As a league, my nineteenth-century baseball teams scored an average of 3.69 runs per game during our most recent season. How is it, then, that the Canaries -- a team with Hugh Duffy, Ed Delahanty, Roger Connor, and Honus Wagner at the top of its batting order -- could manage only a measly 2.88? I'm sure luck played an outsized role, but as I looked back over the past several seasons, the Canaries have consistently scored well below the league average.
Heading into Season 8, they needed to make a change. With pitching as their only real asset, the Canaries put starters Tim Keefe, Kid Nichols, and Addie Joss on the trading block to see what sort of match they could make with a team that had surplus offense but was in the market for pitching. Enter the Blue Legs, a perennially high-scoring team with serious run-prevention issues. The Legs could offer outfielder and leadoff man Billy Hamilton, owner the highest on-base percentage in the entire league. Fundamentally, this trade ended up being Keefe for Hamilton, but I needed to throw in a couple of other players to ensure each team had the right number of pitchers and position players; as such, Tommy McCarthy went to the Blue Legs for his second tour with that franchise, and, likewise, veteran pitcher Pud Galvin returned to the Canaries, with whom he was a Playoff MVP way back in Season 4.
So, at the end of the day, we've got ourselves a blockbuster trade in an otherwise quiet Hot Stove season prior to Season 8. It's hard to imagine Tim Keefe pitching for anyone other than the Canaries -- he's been their Opening Day starter for seven straight seasons -- but the team has spent the last three years below the .500 mark, and perhaps this trade will help get them sorted out.
And when the Canaries take the field for their Season 8 debut against the Haymakers, it won't be Keefe throwing the first pitch, but rather third-year phenom Addie Joss taking over as the staff ace.
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