Dear Mr. EFL Answer Man:
I don’t totally understand – we did post records of MLB teams last year. Each of us, in our divisions, had a place in the divisional standings. Has that gone away? It’s fine if so, I am just trying to understand how these weeklong series translate into the overall MLB/EFL picture. Perhaps the series mean nothing, since us beating the MLB team we are playing doesn’t actually translate, necessarily, into them losing. Is that right?
Also, how are we determining the number of games played as we are keeping track of stats in our sheets? Is it simply that each day is a game (whereas before we played when the team leading our division played)? Or should I just always make sure that, by the end of the week, it is six games played? This is just for my own curiosity.
Thanks!
— Just Curious
Dear Mr. Just:
Thanks for asking these questions. We are making a lot of changes this year, substantive and cosmetic, and I don’t want anyone left behind.
There will be standings updated once a week. In April each week ends after Wednesday evening’s games. It would be better if weeks ended on Sunday night, but MLB ruined that for us with its delayed start to the season.
If I have time this evening I will do an “interim, mid-week” standings update so you can see where we stand. Updating the standings is expected to take longer in this format, so I am only planning to update once a week. I expect to include MLB divisional standings.
Our competition with MLB teams does not affect MLB teams’ records, only our own. This will be true until MLB recognizes EFL teams as full equals.
We play 6 games every week. Like clockwork. There are 27 weekly series, times 6 games per week, for 162 games. The number of games is always 6 per week so we are all exposed to MLB teams (and each other) an equal number of games. When MLB delayed starting the season by a week, it was OBVIOUSLY just trying to disrupt the EFL… there was no other good reason for it. Fortunately, we maneuvered around them by squeezing an extra week in, which we will do in May and June by having several 6-day weeks.
I will do all the updating to the standings. There is enough risk of error with just one guy doing updates. It would be chaos if we all did our own updates. I am happy to train up a back-up in case something happens to me or I am traveling through darkest Wyoming on the update day. Any volunteers?
To help us all learn the system, I have created two sets of identical team sheets, each set in its own folder. The sheets you can use to run scenarios and submit allocations and weekly reallocations are in a Google folder called “EFL team sheets.” I am still learning how Google folders work… I can’t seem to share my folder with you as a folder. What I have done is given every EFL owner commenting powers on my team sheet (EFL 2022 OD v2) and editing power (which I share) over their own team sheet (named with a “v2” on the end). I hope you will see these in an “EFL team sheets” folder…. but maybe not?
You should also have commenting access to two sheets named “Copy of”. One of those will be “Copy of EFL 2022 OD v2”, and the other should be the copy of your own team sheet. These reside in my “EFL updates” folder. I will use these sheets to update the standings. I am letting everyone see my team sheet for accountability purposes.
I would like to delete all the other team sheets, including the playgrounds, from my menu to keep things tidier. I am not sure if that would remove them from your access… if I were you I would hope so. If you have an objection to this plan let me know today.
I will have a chance to do another Zoom tutorial session on Tuesday evening, let’s say 6:30 – 8:30, if anyone is interested.
Today we are celebrating my mother’s 90th birthday, so I’ll be busy from 10:00 AM until probably at least 7:30 PM.
If you want to dress up your team’s spreadsheet — say, by picking a font for your team name, or changing the color scheme of the banner (rows 2 – 10), or put a logo in the T column between rows 3 and 9, or important/intimidating/lamenting messages in the big green area in rows 17 – 38 and columns i through o — please DO. It will help me keep track of what team’s sheet I’m on when I’m doing updates.