St. Louis Pilgrims Season Review

By Greg Nims

1.15.2014

St. Louis, MO (AP) - Things had gotten stale again with the franchise, so after seven years of Grateful Dead team names, we went back to Panic. St. Louis is a new-ish instrumental, while Pilgrims is one of my favorite Panic tunes ever, and I've long consider Boston Pilgrims or some other team name in order to use Pilgrims. I finally got my wish.

The Draft

We decided to draft some power this year, and were fairly successful. We took power early and often in the draft, going power on our first six picks: 3B Adrian Beltre 3b5 7.7 r26, Giancarlo Stanton of2.35 8.2 f29, Ian Desmond ss8 5.7 d30, Albert Pujols 1b5 6.1 f34, Curtis Granderson cf3.31 5.6f30 and RF Carlos Gomez of3.37 5.0 b33. We later added Nick Swisher of2.321b3 6.3 and OF/1B Tyler Colvin to add depth.

We somewhat ignored pitching to draft that power, but scrambled to an acceptable rotation in Greinke P13x+2, Colon 10zz, Vogelsong P12y+2, Dempster P12y+0, and BurnettAJ P12y+0. Snagging the 12s in 17th, 18th and 19th was fortunate. We complimented the rotation with a strong pen. Four 18s+ in Ryan Cook P*19gxy+1, Burton P*18gx+0, Rafael Soriano P*18x+0, and Huston Street P*19gxy+1, followed by acceptable innings eaters in Ziegler P*15h+1, Pestano P*16xy+1, and Gregerson P*16x+0.

The Season

We started off well, and my division mates started off poorly. At the 40 game mark, I was 26-14 and had a 9 game lead. Things were going well, and I had no roster complaints, so it was easy to pass on any moves during the free agent draft.

By the 50 game mark, we had a 12 game lead, and after that it was a matter of playing our games and keeping it up. We hit a couple tough patches, but nothing bad and won the division easily. We finished at 93-69, our best record since our 2006 China Cat Sunflowers went 97-65, and our fifth most ever.

We ended up hitting 236 HR, with Chris hitting 210 for second, and Ken was third with 200. So I guess the power strategy worked, or at least worked well enough. We finished third in runs scored, but three teams scored just ten runs fewer than us, so we were basically a smidge above average.

Our defense and pitching excelled, ending up third in the league, just 0.02 behind Chris' squad in runs per 9. Our early investment in defense seemed to pay off, and the strong bullpen really helped.

My best or favorite picks: Stanton falling to me in the 2nd, Granderson in the 5th, Gomez in the 6th, Colvin in the 13th, Soriano in the 16th, Street in the 20th, and 16s Pestano/Gregerson in the 25th/26th.

Least favorite or worst picks: Desmond in the 3rd, Cook in the 7th, Colon in 10th (because we then missed Willingham, although had we drafted 'Ham, we never would have gotten Colvin), Scutaro in 15th.

Playoffs

I faced Chris's 86-76 Asbury Park Flying Fish in the semi. It was a tight, tense series, one that we "should" have won. We were two outs away from closing things out in Game Five, gave up a Trout two run shot and it was all down hill.

Conclusion

Good year. Good record. Tough playoff loss. On to SL2014.