Fighting Tigers' October Progress Report (UAL)

As my readers know, I joined a mail-in league involving 24 owners, 24 teams. We play are home games while we send our opponents instructions for our teams when they play on the road. The regular season ranges from October to March, while we are using the 2017 APBA Baseball Cards, we have a salary cap while the salaries are based on their real-life annual salaries.

October is in the books for the Ultimate APBA League (UAL) while my Traverse City Fighting Tigers find themselves in a three-way tie on top of the National League West with a 19-11 record. We went 11-4 at home, while 8-7 on the road.

Jose Altuve is currently leading the entire UAL with a .360 batting average, while also leading the league in steals (12), while 2nd in hits (40). Altuve's bat was red-hot at home, while batting .466 (27-for-58) with 3 HR, 13 RBI, 15 runs & 1.190 OPS... I am not sure if I have ever rolled that hot with a player in such a large fragment of 15 games.

My bullpen overall had underachieved during the month of October, I only expect things to improve, they can't really get that much worse. We have way too much talent in the pen, to suffer another bad bullpen month... so that said there is room for improvement.

My record should go down slightly since November will be a little more challenging. I played two bad teams in Michigan and Grand Junction during October, I went 8-2 against each of those teams. On paper they were really bad, but they had occasional (and sometimes annoying) pop. That is some of the reason for the inflated bullpen ERA's, the home run ball killed them (especially against the month's biggest challenge in Ephrata).

One of the biggest challenges is making sure you sit players enough, because we have games and innings limits with players. I am trying to sit my guys against weaker challengers, so that in the second-half of the season, it can be balls to walls while having my best guys on the field.

With the talent that my team has, I expect to be in the postseason, no less, and not more to be honest, but to miss the playoffs (after looking over the National League rosters) would be a complete disappointment. We already know that next season will be a reshuffle in what appears to be a down-year for us, when looking at the 2018 MLB numbers... so this is our season to have some fun before the upcoming hangover.

So far, so good... but now onto November!