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TRADES |
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FREE AGENT SIGNINGS |
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INJURED LIST |
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STU
MILLER |
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MONTH |
W-L, ERA | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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August 1952 |
4-1, 1.92 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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April 1953 |
6-0, 1.93 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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April 1954 |
4-2, 1.37 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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August 1954 |
6-1, 1.62 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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April 1957 |
5-1, 1.69 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
United
League of
American Base Ball Clubs
est.
1951
LEAGUE
FILE (5/27) ·
HEADLINES
· NEWS
LOG · TRANSACTIONS ·
INJURIES ·
FINANCES
STANDINGS ·
BOX
SCORES · SCHEDULE ·
BATTING ·
PITCHING ·
FIELDING · LEADERS
LEAGUE
RULES · TEAM INFO ·
ROSTERS ·
FREE
AGENTS · TOP
PROSPECTS · TOP
FARMS
TOP
PERFORMANCES ·
RECORD
BOOK · PAST
LEADERS · CAREER
LEADERS
BEGINNINGS ·
CITIES ·
BALLPARKS ·
PLAYER PHOTOS (1957)
·
OOTP 6.1 PATCH
TOTAL UL
· 1951 ·
1952 · 1953 ·
1954 ·
1955 ·
1956
·
1957 DRAFTS
4/7 (Season Preview) ·
4/17 ·
5/1
|
|
Colts
Drop 12
Straight
Bats Silenced,
Pitching Pounded
As Chicago Lays Claim to Cellar
CHICAGO (May 1) -- It's not the Great Chicago Fire, but a 10.5-game deficit on May 1
should be triggering some alarm bells in the Windy City. A 2-14 start, including a twelve-game losing streak,
found the Chicago Colts in dead last by a longshot by mid-April.
After a 2-2 start, the Donkeys lost three games to Louisville, five to
Washington, and two each to Brooklyn and San Francisco, to find themselves
9.5 games out of first place on April 23. Granted, the deck was
stacked against them: their first 14 games were against the three hottest teams (combined record 46-20), and 12 of them on the
road.
GM Lance Mueller may come to rue the day he shipped Yogi
Berra to Brooklyn in exchange for Gil Hodges. The ex-Ba is batting
.167 (10-60) as a Colt, though seven of his 10 hits went for extra bases
(.460 SLG). What's more, while the Frank's clubhouse is now peppered
with colorful Yogiisms, Wrigley's has been replaced by drab Gilisms such
as: "Sometimes you hit the ball, sometimes you don't." But
Hodges is not alone in the hitting department -- or shall we say, lack-of-hitting department. The
Colts rank dead last
in runs scored (2.95 per game) and batting (.209). Of the heart of
the order (Zernial, Banks, Hodges, and Burgess), only Banks is hitting over
.208. Zernial and Bobby Thomson have two of the three lowest
averages in the league. And so on.
The pitching hasn't been much to write home about
either. Despite the second best opponent batting average and
second fewest walks allowed, the Colts have managed to post the third
worst ERA, and fourth most runs allowed. Credit that anomaly to a
generous pitching staff that has allowed 26 homers in 21 games (Robin
Roberts and Don Drysdale have allowed eight and seven,
respectively). A starting trio considered among the league's finest
has produced just three wins in 17 starts. Some of that is just dumb
luck. Whitey Ford, for instance, is 1-4 despite a 2.85 ERA.
His run support is second lowest in the league (1.7 runs/game),
mainly due to the quality of the pitchers he has faced. Whitey's
opposite numbers read like a Who's Who of United League supernovas:
Stu Miller, Johnny Antonelli, Larry Jansen, Gene Conley, Hal Brown, and
Vinegar Bend Mizell. (Okay, Vinegar Bend Mizell isn't a pitching
great in any universe, parallel or otherwise. But he did beat Whitey
Ford 5-1 on Apr. 29 with a four-hit complete game.)
The picture isn't all doom and gloom for the Horsies.
They are 3-3 in their last six, 12 of their next 17 games are at home, and
they don't face Washington or Louisville until after the Midsummer
Break. But the Donkeys are slumping hard, and it will take an
equally dramatic upswing to get them back in the race.
Captain Stu-bing's
Back
Recovered Miller
Wins 5th POM
WASHINGTON (May 1)
-- Monuments ace Stu Miller won Pitcher of the Month for the fifth time
(see box, left),
and the first time in two and a half years, signaling a return to full
health after missing 12 months to a ruptured disk. Miller, 29, was 5-1
in April with a 1.69 ERA in 6 starts. He opened his sixth UL
campaign with four straight wins and PoGs (Player of the Game) before losing to St. Louis 9-2 on Apr. 25. Interestingly,
three of Miller's five POMs have come in April, and all of them in months
starting with A. Miller won his previous POMs in 1952, 1953 and
1954, all pennant-winning seasons in the Nation's Capital. Miller
won Rookie of the Year in 1952, the Cy Young Award in 1953, and was a UL
All-Star in 1953 and 1954 before his back injury on June 25, 1955 ruined
the greater part of two seasons. He was 16-6, 3.33 in 26 starts last
year.
Washington fell out of first place momentarily, but moved
into first place tie with Brooklyn with a series win at Frank Thomas
Memorial Stadium Apr. 27-29. Carl Erskine anchored a five-hitter and
Ted Kluszewski homered in a 6-2 win; Willie Mays was 3-for-5 including a
home run and a game-winning single in the tenth in 6-5 win; and Larry
Jansen lost 4-3, despite a pitching a four-hit complete game.
Willie Mays has snapped out of his early funk. Mays was
hitting .111 (4-36) through April 17, but has 20 hits in 43 at-bats since
then (.465), including four three-hit games in a five-game span. The
Say Hey Kid's 17 RBIs leads the team, and helps pick up the slack for an
ailing Duke
Snider, who is hit just .246-3-11 in April. Snider's home run off
Art Ditmar on April 30, however, was all the scoring Stu Miller needed, as
he blanked the Gothams 1-0 with a one-hit gem.
