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| The Unusual Suspects: Bruce Bochte, Gary Alexander & Dan Ford. |
Not to sound like a broken record player, for those that may not know, my brother Chris and I, are replaying the 1978 MLB Season through APBA Baseball. Chris is using the Master Board Game to replay the Senior Circuit, while I am playing the Junior side of things, using the Basic Board Game with Optional Fielding.
I just finished April 26th on the American League Schedule, and it's been nothing short of exciting.
Three hitters have stood out for the most part in the American League so far, and those three are not your usual big names such as a Jim Rice, Reggie Jackson or Don Baylor at the time. Those three players are Seattle's Bruce Bochte, Oakland's Gary Alexander & Minnesota's Dan Ford.
On the morning of the April 16th Sunday paper, Seattle's Bochte ranked at the top of nearly every offensive category in the American League. Bochte was 4th in batting average (.422), while leading the league in hits (19), runs batted in (16), doubles (5) -- which contributed to a 1.171 OPS [On Base + Slugging]. Bochte is still batting .333 with 20 RBI for the season, but has had no home runs in the last 10 days, while he is batting only .238 (10-for-42) during that span.
Seattle has been doing much better than their real-life 1978 counterparts at his point, posting a 10-12 record, although it didn't start out all too well, with a 3-9 start... but have since won 7 of 10, while the team owns a 4-2 record against the California Angels. The same Angels that started the season undefeated at 7-0.
The Twinkies' Ford continues to hit above .300 with a a batting average of .345, while knocking in 19 runs, with a .822 OPS. Ford has slowed down slightly, batting .289 (11-for-38), since his .391 batting average on April 16th. Besides Rod Carew (.318 BA) & Dave Goltz (3-0, 1.39 ERA) though, I can't say anything else good about the Minnesota Twins who sit at 9-11, and feel like a much worse team than the record even reflects. Their pitching has been bad (4.80 team ERA).
Last, but certainly not least, is Gary Alexander of the Oakland A's. Alexander has only heated up since April 15th, by hitting .378 (14-for-37) with 7 HR & 16 RBI during the last 11 days. Alexander was batting .318 with 4 HR & 6 RBI entering April 16th. In real life 1978, Alexander started off hot for Oakland as well, earning a spot on the cover of The Sporting News, while he batted .283 with 5 HR & 10 RBI (1.038 OPS) through April 26th. His APBA batting average is certainly up (batting .356) while his HR & RBI doubles are twice as much verses real-life.
Alexander's 58 total bases equals that of the next two highest total base leaders on the Athletics, combined in Gary Thomasson (32) and Mario Guerrero (26).
I think the truly remarkable thing about Alexander is that he hit 27 HR in 498 at-bats during 1978, between two teams, Oakland and the Cleveland Indians. He is well above that pace at the moment with 11 HR through 15 games (17 Oakland games), while in real-life he finished tied for 8th in HR. With his fast start in the APBA replay, he has a chance to win the HR title while playing for two teams possibly if he someone like Jim Rice under-performs.
The only other time I was hitting home runs at a crazy clip would be during high school in my brother Jared's 1993 APBA league with Francisco Cabrera hitting 19 HR in 25 games... obviously, we were not sticking to replay rules and were playing a clear J-4 backup with a serious monster card.
Rice has heated up of late, with 3 HR during last 6 games (after none first 11 games), while Andre Thornton for Cleveland just had a 3 HR day that put his season total to 7, trailing Alexander in 2nd place.
Very likely, Alexander will come back down to Earth, just like Bochte and Ford appear to be doing as of late. A long season has it's peaks and its valleys, it's ups and downs, with teams heating up and cooling off. Players do the same, and very likely Alexander will have his dips as well... but one thing is for sure, no one can ever take away his hot start to this 1978 A.L. Replay.
Batters can't have all the fun, here are three pitchers out-performing their cards as well...
- Dick Pole (SEA / Grade D): 3-1, 2.51 ERA, 17 K & 1.186 WHIP through 5 starts & 28.2 innings of work.
- Mike Torrez (BOS / Grade C-Y): 4-0, 0.97 ERA, 2 SHO, 14 K & 0.892 WHIP through 5 starts & 37 innings.
- Moose Haas (MIL / Grade D-KZ): 1-3, 3.24 ERA, 29 K & 1.160 WHIP through 4 starts & 25 innings.
I am playing '79 and two of these three have already changed teams! I hadn't remembered that Alexander was pretty good with the power in '78 until I looked up his record the other day.
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