Monday, February 13, 2023

WCAC in Women's College Basketball

 So, this season (2022-2023), there are at least 59 D1 men's college basketball players that had spent time at WCAC schools.  What about in the women's game?

We took some 10-year olds to a girls' high school basketball game this weekend and their first major impression was "these kids move fast!"  The speed at which high school basketball is played in the WCAC is still something, after almost an entire season of watching up close, I find remarkable.  It may be that there are other high school leagues that match it, but night in and night out, an extraordinary level of athleticism is required to win games in the WCAC.

Mining data from rosters for women's college basketball teams is more difficult than with the men's, likely due to the differential in resources dedicated to the two sports.  Nevertheless, at a minimum, there are 45 D1 women's college basketball players that had spent time at a WCAC school for the 2022-2023 season.  This is a lot less than I expected, given the number of players in men's basketball with ties to the WCAC.  

To be sure, the DMV seems to also be over-represented in D1 programs compared to other regions of the country, but unlike in the men's game there are many more players at that level coming out of public high schools and private schools outside of the WCAC.  A review of rosters indicates that the most prolific school at turning out D1 women's basketball players in the area has been the New Hope Academy, and Riverdale Baptist has turned out a fair share as well.

Nine of the WCAC schools are represented on D1 rosters, led by St. John's College and Bishop McNamara with 10 each.  Eight D1 players came from St. Paul VI, while six are from Our Lady Of Good Counsel, four from Bishop O'Connell, three from Bishop Ireton, two from Elizabeth Seton, and one each from St. Mary's Ryken and Archbishop Carroll.  I could find no D1 player with a tie to the Academy of the Holy Cross.

The 45 players with WCAC ties played in 20 different conferences.  Eight played in the ACC, five in the Colonial, three apiece in the Ivy League, the SEC, the American Athletic Conference, and the America East.  The Big Ten, Conference USA, MEAC, Metro Atlantic, Northeast, and Sunbelt conferences each have two WCAC players, while the PAC-12, Big East, Mountain West, A10, Big South, Patriot, SWAC, and ASUN each have one WCAC player.

Of all of the teams in D1, Elon boasts the most from the WCAC (3), while NC State, Columbia, UCF, and Maine have two from the WCAC.  The other schools with WCAC players are: Maryland, Northwestern, UConn, USC, Clemson, Florida, Georgia, Ole Miss, Cornell, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh, University of North Carolina, Boston College, Appalachian State, Drexel, James Madison, Loyola (Maryland), Binghamton, Rice, Campbell, St. Bonaventure, Utah State, Central Connecticut, Stony Brook, Coppin State, Wichita State, Manhattan, Stetson, Mount St. Mary's, Western Kentucky, North Carolina Central, Wagner, and Texas Southern. 

Monday, February 6, 2023

WCAC in D1 Basketball

Because I have a kid playing WCAC basketball now, fairly often, I have found myself sitting in the stands marveling at the talent of some kid on the floor, leading me to look up the player's recruiting profile.  Most of the time, despite what seems to me to be incredible athletic talent and good basketball skills, the kid doesn't have offers that they've reported.  Some, of course, do, and these tend to be to high profile colleges, but most do not.  The kids are serious about basketball.  Their play reflects the amount of time, attention, and effort they have put into the game.  And, yet, the future for them in the sport beyond high school is not clear.

Living in Prince George's County has meant that we routinely meet people who played Division II and Division III basketball and who have continued to feed their passion for the game through youth coaching.  Basketball doesn't need Division I for validation.  The game is the game.  But there is no question that the D1 pedigree affords a cachet of respect and admiration that is otherwise not bestowed.

Just as with football, I was curious about the number of WCAC kids that are playing Division I basketball this season.  It is a much more difficult question to answer, as a lot more colleges participate in Division I basketball than Division I football and, as such, we are talking about the rosters of 363 teams.  The roster listings for many schools omits or does not fully report information about high schools and this also complicates the process.

Nevertheless, from what I have reviewed, there are at least 59 players who went to WCAC schools on the rosters of a men's basketball program competing in Division I this season.  There are 11 boy's basketball schools in the WCAC.  All but one, The Heights, seems to have representation in D1 basketball.  There are at least 12 players that had spent time at DeMatha in D1, followed by Gonzaga and St. John's with 10 each.  Bishop McNamara, Bishop O'Connell, and St. Paul VI each have 7 players in D1, while Archbishop Carrol and Good Counsel have 2, and Bishop Ireton and St. Mary's Ryken each have 1.

9 players in the Colonial Athletic Conference have roots in the WCAC, while the Big Ten and ACC each have 6 players from this high school league.  The A10, America East, and Mid-Eastern conferences each have 5 players from the WCAC, while the Big East has 4, and the SEC and Metro Atlantic each have 3.  The Northeast Conference has 2 players from the WCAC, while the Pac-12, Ivy, ASUN, Patriot, Big South, Southern, Big West, Ohio Valley, and Southwestern conferences each have one player from the WCAC.

Michigan, Howard, and Towson each have three players from the WCAC on their respective rosters.  Six colleges have two WCAC players on their rosters this year: Vanderbilt, Villanova, Miami, George Mason, Bryant, and Delaware. 

I don't know how impressive these numbers are compared to other basketball powerhouses.  Bishop Walsh gets listed a remarkable number of times on D1 rosters, but even it pales in comparison to Hargrave Military.  But 59 kids playing D1 basketball from one private school conference in the DMV seems like a lot.

Monday, September 5, 2022

WCAC in the FBS

As I was sitting in Maryland Stadium watching Ron Cook Jr. (St. John's College) run the ball and James Patterson (St. Vincent Pallotti) make tackles for Buffalo, I scanned the school's roster and there are a significant number of players from local schools: Brian Plummer (Quince Orchard), Nik McMillan (Dr. Henry Wise), Janik Ogunlade (North Point), Caelan Shepard (Broadneck), Logic Hudgens (Archbishop Spalding), Devin Morgan (St. Frances Academy), Cornell Evans (St. Frances Academy), and Dylan Powell (St. Vincent Pallotti).  And there are another four players on Buffalo's roster from the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC): George Wolo (Our Lady of Good Counsel), Jalen McNair (Our Lady of Good Counsel), Cameron Ball (Gonzaga College), and Robbie Mangas (Gonzaga College).

Five players from one football conference in the DMV populating one college team in the Mid-American Conference seems kind of remarkable.  There are ten football schools in the WCAC -- DeMatha; Archbishop Carroll; Bishop McNamara; Bishop Ireton; Gonzaga College; Saint Mary's Ryken; Our Lady of Good Counsel; Saint John's College; Bishop O'Connell; and Saint Paul VI.  There are at least 118 alums of these ten schools currently on Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) rosters.  

Some statistics:

There is at least one WCAC alum playing in every FBS conference -- both the Power 5 and Group of 5: 34 in the Big Ten; 24 in the ACC; 12 in the American Athletic; 12 in independent FBS schools; 10 in the Sunbelt; 9 in the Mid-American; 7 in the SEC; 4 in the Big 12; 3 in the Pac-12; 2 in the Conference USA; and one in the Mountain West.

One out of every six of the WCAC alums (16.1%) in the FBS plays for Maryland (19).  Other teams with multiple WCAC alums:  James Madison (7); Pittsburgh (6); Navy (6); Michigan (5); Penn State (5); Notre Dame (5); Buffalo (5); Wake Forest (4); Virginia (3); Boston College (3); Temple (3); Ohio University (3); Georgia (2); University of Southern California (2); Vanderbilt (2); West Virginia (2); Louisville (2); Syracuse (2); UConn (2); Marshall (2); and UMass (2).  Alabama, Army, Boise State, BYU, Charlotte, Duke, Georgia Tech, Kent State, Liberty, Louisiana State University, Middle Tennessee State, Minnesota, North Carolina State, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Purdue, Rutgers, South Carolina, Southern Methodist University, Stanford, Texas, Tulane, University of Central Florida, University of Louisiana-Monroe, Virginia Tech, and Wisconsin each currently have one WCAC alum on their roster.

Of the 118 WCAC alums, 29 were from DeMatha, 27 were from St. John's College, 25 were from Gonzaga College, 21 were from Our Lady of Good Counsel, 6 were from Bishop McNamara, 5 were from Archbishop Carroll, 2 were from St. Mary's Ryken, 2 were from Bishop O'Connell, and one was from Bishop Ireton.

Crazy numbers.

Monday, September 16, 2019

Paulie Doesn't Know

Paul Sullivan is not, by any means, a bad sportswriter.  I don't tend to read a lot of his articles, because condescending cynicism isn't what I look for in sports journalism.

But I do catch some of his stuff and so I read his recent piece on Kris Bryant's first five years in a Cubs uniform compared to Ernie Banks.  The primary content is fine, but this frolic and detour is terrible:
“But it’s fun here," he continued. 
Actually, average MLB attendance was down this season to 28,212 per game entering Sunday, the lowest since 2003, when teams averaged 27,840 per game. So perhaps the home run barrage isn’t really what fans want to see. 
But that’s another subject for another day, and Bryant is not expected to keep tabs on attendance records.
Paulie is, of course, correct:  Kris Bryant should not be expected to keep tabs on attendance numbers.  But, actually, a writer with a computer and working internet access ought to do better.  Paulie's claim here is that fans are turning their backs on major league baseball because of a lack of interest in the all-or-nothing style of the current game.  And there's no question that this is an unprecedented, crazy year in terms of the long ball.  As of Sunday, nine of the thirty major league teams had set or tied franchise records this season for most team home runs in a single year (Twins; Yankees; Astros; Dodgers; A's; Cubs; Brewers; Padres; Braves).  Another three teams will almost certainly do so by the end of the season (Nationals; Mets; Reds).  And another four teams will have a decent shot at doing so (Red Sox; Diamondbacks; Pirates; and Indians).  Of these sixteen teams, ten saw their average attendance increase this year versus last season (Twins; Dodgers; A's; Brewers; Padres; Braves; Mets; Reds; Red Sox; Pirates).  Four of the remaining six have per game attendance averages that are only slightly below last season's (Cubs; Yankees; Diamondbacks; and Astros).  Only two saw double-digit percentage declines this season (Nationals; Pirates).

So what's a better, less snarky, explanation for attendance declines?  How about terrible baseball and teams that don't compete?  The most amazing thing about the Cubs home run barrage against the Pirates over the weekend wasn't the fact that Chicago hit almost as many home runs (14) as Pittsburgh scored runs overall in the series (15).  It's that the Pirates didn't hit a single home run over the weekend.  And while there are a lot of teams hitting the cover off the ball and obliterating the record books, a little less than half of the league is significantly below their franchise record levels.  Attendance declines have been concentrated with these teams, with just five of the fourteen seeing an increase in average game attendance this year compared to last year (White Sox; Cardinals; Rays; Angels; Phillies) with the only real significant increase seen in Philadelphia.  In contrast, attendance of games in Toronto, Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Detroit is way down this year.
In other words, fans seem to dig the long ball.
As of the end of games on Sunday, September 15, 2019:

Minnesota Twins -- Record High 287 2019 287 (24,489 vs. 28,413)
New York Yankees -- Record High 286 2019 286 (42,998 vs. 41,777)
Houston Astros -- Record High 262 2019 262 (36,796 vs. 34,904)
Los Angeles Dodgers -- Record High 261 2019 261 (47,042 vs. 49,013)
Oakland A’s -- Record High 244 2019 244 (19,427 vs. 20,262)
Chicago Cubs -- Record High 242 2019 242 (38,793 vs. 38,283)
Milwaukee Brewers -- Record High 232 2019 232 (35,195 vs. 35,892)
San Diego Padres -- Record High 209 2019 209 (26,837 vs. 29,617)
Atlanta Braves -- Record High 235 (2013) 2019 235 (31,552 vs. 32,705)

Washington Nationals -- Record High 215 (2017) 2019 213 (31,620 vs. 28,046)
New York Mets -- Record High 224 (2017) 2019 218 (28,164 vs. 31,046)
Cincinnati Reds -- Record High 222 (2005) 2019 216 (20,115 vs. 22,362)

Boston Red Sox -- Record High 238 (2003) 2019 228 (35,747 vs. 36,022)
Arizona Diamondbacks -- Record High 220 (2017) 2019 208 (27,687 vs. 26,189)
Pittsburgh Pirates -- Record High 171 (1999) 2019 159 (18,786 vs. 18,940)
Cleveland Indians -- Record High 221 (2000) 2019 208 (24,083 vs. 21,915)

Toronto Blue Jays -- Record High 257 (2010) 2019 223 (29,066 vs. 21,974)
Los Angeles Angels -- Record High 236 (2000) 2019 211 (37,286 vs. 37,329)
Philadelphia Phillies -- Record High 224 (2009) 2019 196 (27,318 vs. 33,927)
Tampa Bay Rays -- Record High 228 (2017) 2019 199 (14,258 vs. 14,589)
Seattle Mariners -- Record High 264 (1997) 2019 230 (28,388 vs. 22,419)
Kansas City Royals -- Record High 193 (2017) 2019 154 (20,556 vs. 18,543)
Colorado Rockies -- Record High 239 (1997) 2019 199 (37,233 vs. 36,976)
St. Louis Cardinals -- Record High 235 (2000) 2019 189 (42,019 vs. 42,868)
Texas Rangers -- Record High 260 (2005) 2019 205 (26,013 vs. 25,741)
Baltimore Orioles -- Record High 257 (1996) 2019 190 (20,053 vs. 16,587)
Chicago White Sox -- Record High 242 (2004) 2019 162 (20,110 vs. 21,667)
San Francisco Giants -- Record High 235 (2001) 2019 158 (38,965 vs. 33,391)
Miami Marlins -- Record High 208 (2008) 2019 128 (10,013 vs. 9,752)
Detroit Tigers -- Record High 225 (1987) 2019 139 (23,212 vs. 19,027) 
 

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Why Does David Haugh Work for the Chicago Tribune?

Look at this:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/football/bears/ct-spt-bears-george-mccaskey-anthem-haugh-20180607-story.html

Seriously, read this article.

Haugh's byline is synonymous with sycophancy, but even with his detestable history of acting as an uncredited public relations man for the Bears ownership, this obsequious prostrating is beyond the pale.

Philosophical middle ground?  Ludicrous.  Just ludicrous. 

There's nothing remarkable about Haugh's writing.  It's straightforward and authoritative, in the way that a know-nothing jackass in a seat behind you lectures his kids or wife or girlfriend about what's happening on the field.  There's no art or beauty or craft.  Just an unwavering confidence in the superiority of superficial views and the preemptive denigration of anyone that might disagree with this idiocy.




Saturday, July 22, 2017

I've Got a Ton of Great Ideas



I grew up thirty miles to the west of Wrigley Field and the stadium that goes by whatever corporate name the new Comiskey has outside it this year.  Now I live seven hundred miles to the east of those stadiums, fifteen miles north of Nationals Stadium, and thirty miles south of Camden Yards.

As a kid, the boredom of summer was interrupted by trips into the city to bake in the sun at the corner of Sheffield and Addison.  I got to watch Fergie Jenkins go to work.  One of my little league baseball cards lists Ron Cey as my favorite baseball and that I preferred to play third base.

The addition of 670 miles of distance means that I can replicate that exact experience with my kids.  But there are other options.  Although we are closer to the Nationals, the roots of the Orioles in our neighborhood are deeper.  It’s an inversion I enjoy.  In the western suburbs of Chicago, rooting for the Cubs implied a rejection of the coarse ethnic poverty of a de-industrializing city.  The Cubs were finance; the White Sox were the stockyards and freight trains.  In the Prince George’s County suburbs of DC within the Beltway, maintaining an affiliation with the Orioles implies a rejection of K Street and government contractors.  The Orioles are blue collar; the Nationals are the law firms and lobbyists. 

We are fifteen miles to the west of the home stadium of the Baltimore Orioles’ AA affiliate, the Bowie Baysox.  If I longed for the national pastime in the summer, we head to Prince George’s Stadium.  Our kids’ school runs fundraisers at Baysox games.  The club’s spring egg hunt is an annual tradition and for the past three years, both kids had a birthday celebration at the park.  Many of the players they see on the field for Bowie move up to Camden.  And established Orioles players often spend time with the Baysox – last year our eldest got a baseball autographed by J.J. Hardy for a classmate that is also a rabid Orioles fan.  He was thrilled.  I revered Scott Sanderson.  There is no accounting for who we attach to.

I like the Orioles.  I went on the middle school trip to the East Coast and came back with an Orioles cap.  In the nineties, when the Cubs were horrible, Baltimore became something close to my second team.

I haven’t become an Orioles fan, nor have I encouraged my kids to develop any ties to the franchise.  We cheer for D.C. United, for the Washington Mystics, and for the University of Maryland’s teams as a family, but otherwise have left the other sports alone.  They know that I root for the Cubs, Bears, and Bulls.  They’ve been members of Clark’s Crew for several years.  They have Cubs/Bears/Bulls gear.  Our eldest loves Charles Tillman and the concept of the Peanut Punch.  But that’s about all there is to it.  It had been something in the background for them.  Something they knew was a part of their parents’ lives, but not something that they cared much about.  Like, they have to listen to me playing The National all the time and they know some of the songs, but it’s not their music and they will, if they have to, tolerate it for a while before asking for Sabrina Carpenter.

Their friends have NFL teams, NBA teams, and MLB teams.  They know that LeBron plays for the Cavs, that Brady plays for the Patriots, and that lots of people like the Cowboys, Lakers, and Yankees.  Pressed on the point by teammates, our eldest decided two years ago that she was a Pirates fan and bought some Bucs gear when we stopped in Pittsburgh on our way to Michigan for the Thanksgiving holiday.

For the twenty-plus years that my wife and I have been together, the Cubs have been a significant part of our shared experiences.  We burned a vacation in Mesa for a week of spring training.  It was my Disney World.  We try to go to Wrigley for a game once a year.  I went to the Cubs Convention the year that Theo took over.  We’ve travelled to watch the team play in San Diego, Pittsburgh, and New York (both at Shea and Yankee Stadium).  When John Smoltz closed out a Russ Ortiz win in Wrigley to even the National League Divisional Series at two games a piece, we watched Sammy Sosa fly out to center for the last out, jumped in the car, drove to Atlanta, arrived at Turner a couple of hours before gametime, and were in the stands celebrating with other fans as the team won its first playoff series since 1908.

At every location where Cubs fans congregate, there are origin stories.  People from towns you’d never heard of, who killed time watching WGN, and loved Harry as if he was a jovial uncle that was welcome in the house anytime.  When that era ended, they listened to Ron Santo on a radio stream however they could get it.  That our start came as native Chicagoans made us exceptions and opened up a battery of “what was it like?” questions regarding our time inside the friendly confines.

This is all a long way of saying that I wanted to raise Cub fans.  But 670 more miles and no WGN increased the degree of difficulty, so much so that I made peace with the fact that it wasn’t going to happen.  Maybe I’d like learning about the Pirates if our eldest kept with that interest.  Or about the Orioles if they succumbed to peer pressure.  Or major league baseball would be like “City Middle” off of Alligator – I’d thoroughly enjoy it, but it would just be background noise for my progeny.

We bought season tickets to Broadway Chicago last year because a season ticket was cheaper than a single ticket to Hamilton in Manhattan.  We’d see Hamilton and Aladdin and be able to gift the tickets to the other shows to family and friends.  The date for our Hamilton tickets – set many, many months in advance – happened to be October 8th.  The week before we headed home, we realized that if we got to the city early, our kids could stay with family and we could go to Game 1 of the Divisional Series.  A playoff game in Wrigley.  We bought two tickets.  When told the plan, our eldest objected – why can’t I go?  I want to go.  That’s a lot of money to piss away on a kid that is likely to spend the final third of the game complaining that she wants to leave or get ice cream or walk around.  BUT.  But… she wanted to go to a Cubs game.  She wanted to go to Wrigley.  For a playoff game. 

I bought an extra ticket, several rows back in the same section, on an aisle.  The two of them would sit together and I would drop by from time to time to see if we needed to switch seats.  When we got to the game, our kid wanted us to stay together.  Three people, two seats.  We checked with the people around us, including the Giants fans a row behind us, and everyone was awesome.  Jon Lester versus Johnny Cueto.  Two and a half hours of edge of the seat tension, hemmed in by an electric crowd.  As Javy Baez walked to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, I bent down and told my daughter “Baez is one of the only guys on this team that’s been able to read Cueto.  I think he’s going to hit a home run.”  Full count.  Tension still rising.  Everyone on their feet.  Quick pitch.  Upper cut.  Contact.  From our seats on the third base line, we could see the ball cut through the air, and could see Angel Pagan tracking it back and getting his back up against the wall.  I had sudden visions of the ball dying short of the basket.  Of being close, but falling short.  Of passing on the one thing that has defined my lifelong love of the team:  disappointment and resignation. 

But the ball didn’t die.

As soon as it landed, I looked down and saw my daughter beaming back up at me, and we were hopping.  Everyone (except the row behind us) was hopping. 

We all sweat through Chapman’s ninth inning and then just stood around inside the stadium until we were ushered out.  At the gate before exiting, Theo came down, grinning, allowing the adulation to wash over him and provide evidence that he was just as emotionally involved in the spectacle as everyone that had paid to get in.  We walked around the outside of the stadium for another half hour before catching the L home, sharing stories about how we grew up here, how this was our childhood.

The next night, I wore a Cubs jersey to Hamilton.  Before the curtain raised, all of the people around us had their phones out following what was happening a few miles to the north, including a refined Russian couple behind us that came in evening wear:  “We’re up 4-0!”  The show started.  At intermission, the ushers immediately gave us an update, “5-2, they pulled Hendricks ‘cause he got hit with a ball.”  The show was fantastic.  Yet, walking out, the conversations were mixed.  The mind-blowing experience of Hamilton versus being up 2-0, with a team that everyone loved.

The next day, we went to see In The Heights at the Porchlight.  We were enthralled.  Afterwards, hanging out with the cast so that our kids could ask them questions, we talked about the Cubs.  About how this was nothing like 2003.  And I think that they began to understand, without us having to tell them, how the Cubs are part of the marrow of Chicago.  For better or worse, they got to see why their parents are a little crazy but just like everyone else in their hometown.

Back home, we watched the rest of the playoffs together.  They were sent to bed when the rains game to delay Game 7 with me telling them that this is what it meant to be a Cubs fan – to have hope, to see that hope crushed, and to, nevertheless, renew your faith.  They told me I was wrong, that it was obvious that the Cubs would win, and they went to bed.

Being a Cubs fan is not about the excitement of the playoffs.  It is not about the flickering.  Maybe for Yankees fans or Braves fans or Cardinals fans or Red Sox fans or Dodgers fans or Giants fans.  Being a Cubs fan is about the grind of the regular season.  It’s 162 games of box scores and sleepy games sitting amongst distracted fans.  We left things alone for the most part.  We signed them up for Clark’s Crew again, went to several Baysox games, and watched a few Cubs games on television.

A month ago, we told them that we were going to a Cubs game at Nationals Park.  They didn’t object, we watched the Cubs lose (badly) with Arrieta on the mound, and while they didn’t seem to really enjoy themselves, we stayed until the game ended and there were no complaints.   We didn’t press our luck, knowing that we had tentative plans to go to Camden to see the Cubs in July.

Last week, we went with our friends and their two kids to watch Jake Arrieta pitch again.  Our friends left in the eighth, we stayed until the final out.  We talked about the trade for Jose Quintana and how his first start was the next day.  Could we pull it off?  Could we go to two games back-to-back? 

We could.  We did.  Again, we stayed to the last out.  Afterwards, they tried to watch as much of the Braves series as they could.  The kids now tell people they are Cubs fans.    

My eldest’s first softball card lists her favorite player as Javy Baez.  

Yesterday, I bought four tickets to see The National at the Anthem in December.  Because I have hope.  And sometimes hope is rewarded.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

History Is Happening II

When Greg Maddux left Chicago after the 1992 season, he proceeded to put up eleven straight years of winning at least 15 games or more for the Atlanta Braves.

Eleven years.  Kerry Wood never reached that mark in any season.  In fact, all told, Wood, Mark Prior (1), Matt Clement (0), and Carlos Zambrano (3) only managed the feat four times between them over the course of their careers.

In that eleven year stretch from 1993 to 2003, the Braves had pitchers reach at least 15 wins in a season 29 times.

That's as many times as Cubs pitchers won at least 15 games in the forty-one year period between 1975 and 2015 and Greg Maddux, himself, had by far the most of any Cubs pitcher, accounting for six of those twenty-nine seasons.  (The others:  Rick Sutcliffe (3); Carlos Zambrano (3); Ted Lilly (2); Ryan Dempster (2); Rick Reuschel (2); Ray Burris (2); Jon Lieber (1); Mike Bielecki (1); Mike Morgan (1); Greg Hibbard (1); Jaime Navarro (1); Steve Trachsel (1); Kevin Tapani (1); Mark Prior (1); and Jake Arrieta (1)).

On Monday, Kyle Hendricks won his fifteenth game of the season.  On Tuesday, Jason Hammel fell short of winning his fifteenth and remains stuck on fourteen, having lost his last two starts.  Jake Arrieta will go for his eighteenth win of the year on Saturday and Jon Lester won his seventeenth tonight.

The Cubs haven't had three starters with at least 15 wins in a season since 1989 (Greg Maddux 19; Mike Bielecki 18; and Rick Sutcliffe 16).

If Jason Hammel can notch one more win this season, it will be the first time the Cubs have had four pitchers with each more than fifteen wins since 1935 (Lon Warneke 20; Bill Lee 20; Larry French 17; and Charlie Root 15).

What is exemplary for Cubs fans is mundane for Braves fans.  In 1998, Atlanta had five pitchers with at least fifteen wins (Tom Glavine 20; Greg Maddux 18; Kevin Millwood 17; John Smoltz 17; and Denny Neagle 16).  With John Lackey at nine wins and at most three more starts before the end of the regular season, the Cubs won't challenge those numbers.

Regardless, what they are doing, even if not to the standards of other clubs is virtually unprecedented in the modern history of the franchise.