NLD 38 - Opening Day Season

Whaddaya mean? It totally says Spider up there!

Yep. My humble apologies.

Yep. My humble apologies.

He he he.

Goodness gracious, we won two 1-0 games and swept Smokey at his place. That's a huge surprise for this team. We were 1-8 in his park and 7-14 overall coming in. We are now 28-40 in one run games. "Only" 44% of our games have been one run games. That's just amazing.

Smokey only lost one game on AT and, despite going 4-6 in his last 10 has actually gained a game on his pursuer.

In the Central, MG swept while Hawk continued his hot streak by taking three from Big A! MG is 5 up with six to play.

GB, despite getting swept has clinched the West.

In the WC, AT holds a one game lead over Big A and 2 over SPIDER (not zim )

Ouch! Lost game 3, 2-0, in a battle of the 20-game losers (Price and now Hughes)! Brantly went down for three. Down two to Ottawa and one to Bonn with six to go - things are not looking rosy for the good guys.

Yeah, Feel kinda bad about that. Magic number is one, but, anything can happen. There is still 54 innings to play yet. And, I may have said this before, but I ll just chalk up my early success in the NLD to beginners luck.

Even if I bomb out, and waste a 5 game lead with 6 to play. I will still consider this a successful season against all this stiff competition.

Thanks for the invite Semper, this is a great bunch of guys.

Had a sweep!!! Ok, that's about all I have to add to this crummy season

Too close for comfort. I like the math but I've really struggled without mckhenry and jay. Generally uneasy about teams that under perform pythag. Like I'm diminishing them somehow. Just need a little bit to avoid collapse.

I suspect I out performed my ratings due to the dominance in the bullpen. I actually feel this team has been a little unlucky. I'll try check some roll counts etc.

Too close for comfort. I like the math but I've really struggled without mckhenry and jay. Generally uneasy about teams that under perform pythag. Like I'm diminishing them somehow. Just need a little bit to avoid collapse.

I suspect I out performed my ratings due to the dominance in the bullpen. I actually feel this team has been a little unlucky. I'll try check some roll counts etc.

Smokey, I'll see if I can recheck your ratings here at the end and see if the pitching usage has changed.

Well, it's nice to see my team finally playing good ball. We've had our second good winning streak of the year, an eight gamer and 11 of 12. We had a 12 gamer early on. I hate to think what our record has been in the rest of the year! We have accomplished our secondary goal of avoiding the East and only need to win one more to finish .500. I guess it's good to know that this team actually *can* play good ball. We once again have the second best run differential in the league. Of course winning four of five one run games helps too.

As for the playoffs, Smokey is in. MG is in and GB is in.

The wild card is truly wild with a team from each division having 84 wins! AT, Big A and Spider are taking it down to the wire. I'll let someone else figure out the tiebreakers.

Tiebreaker:

2-way:
Spider beats AT, loses to BigA
AT beats BigA, loses to Spider
BigA beats Spider, loses to AT

Three-way:

Spider and BigA would have same divisional record, AT worse, so
Run Differential edge is clearly in BigA's favor (+47) to Spider's +30 and AT's +13.

Would dearly appreciate help from JTJ and nythawk.