1) 90% of the game is half-pitching, and Hawaii’s staff is among the top in the game. The Tropics have allowed the fewest homers in the Frick, and are #2 in essentially any other stat you want to pick up.
Zak Johnson is for real now, folks.
2) The other half of the game is 90% defense, and the Tropics are pretty danged good at that, too. Their team ZR is #3 in the league, by OOTP, and their overall defensive Plays Above Average in my newfangled contraption is the best in all of baseball. Balls do not leave the Tropic infield.
3) Manny Aguilar, Jr. The nickname “Second Coming” may cause him to feel he’s got some big shoes to fill, but Aguilar is doing the job of making runs out of water. 33 homers and 39 doubles will do that. He can also pick it at first well enough that he could garner some Zimmer attention. Regardless, he’s got Tropic fans leaving the park singing Holy something or other.
4) A Belgian manager. Aurelien Guerin may not have much of a reputation yet, and he may never have guided a team to a record above .500. But he’s from Belgium, and m wife will die without a reliable hit of Belgian chocolate every gift-giving opportunity. Or maybe it’s me who will die if that doesn’t happen. I dunno, but since the post season is a National Holiday, and hence a giving opportunity, I figure you can’t go wrong with a Belgian.
5) They play a lot of the rest of the season on the road, where they are only 29-42. All right, I hear you. How, you ask, does that make the Tropics in line to go to the play offs? It’s like this. The club is 47-31 at home, and you have to figure (despite Fangraphs' "Effectively Wild" saying this isn’t true), that there’s no way a .603 team at home can suck as bad as .408 on the road. Hence, the record will improve…and since we’re at the end of the season, it has to improve NOW. Obvious, right?
6) A check of the precincts left to report in. The Tropics schedule shows three games against both California and San Fernando, as well as seven games against teams going nowhere (Madison, Huntsville, and Twin Cities). Reading the teleprompter on election day says the path to the post season says “take two of three from the big guys, and the rest falls into place.
7) Coconuts. Did you know there are about 276 calories in a coconut? They’re highly rich in fiber and carry a literal crapton of vitamins and other good stuff like medium-chain triglycerides that lead to weight loss, and iron and magnesium and more. Whatever it is, the Tropics must have a great spread on the pre-game buffet because per StatsPlus the Tropics have lost only $1.7M to the trainer’s table this year—lowest among those fighting for the post season.
8) Norm McConnell and his 39 saves says the Tropics need only to get ahead by the 8th and the game is over. Sure, talk to me about his blown saves, and I note that SFB’s got that Tomanek guy with 39, too. But MConnell 2.52 leverage index says that he throws under nothing but pressure-cookers, whereas Tomanek’s 1.96 says he gets to coast a bit. As my daddy used to say, Pressure cooks. Besides that, you have to think well of a guy who gets greeted by a chorus of "Norm!" every time he enters his favorite corner bar.
9) The Tropics are the only team with true
Tallent. Admittedly Dave Tallent seems to have been a bit of a downer for most Tropic fans, who expected bigger things out of this now-26-year-old. Fear not, though. The next two weeks will see him turn it up a notch, raising that -.7 WAR above sea level and dunking the raiding cannibals into the big lagoon before getting a kiss from both Ginger and Mary Ann, then radioing home for rescue. Oh, wait, maybe I’m getting a wire crossed here? Hmm. Well, anyway. It just goes to show it’s always something.
10) Elvis made
three movies in Hawaii. Nuff said.
