The Baltimore Orioles emerged victorious as World Champions of my 1969 MLB season replay that concluded last week and took a year for me to finish. Between playing along with the current MLB season, other SOM projects and just living life, one year seems to be the time I need to enjoyably play an entire retro season.
My goal in every replay is to manage the Detroit Tigers to an AL Championship, so I fell short with the 1969 season. Baltimore was just too strong. They had the best record in MLB at 104-58. My Tigers finished 98-64, 6 games behind the Orioles in the AL East. Baltimore under-performed by 5 games when compared to their actual record in '69. Detroit over-performed by 8 games. That led to an exciting, season long chase by Detroit. But to be honest, I never felt I had a good enough team to overtake them. Detroit did not have the pitching depth Baltimore had. I also couldn't put a team on the field that compared to the Orioles every day starters. Baltimore sat on top of the AL East all season long, except for 3 days in early July when the Tigers swept a 3 game series from them and moved into 1st place, temporarily.
Baltimore swept a very strong Minnesota Twins team in the AL Championship Series and then defeated the New York Mets 4 games to 1 in the World Series. The Mets were surprise winners in the NL. I didn't think they had a good enough team to win like they did in real life. In my replay, they didn't climb into 1st place in the NL East until the last week of the season. The Chicago Cubs led the NL East for the 1st 4 months of the season and the Pittsburgh Pirates led for most of the last 2 months. But the Mets passed them both by and finished 2 games ahead of the Pirates. The Atlanta Braves won the NL West walking away from their competition but got swept by New York in the NL Championship Series.
The 1969 season had a good balance of great pitching and great hitting. The NL produced seven 20 game winners and the AL had 4. In the NL, Hank Aaron (55) and Willie McCovey (50) topped 50 HR. In the AL, Frank Howard and Reggie Jackson both hit 53 HR. Both leagues each had over 12 players hitting better than .300.
NL Top Pitchers: Koosman (NY) 24-6, 1.75ERA, 217K; Marichal (SF) 24-10, 1.63, 221; Dierker (HOS) 22-11, 2.22, 212; Jenkins (CHI) 22-16, 2.99 305; Reed (ATL) 21-4, 2.43, 152.
AL Top Pitchers: Cuellar (BAL) 25-6, 2.42ERA, 203K; McLain (DET) 22-9, 2.79, 180; McDowell (CLV) 22-11, 3.11, 281; Boswell (MIN) 20-10, 2.74, 192; Lolich (DET) 18-10, 2.67, 274.
NL Top Batters: Aaron (ATL) .342BA, 55HR, 134RBI; McCovey (SF) .324, 50, 126; Williams (CHI) .323, 30, 125; Perez (CIN) .300, 35, 111; Agee (NY) .283, 36, 94; Clemente (PIT) .342, 26, 98.
AL Top Batters: Howard (WAS) .307BA, 53HR, 126; Jackson (OAK) .315, 53, 116; Killebrew (MIN) .269, 48, 142; Epstein (WAS) .320, 41, 104, Powell (BAL) .322, 36, 95; Yastrzemski (BSN) .268, 46, 119.
Like I said, 1969 was a very strong, balanced season in both hitting and pitching. Changes to the pitching mound and strike zone prior to the '69 season helped increase batting production after an anemic year of hitting in 1968. Even though the only close pennant races were in the East divisions of both leagues, it was a very fun season to replay.
1969 was a year of expansion in baseball. For the 1st time, there were 2 divisions in each league and League Championship playoffs were needed to determine the World Series participants. I finished the replay using the new Baseball 2012 version from SOM and am now getting ready to do my annual 'play-along' of the current MLB season, 2012 this year. Next up for a retro asplayed replay will be the 1911 season. It will be the oldest, carded season I have ever done.
