the time to do all of this, however, is flat-out beyond me…

All NL Statistics Are Now Current!

Believe it or not, for the first time since 1989, statistics for the National League are up-to-date to the current point of my SP78 season: August 16th, 1978. No more will I have to take the collected stats for June (which I completed while playing July games, well after June had wrapped up), add them to the stats for July, then add them to the current stats for August, just to get up to the minute stats for a particular player or team. Let me repeat: the NL is CAUGHT UP!

I know it may not seem like a big deal, but trust me, it is; having gone nearly thirty years without current stats, and to suddenly (well, after a few months of relentless work) now have them full and complete at my fingertips, well, that’s definitely something for me to celebrate. Which I think I’ll do later this afternoon with a bike ride to a nearby Barro’s for pizza.

These updated stats can be found by clicking the ‘Statistics’ drop-down on the main page header, hovering the pointer over an NL division and team, then clicking on ‘Current Season Stats’. You’ll find that some stats and stat totals are blank; those will remain that way until the end of August. Right now, figuring out those numbers game-by-game is much more time-consuming than I’m willing to commit to.

And later today I’ll begin work on the American League pages, which hopefully won’t take very long now that I have a system and rhythm down. Though NL games for the 17th are complete, I’ll let you enjoy these stats from the 16th for a bit before I add those other numbers in. And don’t forget to take a look at the Cardinals stat page and see how that 15-year-old rookie sensation is doing thus far in the ’78 campaign!

July AL Award Winners Announced!

And now it’s time for the American League award winners for July, coming on the heels of current AL stats recently being finalized through the end of that month. Check out the complete list below; for a more detailed look at prior recipients, a description of each award, and photos of the trophies and plaques awarded, check the ‘SP78 Awards’ section of the Statistics dropdown link on the main menu above.