A Look at Mickey Tettleton; 1991 Replay

Every so often while replaying an APBA baseball season, you run across players who either closely replicate their performances in real life, or become anomalies and do something totally opposite of expected. As contradictory as it sounds, I may be seeing a case of both occurring at the same time with Mickey Tettleton, the Detroit Tigers' catcher, in my 1991 replay.

The games are coming at a slow pace — I began this season on Aug. 16, 2015, and have reached Game 549 some 18 months later — but I play enough to notice some things. I keep limited stats for the players because of a lack of time and because, invariably, no matter how I save them, I either lose the statistics on computer or I make some inane error when tallying and it takes forever to rectify the mistake.

So, I keep home runs for batters and won-loss records and saves for pitchers. But when some player, like Tettleton, stands out, I'll go back and check more of his stats.

As of May 27, 1991, in my replay, Tettleton has 12 home runs and is in third place in the American League homer race. Only sluggers Jose Canseco with 14 and Frank Thomas with 13 dingers are outpacing Tettleton in this replay so far.

Overall, Tettleton's stat line is thus: .230/ 12 HRs/ 31 RBI. In the real season, the catcher hit 31 home runs with 89 RBIs by season's end. He also batted .263.

The Tigers, by the way, are 22-21 in my replay. On the same date in the real season, Detroit posted a 23-20 record.

In the real season, Tettleton only had seven dingers by May 27. So he's on pace to hit more home runs in this replay than he did in the actual game, but his batting average is 30 points less. He got off to a slow start in the replay as well. He hit his first home run in Chicago on April 20, 1991. In the actual season, he hit one out of the park for the first of the year against the Yankees on April 22, 1991.

In my replay, Tettleton copied his performance of the real April 22 game, hitting a home run in a 12-3 win in New York. Then, he cooled off briefly. But May came and Tettleton took off — especially against my favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. On May 9, he hit one against the Twinkies to win, 5-4. On May 12, he hit two more homers — his fifth and sixth — against Minnesota in a 9-5 victory. Three days later, he did it again, hitting one against the Rangers in Texas.

He hit his 11^th and 12^th round-trippers in Milwaukee, pacing the Tigers to a 12-3 win.

So far in the replay, he's hit four against the Twins. Nine of his 12 home runs have come on the road.

Obviously, it's early in the season and things can change. APBA's baseball game is based on statistical frequencies. Players' cards are developed upon their actual performances for each season and mostly they produce closely in the APBA game to their real life production.

But then, sometimes, things happen for no reason. The dice roll differently for some. Maybe Tettleton will end up with 31 home runs by season's end as he did in the real game. But the path he takes to get there has been pretty interesting in this replay so far.

It's one of the reasons we roll each game in a replay, taking months and even years to finish a season, just to see how things all turn out.