The EFL’s official name is the Expansion Fantasy League. We all started as expansion teams in Major League Baseball, to see whether we can compete with MLB franchises on as level a playing field as we could create without actually having a billion dollars. This is our 15th year, so the Expansion part of the EFL is a stretch for some of us, unless you think a team is “expansion” as long as it’s never won a championship. But even then, we would be 3/11 non-expansion. And the Astros would have been an expansion team for 57 years, leaving the Padres (at 50 this year) and the Mariners (at 44?) the oldest expansion teams.
We do allow for restarts — essentially an option to take another stab at getting expansion right. We have a nicely complex set of rules governing restarts, and the Rosebuds are a test case for our rule, since they are the only team to be born in a restart. The Elephantes in their grey and yellow passed away but, lo, they are reborn as the Rosebuds in their red and white, and may be about to rise to the pinnacle of the EFL!
I have done a little study. I compiled four different Wins Above Average projections for all the players on our EFL teams: BP, Fangraphs, Steamer, and ZIPs. Then I used everyone’s Opening Day allocations to prorate those projections. And I made an adjustment for the defenses you’ve allocated. Then I added the resulting WAR index to the average number of wins each WAR system assumes a team full of replacements would earn if it player together for an entire season in the current MLB.
This method is not fool proof. It’s not even fool resistant. It’s got foolishness built right in. First, no one will stick to their allocations all year. No one ever has, not even the Nebraska Bugeaters the time they made no allocation adjustments until the end of August and lost by only 0.9 games.
Second, we can improve our rosters by judicious acquisition of debutants and veteran free agents Our rosters are more like rivers than they are like structures. Players flow into them and others flow out. No projection system can predict the river’s actual composition. My method assumes its offense will be about 11% Turner, 11% Devers, 11% Schwarber, and so on. But it will also comprise some surprises, plus portions of players not yet known… So my fixed, concrete projections cannot capture the flow of any roster’s season any better than a weatherman can tell you whether you should plan for a picnic six months from now.
Nevertheless, Mock’s Expansion Farmer’s Almanac predicts that this year will be Easter for the Rosebuds. To wit, our projected WARs:
| Team | OFF | PIT | DEF ADJ | TOTAL WAR | W | L |
| PR | 26.3 | 23.4 | 2.7 | 52.4 | 102 | 60 |
| CC | 32.05 | 13.83 | 0.70 | 46.6 | 96 | 66 |
| HD | 24.98 | 18.05 | 2.40 | 45.4 | 95 | 67 |
| KD | 25.84 | 17.93 | 0.20 | 44.0 | 93 | 69 |
| CK | 23.99 | 17.46 | 1.10 | 42.6 | 92 | 70 |
| FH | 23.49 | 17.40 | 1.40 | 42.3 | 92 | 70 |
| OD | 19.45 | 21.18 | 1.20 | 41.8 | 91 | 71 |
| PP | 23.70 | 10.81 | 2.30 | 36.8 | 86 | 76 |
| BO | 20.29 | 11.95 | -2.00 | 30.2 | 80 | 82 |
| PA | 15.56 | 15.06 | -2.20 | 28.4 | 78 | 84 |
| DC | 14.60 | 9.80 | 2.90 | 27.3 | 77 | 85 |
So, as you can see, Portland is our Easter poster child, an amazing resurrection in process. (And our worries about the Johnson family taking over all the top spots are mollified a little by the intervention of the Cheese and the Kangaroos.)
Let’s see whether Saturday’s games support today’s theme.
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 3 | 0 | .895 | — | 15.8 | 5.4 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 2 | 0 | .878 | 0.4 | 17.5 | 6.5 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 2 | 0 | .822 | 0.5 | 14.2 | 6.6 |
| Brookland Outs | 1 | 0 | .932 | 0.8 | 8.0 | 2.2 |
| Cottage Cheese | 1 | 0 | .641 | 1 | 4.3 | 3.2 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 2 | 1 | .500 | 1.2 | 10.1 | 10.0 |
| D.C. Balk | 1 | 1 | .454 | 1.3 | 10.9 | 12.0 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 1 | 2 | .377 | 1.6 | 16.8 | 21.6 |
| Kaline Drive | 1 | 2 | .312 | 1.7 | 13.4 | 19.9 |
| Peshastin Pears | 1 | 2 | .226 | 2 | 8.6 | 15.9 |
| Haviland Dragons | 0 | 3 | .149 | 2.2 | 10.9 | 26.1 |
See if you can spot the April Fool’s Jokes being played on us.
Old Detroit: W 2, L 0; 11 – 4. Well, here’s one: BP still won’t let me see just yesterday’s stats. I presume that will become available starting tomorrow. So I don’t have an efficient way to let you see individual performances from Saturday. I can say Rick Porcello’s first Wolverine start was great: 5.3 innings, 1 earned run. The team’s raw ERA is just 1.69.
Canberra: W, 8 – 2. Adam Eaton clobbered 5 hits to lead the Kangaroo offense.
Pittsburgh: W 1, L (-1); 9 – (-1). Stephen Strasburg allowed 3 runs in 6 innings, but luckily two of them were unearned.
Brookland: DNP, (-1) – 1. Yes, there are cosmic April Fool’s jokes here. First, you can lose runs in a game. This happens when you have a bad day at the plate, enough to lower your average runs scored for the month. And there’s a second one, here, too: in the American League Central, Milwaukee is 3 – 0 and Pittsburgh is 1 – 0. Since the database is looking only at winning percentage, it is (randomly?) keying on Pittsburgh to set the games played for Brookland and Cottage. I don’t KNOW Brookland would be in first if it had 3 games…Probably not, since Brookland only has 11 innings of starting pitching at this point, and only 82 plate appearances which would have to be perfectly distributed to avoid piling up some replacement hitting.
Cottage: W 1, L (-1); 2 – 0. I don’t know what anyone did. We already talked about $15,500,000 Danny Duffy’s rough opening day start, didn’t we?
Portland: W: 5 – 2. The Rosebuds are baaaarely over .500 — with 0.1 more runs scored than allowed. I don’t think they’re going to stay there.
D.C.: L, 3 – 9. Wasn’t that Jarlin Garcia fantastic in that marathon 17-inning game Saturday?
Flint Hill: W 1, L 1; 12 – 15. 5 innings with 7 earned runs from Robbie Ray and 4 ER in 3 IP by Brad Hand have led the way for the Tornados into the
Kaline: W 0, L 2: 9 – 19. James Paxton seems to have been the culprit Saturday: 4.7 ip, 6 er. That and the extra game essentially covered entirely by replacements.
Peshastin: L, 3 – 7. Mitch Haniger cooled off Saturday. His OPS for the season dropped to 2.048. His best Pear colleague so far has been Brandon Drury (3 for 12, .817 OPS). With only one Pear starting pitcher having started by the end of the day, there is a lot of room for improvement.
Haviland: W 0, L 2: 6 – 21. Three Dragon starters have combined for 11.3 ip and 18 earned runs allowed. That’s a lot to ask the Dragon batters to make up for.