The Greens averaged 6.6 runs a game, scoring 1067 runs in all, as many as any team had ever scored. The Greens hit 295 home runs, 30 more than any team had ever hit. No team had ever had five players hit 30 or more home runs. The Greens' potent lineup
featured six players with over thirty. Seven Moline regulars hit better than .300. Nine players slugged better than .500. Moline's offense led the league in at bats, hits, runs, doubles, triples, home runs, batting, on-base percentage, and slugging. On defense, the Greens 3.83 team ERA led the league by half a run. Three Moline pitchers won 20 games, led by Kevin Brown with 24. Brown's .889 winning percentage set a league record. His 2.69 ERA was second only to the staggering 1.63 mark posted by team ace Pedro Martinez, whose mere 20 wins were more about bad luck than poor pitching. Third and fourth starters Roger Clemens and Kris Benson finished ninth and eleventh in the league in ERA. Only the mediocrity of fifth starter Chris Holt and the thinness of its bullpen kept Moline from outperforming its 110 wins. "Suzann would remind me to be humble," said manager Joe Morgan. "But I've got to say, at this point, we have arrived. This is as good a team as any I've been associated with, and, yes, that includes the Big Red Machine."
They were never challenged, not after they won 16 straight in June. By July, the question wasn't whether the team would win the division. The question was by how much. The team suffered through a painful 2-10 stretch in August, a swoon that cost them a chance to play .700 ball for the year. And the final numbers suggest that the team should have won more, should have won 116 games by the differential between the runs it scored and those it allowed. A bad bullpen? Bad karma from team atheist Liane Luckman? So WMOL callers said during August's bump. But winning eases pain, distracts Quad Cities' baseball fans from the sobering realization that theirs is a stagnant industrial economy in a post-industrial age. In an economic climate so hostile to the blue-collar labor base of the region, baseball offers an atavistic comfort, distraction, pap for the people. There's some truth to the charge. Keeping the SJL Shoe in Moline offers no better prospects for a Milan divorcee with three kids and a minimum-wage job. No Greens' success will raise soybean prices for Whiteside County farmers or sharpen job skills for a Colona assembly-line worker or make that Coal Valley fifth grader want to learn. But, damn it, it's something. It makes some of us a bit happier. What else is there, exactly? "Certainly not God," answered Luckman. "How about yoga?"
Down on the farm, there were good stories in 2000, if nothing as grand as the Combine of Moline. At Winnipeg shortstop Jimmy Rollins put together a strong second half to boost his final numbers to a solid .274 BA and .457 SA, pretty good for a 21 year old in the his first year at AAA. Double A outfielder Jody Gerut, acquired in a mid-season trade from Pennsylvania posted a 76/54 walk/strikeout ratio at Topeka and looks like at least a strong reserve in a few years time. In low A ball Waterloo, Chris Snelling has assumed the mantle as Moline's top prospect, hitting .305, .386, .483, despite a wrist injury that limited him to 72 games. In Manitowoc Wilson Betemit hit .331 with 15 doubles as the youngest player in the league. The system's depth will take a hit with expansion next month, but there are some resources down on the farm, even if there no one who yet looks like a franchise talent. Observed scouting director Josh Logan, "It would be self delusion to suppose that any organization could prosper at the level we knew some years back. You simply cannot expect impact players every year. Not in the current climate. But we do scout year round, assiduously. We'll see what next March brings."
2000 Moline results
2000 Moline statistics