NLD 41 - The Tradition Continues

First, thanks for the ratings Joe. I know how much time goes into culling through each team's roster to build the data set.

Obviously, you can't factor in "luck" but Lady Luck has made a longer stay at my park than normal.

I'm not sure how we're winning so many games. We haven't rolled on our cards, only a couple of guys are really having great years. I guess our pitching has been better than expected. Yeah, I guess that would be main thing

Gee, you're starting to sound like the spider talking to Poor little Miss Muffet

So, Semper, your rating is very good primarily because of your D. Your offense is 9th. There are just bigger gaps. Your rating was certainly better before some of the moves.

General thoughts on the ratings.

The records were close so there are some anomalies here because the ratings are not as close as the records. Smokey is low and Doug *was* before winning 10 in a row after I took the data. Big A also is low. As discussed previously, when you are so extreme in O v D or D v O, it's not uncommon to underperform the rating. Smoke's pythag would put him more in line with his rating. Interesting that Doug is in line with his pythag despite a very good one run record.

On the other side of the coin, MG and Hawk and Dale are higher than expected. Actually, MG and Hawk might not be any more as Dale lost 6 of 9 and Hawk 7 of 9 since my snapshot. Both Dale and Hawk are very good in one runners so that pretty much explains the difference.

Interesting to note that DAle is underperforming his offense. Again, the runs scored were so close, for the most part, that it was hard to separate. It will be interesting to see if the numbers change down the road with more data. You would sort of expect, based on the ratings, that JTJ and Hawk and Dale would be 1-2-3 in runs. Dale has slacked, but the other two are as expected. At the bottom Big A and GB are also where expected, lagging far behind. In between there isn't a ton of difference and I think people are about right, more or less.

On Pitch + fielding the biggest surprise is that Big A isn't totally dominate in runs allowed. In fact, he's not even first. The biggest surprise otherwise is Jeep's lower than expected performance. Hawk, should and will give up the most runs in the league. Although, I have to say that the big gap starts with Dale and continues with MG so they should probably be closer to Hawk than they are. After the top two (Big, GB) there isn't all that much difference until you get to Dale.

I haven't analyzed the x chart data yet, but Big's D is off the charts as usual. GB and Hawk's D are pretty bad. Even though JTJ's D is 10th, 450 is a resprectible defense. There are just some *really* good D's out there.

The west has the best average overall rating, The east the best O and fielding (despite the lowest average rating) while the Central has the best pitching and defense combo.

Ok, a few more thoughts since no one else has anything to add.

Ratings would say that Doug is the class of the East and that MG and Dale should be among the cellar dwellars overall. Stoney should challenge and have a chance for the WC due to their low ratings.

In the Central Semper is the favorite if you ask the ratings and with GB and Spider not too far back and Jeep probably not going to make it.

In the West, there are three teams the ratings like and one it hates. You would expect Smoke and JTJ to battle it out with Big A as a dark horse for the division and a candidate for the WC. Hawk would not be expected to get out of fourth.

The WC would be expected to come from one of the West teams with Stoney a dark horse.

Where we really are:

East - Doug is indeed in first, but Dale and MG are performing better than the ratings expect. In Dales case, his +10 in one runners is the reason. Stones is the second best team, but his -5 in one run games is holding him back

Central - Again, the ratings got the front runner correct. Spider might be expected to be higher and, GB is about where the ratings would expect, but he actually has a negative run dif so... Jeep is where the ratings would expect

West - Obviously JTJ is much higher than what the ratings would expect and is +5 on the pythag. Smokey's one run record is holding him back as his pythag would put him closer to what the ratings expect. Hawk is higher than expected due to the +7 one run record. Ratings certainly don't expect Big A to have the worst record. I'd have to llok closer to figure out exactly why, but his -6 in one runners isn't helping.

You'd think, with Kershaw on the mound and my guys scoring 6, that we'd have a good shot at the win - uhuh - Kershaw gives up 13!!!!

I did my ratings before some of the "final" moves. The only division I am close on is the West - with the order the same as after last night's games. In the East, I'm way off - expecting MG to lead and Doug to be last. In the Central, I expected my guys and Geoff's to battle for the lead with Jeep last.

My staff/fielding is much worse than I expected - at this point (expected to be 5th - not 11th). Scoring runs is about as expected for me (expected to be 5th- not 3rd).

I still think this is one of the most balanced leagues we've had since I joined - I will be curious to see what JTJs "luck" analysis reveals.

I guess my team's bad performance is due to the BAD luck of Scherzer (pitching like hell, and what he has to show for it? 8-18!) and to the many injuries (especially to Panik) that I clearly underestimated.

You'd think, with Kershaw on the mound and my guys scoring 6, that we'd have a good shot at the win - uhuh - Kershaw gives up 13!!!!

Ouch Spider, that;s tough. Say, can you post some of your raw ratings? It would be interesting to see where we differ.

I guess my team's bad performance is due to the BAD luck of Scherzer (pitching like hell, and what he has to show for it? 8-18!) and to the many injuries (especially to Panik) that I clearly underestimated.

Interesting about Scherzer is that it's not like they are rolling on the hitter's cards or that he's had bad luck with BP rolls. His whip isn't that much higher than in real life and neither are the HRs. Must be a question of timing with him.

Are you kidding me? We won 26-7 vs. Deep inj the gap. we scored more runs in that game than we usually score in 10 games.