Jamie didn’t come right out and say it, but I surmise that the Wolverines would have been projected to win by two of the three projectors he used, had Eloy Jimenez not tried to tear his shoulder off. Two seconds and a fourth feels about right for the Woeverines, although my own reading of FG Depth Charts still has the W’s (97.0 wins) edging the Tornados (95.7) and the Kangaroos (94.8).
One wrinkle in my approach: if a player projects for negative fWAR, I treat him as a zero, assuming any EFL owner would bench the dud dude. This may not be accurate — our EFL replacement level players are worse than replacement level in any of the major projection systems — so it may happen that we have to live with a negative fWAR (or rWAR or bWAR) player for stretches. But I think it’s more accurate to assume we would find a better player somewhere.
Nevertheless, I have been preparing myself for some alternate ways to celebrate my team this season in case the sense of doom surrounding my team does not dissipate. Maybe we can look a little deeper into our teams’ performances, with firmer and higher resolution, seeking the finer points in the data.
How about celebrating individual achievements? Like this: Eloy is on pace to achieve his lowest number of strikeouts in a season!
Or even more satisfying: what if one of my players wins an MVP, ROY, Cy Young, or Comeback Player of the Year (CPotY)?
Jim Bowden — whose judgments I find to be remarkably suspect for a man of his credentials, but we’ll assume for now that I know less than he does about what he does for a living — has published his picks for these awards in each league. For each award he listed his favorite, a second and third choice, and a dark horse. We’ll give 5 points to his favorite, 3 and 2 for his second and third choices, and 1 for the dark horse, and see which EFL team will (according to Bowden) get the most satisfaction out of rooting for his players.
I made a spreadsheet, of course — it’s the one atop this article (WordPress wouldn’t let me put it anywhere else without fuzzing it all up).* If Flint Hill does win, as its ownership predicted would be most likely, at least Canberra and Old Detroit should be able to console themselves by accumulating the most individual award points.
Maybe. Notice that none of the AL ROY picks have been available to us yet. Presumably they will all be Debutants, ripe for drafting. If the Flinties draft wisely, they could use their ample financial resources to snag up to 11 individual award points, and just crush us all into the dirt every which way.
Is that the fate you have planned for us, Jamie? Being ground into the ground?
Come on, league colleagues. Let’s stand up for ourselves!
You all know what we should be doing if we find Tornado dominance revolting!
Revolting!!
* Did you see how I resolved the DC dilemma for the new nicknames? I started from “District” and came up with Dissies, which is also a pretty fair homonym for Deecies (or Disease or Decease).