What You Don't Know About This Year's Playoffs
10/8/2081
Al Vincent
Staff Writer
Sports fans have a tendency to focus so intently on their own team, especially during a postseason run, that they sometimes miss all the other interesting things going on around the league. Every group of playoff teams has all kinds of neat bits of trivia that many people are unaware of.
For example, consider this year's crop of playoff teams:
1. You have the highest payroll in baseball in the Rochester Rhinos and the seventeenth highest payroll in the San Diego Padres.
2. You have the last four World Series winners- Pittsburgh in 2080, Miami in 2079, Rochester in 2078, and Washington in 2077. Two other teams have won it within the last ten years- San Diego in 2073 and San Jose in 2072. Of the remaining two teams, the Broncos have never won the World Series (they reached in 2058 but lost), and the Tucson Diamondbacks have gone 43 years since winning it last(2038), though they have reached four since then, including last year. The Broncos were in just their first year of existence the last time Tucson won it all.
3. All but one team was in the playoffs a year ago. The exception is San Diego, who is making its first postseason appearance since 2075.
4. You have the top five scoring teams in the league. In order, they are: Denver, Pittsburgh, Washington, San Jose, and Tucson.
5. You have the top three teams at preventing runs- Miami, San Jose, and Rochester.
6. You have each league's batting title winner, San Diego's Andrew Burdick and Denver's own Russell Thomas.
7. You have the National League leader in homeruns, San Jose's Ugo Momoru. Momuru, by the way, achieved a feat this season that did not attract as much notice as it should have. By hitting exactly 60 homers this year, Momoru became only the second player in league history to hit 60 or more homeruns in more than one season. Momoru also hit 61 in 2077. The previous player to achieve this feat is, of course, the legendary Scott Border.
8. You have a player who may become the all time leader in hits next season. Rochester's Santiago Serrato is only 36 hits behind all time leader Felipe Mira. In addition, Serrato is one of two players in the playoffs to have 500 career homeruns, and one of two to have 3,000 career hits. Washington's Leon Pino is the other 500 HR man, and Miami's Ulises Menendez is the other 3,000 hit man.
9. Lastly, you have the great Segundo Narbaiza, ace for Rochester. Narbaiza currently ranks tied for 4th with Jeremy Poss in career wins with 295. Twenty six wins next season, not an impossible accomplishment for Narbaiza, who won that many this year, would tie him at third with Robert McComas. If he could reach that level, 14 wins would then tie him with Robert Jordan for second place, and then another four would bring him to all time leader Robert Padgett. Does Narbaiza have 44 more wins left in him? It is certainly not out of the question.
10. Narbaiza is also the all time leader in shutouts with 59; he passed up Hector Soriano's 57 this year.
These are just a few of the interesting aspects to the 2081 postseason. However it shakes out, this postseason promises to be an exciting one, with all kinds of storylines.