Falcons Forum

The dust has settled, and the results of thirty-eight hard fought games have resulted in the Falcons ending the season mid-pack. Thanks to a 22-15-1 record, we'll stay in the President's Division for 2024, but a .592 winning percentage wasn't good enough for a coveted Friday night bye this coming weekend.

Attendance was once again an issue for the team, resulting in three losses by default, and numerous stressful WhatsApp discussions about whether or not we'd be able to field a team in the hours before the no-fine deadline. Fully half our games were played with less than 10 players, and eleven more were played with only ten Falcons in attendance. Curiously, during our season-high 6-game losing streak, only one of those games was played without a 10-man Falcons squad.

The good (?) news is that losing streak was the low point of the season, and it came in mid-July. After that, the Falcons played like a dog on fire, losing only three (one by default) of the next 17 games. Everyone wants to go into the playoffs on a hot streak.

The Falcons took care of VP business, as we tend to do, sweeping the series against 4 of the six VP teams, and earning 2-1 records against the other two. The turntables were turned against the President's division. At best, we tied two of our rivals, and lost the series against the other three. You don't cash regular season cheques with results like that.

One could argue the low point of the season came at the end of the big losing streak, when Million Dollar Bill marked the end of his 190-game (including playoffs!) iron man streak. The current iron man, Cowboy, at 23 games, has a way to go.

In brighter news, we reset two of our front page counters: The team enjoyed free beer more than once to celebrate an undefeated streak, and Dr J finally grabbed that carrot with his first two career triples, all in the same inning. Let's hope a Dr J triple is more frequent than a Shelly Two-Bags sighting.


AWARDS SECTION

Here are your Falcons Regular Season statistical leaders:

ATTENDANCE AWARD: Not only did Bill end his streak, he missed enough games to miss out on this award. Fittingly, the new iron man, Cowboy, wins here, attending 33 out of the 35 games we actually played.

RUNS SCORED: There's no reason the lead off hitter shouldn't win this award, and that's good because I don't have to come up with one. Cowboy again, 81 runs scored.

1B: Hold onto your butts, but here's a name we don't tend to see in the awards section: Dr J led the Falcons this year with 64 singles, one better than Dunner

2B: Dunner destroyed the field here. His 32 two-baggers was ELEVEN MORE than the next highest Falcon.

3B: Cowboy nearly doubled #2 (Dunner) on this list, and extended his single-season record in the process. A career high 15 triples nets Cowboy this award.

HR: For the second year in a row, Grandpa Beatty had a slow start with the bat but caught fire late. His 20 dingers was good enough to lead the team and tie for fifth in the league overall.

BB: Barry "Mr Picky" Guerrero Jr once again stood around to take this award with eleven walks.

TOTAL BASES: Dunner won a surprisingly tight race here. His 159 total bases narrowly beat out Cowboy's 145 and Grandpa Beatty's 140 to take the title.

BATTING AVERAGE: Dunner wins for the second year in a row here, and his .789 batting average is a feat to behold.

ON BASE PERCENTAGE: Dunner again, beating the next highest Falcon by almost 50 points, tops the team at .784

SLUGGING PERCENTAGE: Despite his best efforts, it's hard to overcome twenty dingers when it comes to slugging percentage. Grandpa Beatty squeaked out the victory here at 1.273 to Dunner's 1.195.

ON BASE + SLUGGING (OPS): Dunner's 1.979 was only 70 points more than Grandpa Beatty's to take the title.

RUNS BATTED IN: The biggest story line of the season was whether Dunner could break the team record, held by Goliath at 99 RBI in 2010. Sadly OTHER baseball commitments got in the way. 94 RBI is nothing to sneeze at though!

ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN THE PLAYOFFS

If you were one of a handful of people who were upset that there were no Power Rankings this season, thank you. To recap the season, thanks to the mass exodus of the team formerly known as "A's", Storm waltzed to a President's division crown. In the VP division, the no-longer-called-Buellers Greenthumb won the tiebreaker over a surprising Coulas squad to take the title and cash the cheque. Still, the top five playoff seeds are from the President's division. Storm, Broadway, the Isotopes and The Crew will enjoy a Friday night breather before playing their round-robin games on Saturday. Obviously, Storm is the favourite going into the weekend, and as usual is the target of every other team. But the #2 team, Broadway, has the far easier path to Sunday. Storm's pool includes 17-win Hanet, who traditionally gets leaps-and-bounds better come playoff weekend, while Broadway's two pool opponents combined for a 16-60 record this season. The fearless prediction here is that the A's win a crossover elimination game and play Sunday morning, and at least one of the top four seeds does not.

FALCONS' MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

Since the winner's vote doesn't count, we can call it a unanimous win here for Dunner, who was clearly the team's best player in 2023.



FALCONS' MOST SPORTSMANLIKE PLAYER

For the first time in five years, the Falcons have chosen a new MSP, and it's none other than Mr -- sorry -- Doctor Two-Triples-In-One-Inning! Congratulations to both our award winners, and good luck at the banquet!