National League: home runs rain down on London

It was a familiar story in the National League South on Sunday, with the London Mets sweeping the Bracknell Blazers (6-2 and 11-1) and the Richmond Flames taking two against the Croydon Pirates (6-4 and 14-4). So the Flames remain two games back from the Mets (who are 10-0), but they have a chance to draw level this coming Sunday, with the league leaders due to meet in a double-header at the Flames’ ground.

Croydon and Bracknell, who now both have 1-9 records, are scheduled to field a combined team against the GB Juniors at the Blazers’ ground on Sunday, as part of the youth team’s preparations for the European Qualifier Championships, which is taking place from 26 July to 3 August 2008, in the Swedish city of Eskilstuna. The team will also have practice games against a joint London/Richmond team and a National League South All-Star team, before they head to Sweden. 

Getting back to Sunday’s play in the National League South, the story of the day had to be three players each hitting a brace of home runs, these being Maikel Azcuy of Croydon, Ryan Trask of Bracknell, and Grant Delzoppo of Richmond. Delzoppo’s pair included a grand slam that sealed the Pirates’ fate in game two of that double-header.

Azcuy, Delzoppo, and Trask are now joint-leaders of the home run category in the National League South, with three each. In my experience, it’s one of the statistical categories that the players (or at least the sluggers) do really keep a close eye on in the British league.

Last season, the home run race went down to the last game of the season, with a grand slam from Azcuy pulling him level with team-mates Brett Tait and Rhys Dixon. All three Croydon players finished with five four-baggers, with Ryan Barwick (another team-mate) and Richmond’s Delzoppo both one back. There was also a mid-season home run derby, which took place at the London Tournament – Azcuy won this comfortably, although not all of the leading hitters participated.

The five home runs that those three players hit were four fewer than Dennis Grubb managed for the Windsor Bears in 2004. Grubb’s nine round-trippers are the most hit in the top flight in recent years, and he had 69 at-bats that year. If you scale that up to the 476 that Barry Bonds had in the season he set the current MLB home run record of 73, Grubb gets a total of 62. For the record, applying the same translation to Dixon’s total of five in 2007, which he managed in just 26 at-bats, you get a figure of 92.

I am aware that I am playing around with small sample sizes here, but it does illustrate that among the league leaders in both America and Britain, you get a fairly similar rate of home run hitting.

The current leaders are on pace for seven home runs over the course of this 24-game season. According to the records I have, the last player to reach double figures was Alan Bloomfield, who hit 13 for the London Warriors in 1997.

You can follow the home run race here, as well as finding details of other category leaders and full sortable stats for the National League South (at the time of writing, the figures have not yet been updated to include last Sunday’s games).

There is no official word on the make-up of the postseason yet, but let’s for now assume that it will be like last year, with the top two from the North and the top two from the South advancing to the National Finals. If this is the case then while it would take a dramatic turn-around from either Croydon or Bracknell to challenge the Mets or the Flames for a berth, it would make for a potentially exciting run-in for the National League North. Two would qualify from three teams, and they are all currently close together in the standings.

Unfortunately, though, instead of the metaphorical rain mentioned in the title of this post, there must have been some of the real stuff in the north on Sunday, because the four games involving National League teams were all postponed. This Sunday, the Manchester Eagles are scheduled to travel to Menwith Hill to face the Patriots in a two-game series rearranged from 27 April.