[ifspuds]

Well, there's some good news on the Time Warp front. It looks like the league will be saved in some capacity. We had a sim yesterday, and there will be more forthcoming. So, with that said, here's the latest on the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates of Time Warp Baseball...

At the All-Star break, the Pirates trailed the Mets by a game, and the Cubs were right there in the thick of it all as well. As chronicled earlier, the second half of July saw the Pirates get red-hot, and that one-game deficit turned into a 7.5-game lead over Chicago and 10 over the Mets.

The first game of August was a 21-2 shellacking of the Giants, which featured a 9-RBI game from Ben Trome, who also scored 4 runs, and while the team didn't stay quite that hot, they did sweep 3 from the Expos and split a four-game series with the Phillies that started them on their most recent hot streak, a 7-game stretch that included a 2-game sweep of the Cubs and a 4-game sweep of the Cardinals.

The same stretch wasn't as kind to either the Cubs or the Mets, and the Pirates -- who own the best record in baseball at 84-38 -- now rest atop a cushy 14.5-game lead. George Adkison and Levi Sellers are still pacing the pitching staff. Adkison is considered one of the favorites for the 1971 Murphy Award in the National League. His 19 wins lead the league, his 1.85 ERA has him tied with Cincinnati's Charlie Lendon for first and his 198 strikeouts are second only to Cincinnati's Ron Arvizu, who has 199. Sellers, who has found the fountain of youth after a poor 1970, is 18-3 with a 2.25 ERA and has fanned 188 batters. At the plate, Asa Booker never ceases to amaze, as the 3-time Batter of the Year is enjoying his best year since the 2nd of those two awards, 1967. Hitting .312/.365/.512, he's swatted 28 doubles, 12 triples and 13 homers, numbers we've come to expect from Cannonball, though those 28 doubles have him on pace to set a personal record. He's about to collect his 2700th career hit, and with 8 more stolen bases on top of the 22 he already has, he'll crack the all-time top 10 in steals. He just might rack up another 100-RBI, 100-run season as well.

Pittsburgh faces a tougher schedule in the second half of August, visiting the top three teams in the NL West after opening with a 3-game home set against the 3rd place Astros. That 14.5-game lead has Pirates faithful breathing a whole lot easier about the dying days of summer.