League Updates

Learning the ropes in the EFL

My notes on weekdays will generally be sparse until I get my grading done for the semester.  Probably this will happen before the All-Star Break. But I did want to make a few comments about Tuesday’s EFL action — and, in one case, lack thereof — for the sake of our new owner.

EFL
Team Wins Losses Pct. GB RS RA
Portland Rosebuds 1 1 .743 9.5 5.6
Haviland Dragons 1 0 .885 0.1 5.1 1.8
Canberra Kangaroos 1 0 .854 0.1 5.1 2.1
Kaline Drive 1 0 .577 0.4 3.7 3.2
Old Detroit Wolverines 1 0 .516 0.5 4.6 4.4
D.C. Balk 0 0 .000 0.5 0.0 0.0
Peshastin Pears 1 1 .424 0.6 10.8 12.6
Pittsburgh Alleghenys 1 1 .386 0.7 6.0 7.5
Flint Hill Tornadoes 0 1 .228 0.8 2.3 4.3
Cottage Cheese 0 2 .188 1.1 6.6 13.7

Portland: W, 7 – 0.  I warned all of you to watch out for the Rosebuds!  They looked awfully good in the pre-season projections.  And here they are, in first place despite having more losses than half the league, and only the third best winning percentage.  If they can conjure first place out of those ingredients how are we going to stop them? Will all of you at least take me seriously now?  Unless you do #NeverRosebuds is #nevergoingtogetofftheground.

Haviland: W 1, L (-1); 3 – (-1).  Did someone explain this to the Balk Brass? That an EFL team can lose losses (or wins) from day to day?  That a team can allow (or score) negative runs?  That a team which arrives in September fewer games behind than there are games left to play still has a chance, mathematically?  In fact, such a team is not officially eliminated until the last out of the last game in which it has a player eligible to take the field or come to bat? (The game could go to 1000 extra innings, in which the player might bat 400 for 400, while his relief pitcher twirls 800 shutout innings.) We could just as well call this the EHL (Eternal Hope League).

Canberra: DNP, (-2) – (-3).  These negative runs results are most common at the beginning of months when pitchers first appear, replacing replacements.  Notice how the Kangaroos, even though they didn’t complete a game, improved their winning percentage by unscoring fewer runs than their opponents unscored.  Are you paying attention, Balk fans?

Kaline: DNP, (-1) – (-1).  Maybe the DCers are wondering how we know how many games our teams have played? We always match the total games played of whichever non-EFL team in our division has the best record. I don’t usually post all six MLB divisions on these updates. You can see them for yourself by leafing through the tabs on — hey, Dave, isn’t there supposed to be a Standings link on the league home page so people can see how their teams are doing in their MLB divisions?  Well, for now, here’s a link.

Old Detroit: W 0, L (-1); (-2) – (-4).  Reality is getting really bendy here.  The Wolverines played a negative game today because the Orioles (1-0) replaced the Blue Jays (1-1 yesterday) atop the AL East.  There are more than one way to get ahead in the EFL!

D.C.:  … and by “get ahead” I mean “get ahead of the expansion team.”  Of course. The expansion team is the single most important team to be ahead of.   But, still,  I think the rules require us to allow the expansion team to play games.  Didn’t anyone tell Rob the secret password to be allowed to play?  John — as champion — wasn’t this your job?  Mark W.?  Dave?  It’s certainly not in MY job description…

Peshastin:  W, 7 – 6.  Here’s another glory of the EFL: a team can win but (with other teams flying around the standings by holding opponents to negative runs and erasing losses or even doubling up on wins) still lose ground in the standings. This is because a 7 – 0 win is worth more than a 7 – 6 win — as well it should be!

Pittsburgh: W, 4 – 1.   I just remembered why we don’t call this the Eternal Hope League.  The Alleghenys inevitably beat you.  Observe: yesterday they were in 9th place.  Today they’re in 8th. You see the trend. Make your peace with it; there’s nothing else one can do.

Flint Hill:  W 0, L (-1);  (-5) – (-12).  The Tornados won by losing, too — losing a game from their total, and imposing what may be an all-time EFL record of negative runs on their opponents.  I suspect some Tornado pitcher(s) had a great day yesterday, but I don’t have time to look right now.

Cottage: L, 1 – 6.  This is just a good, old-fashioned, straightforward loss, the kind that drops you five places in the standings in a single day.  It really is almost enough to inspire sympathy.  But let’s not get carried away.  Dave has a new job, a wonderful and loving wife, a great family, and the deep and abiding gratitude of the entire league for his work on our database.  What’s a mere total instantaneous collapse to the cellar compared to all those blessings?

 

 

 

 

5 Comments

  • Oh my…. What have I gotten myself into?

    These statements will require some significant neural pathway restructuring on my part:

    “improved their winning percentage by unscoring fewer runs than their opponents unscored”
    “Wolverines played a negative game today”

    My strategy so far has been to acquire future hall of famers, players with huge unrealized (in some cases very unrealized) potential, and then wait a couple of years for them to blossom. In the meantime, the Balk plan to not lose by not playing, remaining close to .500 all season long.

    Surely there’s no mechanism in place to thwart this brilliant approach? I can’t find any rules on the league website that would discourage extensive unwinning and unlosing with my currently uninspiring unteam.

  • On Thursday the Balk were 2-0. Currently we are 0-3.

    Wins and losses appear to be ephemeral, abstract concepts only.

    So what are the conditions that result in a win, and what conditions cause that win to turn into a loss?

  • Good questions.

    We generate our wins and losses this way:

    1. We add up all each hitter’s good stats (H, 2b, 3b, hr, BB, HBP, SB) using a special formula, then subtract his bad stats (Outs,CS, SF, SH, GDP) and compute how many runs a team would score if every batter performed identically to him.
    2. Then we total up all our batters (adjusted by each batter’s proportion of our teams’ total plate appearances) to see what our team would score each game with all our batters’ stats added together.
    3. We multiply that by the number of games played. That gets us total runs scored.

    4. Then we take each pitcher’s ERA.
    5. Then we average all our pitchers’ ERAs (adjusted by their share of total innings pitched) to see what our team ERA is.
    6. We multiply team ERA by the number of games played to get our total earned runs allowed.
    7. We adjust our earned runs allowed by our fielding rating to get total runs allowed. (An average team defense of 35.5 or so allows 10% unearned runs.)

    8. Then we use what Bill James calls his Pythagorean formula to compute our winning percentage from total runs scored and total runs allowed. A team that scores exactly as many runs as it allows is a .500 team.
    9. Then we multiply our winning percentage times the total number of games played by the MLB team highest in our division standings. That gets us our W/L record.

    We round our W/L record on the standings to the nearest whole numbers to avoid 7.34 – 5.66 W/L records. But the database actually records and remembers our records out to a bunch of decomal points. So I might report your record as 2 – 3 when it might really be 2.49 – 2.51, or 1.51 – 3.49.

    Also, if you have a real bad (or good) day you can change your winning percentage enough to add (or subtract) more than one win in a single day. Or say you are 3 – 3 on the standings, but really 2.51 – 3.49. Then you add a seventh game on a day you outscored your opponent, but not by a whole lot. You can then have a score of 6 – 4 on that day, but your record moves to 3.31 – 3.69. So now it shows up as 3 – 4. So I count that as an “L” — an official loss that wasn’t really a loss.

    This gets even weirder when the MLB team that was leading the division with a 5 – 0 record loses a game and gets passed by another MLB team with a 6 – 1 record. Now all of a sudden your team seems to have played 2 games in one day. Suddenly your team needs bunches of replacement players to cover those extra games, so your winning percentage suffers. You go from 4 – 1 to 3 – 4. The next day the two MLB teams swap places, the loser winning and the winner losing. And you have a good day, so you go from 3 – 4 to 5 -2.

    At the end of the month, we fix your final record permanently. Maybe you’re 12 – 12. (Really, maybe 11.78 – 12.22). Now that will never change for that month, it’s set in stone. And if you start the next month with a win (1 – 0), so as long as there aren’t any nasty rounding errors your season record moves to 13 – 12.

    So — to answer your question: you can’t put any wins or losses in the bank completely until the month is over.

    Also — if you want to get a feel for which way the database is rounding things, pay attention to your games ahead (or behind) MLB teams. If you are 3.1 games behind, you know your real record is a little worse than your displayed record. If you are only 2.8 games behind, you know your displayed record understates your accomplishments.

  • So here are the NL East standings as of this morning:

    Team Wins Losses Pct. GB
    Washington Nationals 3 1 .750 —
    Canberra Kangaroos 3 1 .746 —
    New York Mets 2 3 .400 1.5
    Philadelphia Phillies 2 4 .333 2
    Miami Marlins 1 3 .250 2
    D.C. Balk 1 3 .149 2.4
    Atlanta Braves 0 5 .000 3.5

    You can tell your real record is more like 0.8 – 3.2. You can see that again in how you are behind the Marlins despite seeming to have the same record.

    You can also see the Kangaroos are ever so slightly behind your citymates, the Nationals. Not enough to register as even 0.1 games behind; just the teensiest bit of lag in winning percentage.