Big Cat, Tiny Cat

We are in month #2 of the 2019 UAL (Ultimate APBA League) Season, and my Traverse City Fighting Tigers played worst than they did in October. The Fighting Tigers went 9-21 for the month of October, while they just went 4-11 at home for me in November. We also got the results back from their road series against the North Georgia Bravos, in which they went 1-4... So of all the reported games, Traverse City is 14-36 (.280), while on pace for 45 wins.

We knew it would be bad, we feel we can play better than the .280 clip. We play with games limits for position players, so I am getting the rest time in early in the season, so the lineups should be doing better as the season goes on.

So I knew going into the season that I was going to take my lumps. We lost two B starters from last season, who have no-cards for this season (due to injury) in Jimmy Nelson & Taijuan Walker. We had a couple starters also downgraded a grade from last season, while the bullpen went from plenty of B's & A's to all D's and a couple C's. Plus my two team captains in Jose Altuve and Buster Posey missed a good handful of games due to 2018 MLB season injuries as well.

So knowing all that, I didn't expect to have my dice go ice-cold for my favorite hitter in the game in Jose 'Gigante' Altuve. I knew he didn't have a great 1st series playing the Ohio Cougars, players slump from time to time, but I didn't expect things to get worse.

After batting .133 against Ohio, Altuve batted only .109 with a .333 OPS against the Massillon Big Cats. To make matters worse, Massillon's catcher Austin Romine out-played him, not only that series, but Romine's series totals dwarfed Altuve's offensive home numbers for the month of November.

Romine accomplished more in 5 games than Altuve did in 15 games, here are the numbers...

• Romine: 10-for-19 (.526), HR, 7 RBI (.571 OBP / 1.414 OPS) - Romine had a game that he went 5-for-5, all singles with 3 RBI.

• Altuve: 8-for-52 (.154), 0 HR & 6 RBI - Altuve recorded 4 of those 6 RBI, his last 2 games of the month, while collecting 4 hits that series. His best OPS output was .611 against N.G.

The troubling thing is, Altuve didn't do absolutely great in his 1st month of home games with me as well, I believe he batted .273 for me, with a .767 OPS. 

Last season, Altuve batted .423 for me at home, with a .476 OBP & 1.083 OPS. He led the league in batting (.352), hits (221), runs (221) & stolen bases (48), while posting a .946 OPS.

We all know through APBA Season Replays, League Play, APBA Tournaments, or in real life, how little players like Austin Romine can come up big, while big players such as Jose Altuve can come up short...

That's one of the beauties of baseball.