2018 BS Finals - The Last Druid is 2X Champ!

cristano took the first two games behind dominating pitching performances from Pete Alexander and Ed Walsh - back-to-back shutouts. Back in their his home park, however, The Wrong Stuff countered with two outstanding pitching performances of their own courtesy of Jason Schmidt and Butch Henry. Meanwhile facing that friendly leftfield fence in Hilltop Park '11, Stuff's bats came back to life.

With a Dunn team facing a Hilltop team, home field advantage is everything in this series. cristano will go back to his home park (Dunn), for games 6 and 7, but Cy Seymour went down with a 3-game injury, so this series could go either way!

Link to Finals League Postseason: https://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/league/scores/postseason/439191

Facing Pete Alexander again and a less than ideal pitching match-up, The Wrong Stuff overcame a 3-1 deficit thanks to 4 1/3 innings of shutout relief from Randy Myers and Bruce Sutter.

With Cy Seymour still out of the lineup for cristano and lefty-killer Atlee Hammaker on the mound, game 6 will be Stuff's best chance to wrap this up!

Boxscore: https://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/game/439191/991

Congratulations Bruce! The first repeat winner of the event!

Congratulations Bruce! The first repeat winner of the event!

While the early bird catches the worm, in this case rburgh is a little too early with his congratulations, as rumors of cristano's demise are greatly exaggerated. It ain't over until the fat lady sings. Game 6 is tonight back in cristano's home park, Dunn Field, where Bruce's righty heavy team scored 0 runs in the first two games of the series.

With Cy Seymour still out of the lineup for cristano and lefty-killer Atlee Hammaker on the mound, game 6 will be Stuff's best chance to wrap this up!

So it's do or die for cristano's team tonight in game 6, as his team has its back up against the wall. It ain't over 'til it's over, but the fat lady is warming up.

So far the home team has won, so we will see if cristano's team can keep it going.

It definitely ain't over. Cristano is guaranteeing he wins game 6 but is also claiming that Seymour, who is out one more game, is his team MVP. I suspect he would have missed Speaker a whole lot more. It appears that, under some pressure, he is reverting to his pre-detente persona. Anyway if park effects hold up he might very well win the last two. A big but though, my team has been very streaky all season and the odds are no longer a coin toss.

It’s over. Congratulations to Last Druid.

Undeterred by Dunn's cavernous leftfied, Tommy Davis and Mark McGwire both went yard - McGwire's blast came in the top of the 9th innings with The Wrong Stuff staring at a 4-2 deficit and a likely game 7. Once again, the key was the bullpen. Randy Myers throws 4 innings of shutout relief and gets the win on an RBI single by Tommy Davis in the top of the 11th.

Congratulations Bruce. The Last Druid is the first Barnstormers 2-time champ!

congrats to petro for a well fought series and him being the first repeat barnstormers champ. typically i consider petro's teams above average, gimick-y, and underwhelming, and rarely wonderful. however, this particular team seems to be one of his best. +134 run diff in what ended up being the hardest division by far. he might have had a +200 in one of our other two divisions. his 93 regular season wins were tops too.

but above all of that, petro's evolution has been great. the petro from a year ago would do a 100m DH league with pineiro starter 1, henry or duren as starter 2, heredia as starter 3, and a couple more heredia variants as starters 4 and 5. too bad he didn't do that this year, those teams are a lot easier to beat. seems like my boy’s all growns up and growns up.

i think petro’s success this year was finding a great mix of quality starters and super relievers. at the 100m cap, i've always thought the best staff money can buy is one that features pineiro/ duren as the 5th starter, with 4 big non stars ahead of him, mixed with one super reliever. this rotation is superior to the 4 aces approach at 100m, and by my calculations averages a couple wins higher than the 4 aces rotation, but is much much harder to actually draft.

i cannot believe i got my dream matchup in the world series. petro, on the road, righty park team, with two gimmick-y starters as well as henry to boot! before opening day, i made a strategy decision to give up 3 expected wins in order to draft some hitters that could break the gimick-y starters that petro, halle, and others carried. a risky bet as mesquiton almost took the division from me in the final days. what did all that strategy get me? henry and his 3m salary pitches a CG shutout in game 4. i put 8 lefty batters against pineiro and still lose game 5. i put 5 righty batters against hammaker (at home), and still lose game 6. in my opinion, times are changing, and the playoffs should be expanded to 21 out of 40 rather than 4 out of 7!!!!!!!!

many of you know my past with petro, there is really no love lost (i hate him and he seems to hate me). that said, he was really deserving this year, and my hat goes off to him. if I had to lose to a petro team, i am happy it was this one, as opposed to some of his others. In closing, i do note that i tried to include as many back-handed compliments as possible, to accurately show my true dislike of petro. i hope i achieved the same mix of compliment/hatred as petro achieved between his quality starters and super reliever. til next year...

Congrats to Bruce on becoming the first BSers two time winner. That is quite an accomplishment. The field is much larger, the managers are more sophisticated and there is a much larger ATG player pool than when Bruce won in 2008. It is fitting that Bruce repeated within a few days of Tiger Woods' repeat Masters win.

The BSers Tour is comparable to the PGA Tour in that while there are many good players, the best players are consistently near the top of the leader board, with an occasional victory by a less heralded player.

Congrats also to cristano, who not only has the current longest BSers Finals streak of at least 7 (maybe cristano can enlighten us all as to how many years in a row he has made the Finals), along with being in the Finals playoffs all those years as well. That also is a great accomplishment.

Kudos to cristano also for giving Bruce credit for winning the Finals and not resorting publicly to blaming bad luck for Seymour being injured for the Final two games of the series, which were one run games. It requires no stretch of the imagination to think that the outcome may have been different had there been no injury for the last two games of the series to a good $9+ mil player at a $100 mil cap.

Good luck to all in the 2019 BSers Tour. I'm hoping to again join these fine managers in the Finals.