1913 Season Recap - Southern League
Tucson Saguaros corral SL title
Yuma gets the Big Fade award. After cruising into the AZL championship series last year, the Prisoners belly-flopped into eighth place. The team appears to have aged out.
Tucson, though, makes it back to the playoffs after taking the Southern League regular season crown this season. The Saguaros scored 800 runs, tops in the SL, and finished with the second best record in baseball (96 wins).
Ty Cobb continues to drive Tucson. The Georgia Peach, now 26, hit .309 this season, with 15 triples and 95 RBIs. He stole 47 bases. Shortstop
Art Fletcher also had a stellar year, hitting .306 with 88 RBIs.
Joe Ward and
Heinie Zimmerman platooned at second base (with Ward also playing some at first), and the two combined for 133 RBIs. Both hit just above .300.
The Cactus Kids had three pitchers win 20 games, led by
Barney Pelty (28-7). Pelty, 21-14 a year ago, has really emerged the past two years after having losing records the previous three.
George McQuillan was 21-10. Jake Boultes won 20 games but also lost 20. Boultes led the SL with 190 strikeouts and was fifth in ERA (2.90). Control problems kept his record from being even better. McQuillan (2.23) and Pelty (2.52) topped the ERA list for the Southern.
Phoenix makes the playoffs for the first time since the 1905 season. The Dust Devils also won the division in 1901 but have been hanging out in the cellar for the past 4-5 years. Phoenix won its last four games to fend off Nogales, which lost its last four.
1B
Fred Luderus carried a big bat for the Devils. In his third season, he hit 11 home runs, batted .278 and drove home 96 runs. 2B
Del Pratt also had a solid season for a balanced team, hitting .282 with six homers and 80 RBIs. It's hard to find a real go-to guy on this team. But everyone was pretty good. RF
Jack Hayden had the best batting average at .281.
Pitcher
Willie Mitchell was 23-10. Like Tucson, Phoenix had a guy with a 20-20 record,
Al Demaree. Claude Hendrix won 19 games but lost 18. Looking at their stats, it makes you wonder how these guys finished second. They appear to be an average squad, but the Dust Devils just had a habit of winning games ... We'll see how that pans out in the SL playoffs.
Carefree fans are still waiting for their team to break through. The Blues were singing the blues after another finish out of the playoffs. Carefree has been to the post-season just once, when the franchise was still in Lake Havasu in the early 1900s. There have been a handful of other near misses and other years where they were way back...
Final SL standings (sorry about the Yuma Prisoners sirlurksalot):
Code:
Team W L PCT GB Pyt.Rec Diff Home Away XInn 1Run M# Streak Last10
Tucson 96 66 .593 - 98-64 -2 45-36 51-30 8-9 24-33 * W5 8-2
Phoenix 89 73 .549 7.0 83-79 6 39-42 50-31 11-6 36-21 - W4 5-5
Nogales 84 78 .519 12.0 85-77 -1 45-36 39-42 11-4 22-23 - L4 4-6
Carefree 81 81 .500 15.0 80-82 1 40-41 41-40 7-5 22-16 - W1 7-3
Bisbee 78 84 .481 18.0 80-82 -2 42-39 36-45 1-13 31-28 - W3 5-5
Tombstone 76 86 .469 20.0 80-82 -4 32-49 44-37 8-8 24-32 - L3 3-7
Tempe 73 89 .451 23.0 69-93 4 37-44 36-45 4-6 22-26 - L1 6-4
Yuma 71 91 .438 25.0 72-90 -1 32-49 39-42 7-6 24-26 - L5 2-8