Wax job – The Official EFL Web Site

I wax philosophical toward the end. Warning: I’m not a philosopher. So it’s probably not a very good wax job.

EFL Standings for 2018

EFL
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB	RS	RA
Old Detroit Wolverines	79	47	.631	—	613.7	461.6
Portland Rosebuds	78	47	.620	1.5	656.6	505.8
Brookland Outs	71	52	.579	6.7	650.7	556.9
Canberra Kangaroos	66	58	.536	12	570.4	535.2
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	66	58	.530	12.7	645.3	612.8
Flint Hill Tornadoes	65	61	.519	14.1	576.3	552.5
Cottage Cheese	63	60	.510	15.3	612.1	599.8
Kaline Drive	62	63	.497	16.9	555.5	557.1
Haviland Dragons	61	64	.491	17.6	574.4	582.8
Peshastin Pears	57	68	.453	22.3	523.0	577.0
D.C. Balk	54	70	.432	24.9	527.7	606.9

Old Detroit: L, 5 – 7. (19 PA, .353, .421, .412; 11 ip. 8 er, 6.55 ERA). The Wolverine pitching woes carried over from Sunday, dooming the team to a loss despite strong (but slender) offense. Mallex Smith was the only one who shone for the W’s, continuing his breakout season (.667, .750, .667 on Monday.

Portland: DNP, (-1) – 0. (22 PA, .333, .364, .429; 1 ip, 0 er). Betts, Bradley, and Ozuna each had two hits, and each supplemented them with one extra base (B & B with a double, O with a walk). I’m guessing the Rosebuds stored up some gains in the standings for later when they actually play a game. In other words, objects in the W’s mirror are closer than they look.

Brookland: DNP, 0 – 2. (34 PA, .222, .353, .481; 11 ip, 8 er, 6.55 ERA). Bartolo Colon got abused by the Athletics ( 5 ip, 7 er), to the Mariners’ chagrin and the Outs’ pain. .

Canberra: “L”, 7 – 5. (34 PA, .387, .441, .484; 6.3 ip, 3 er, 4.26 ERA). A nice day for Canberra, with 6 ‘Roos OPSing 1.000 or better (Abrea, Adrianza, Anderson, Conforto, Garver and Lucroy). Corey Kluber had an off day for him, accounting for all the Kangaroos’ pitching himself .

Pittsburgh: W, 8 – 5. (34 PA, .334, .382, .688; 10.7 ip, 3 er, 2.53 ERA). Marco Estrada and Ryan Yarbrough each pitched 5.3 innings. One surrendered 3 earned runs, while the other shut out his foes. Which did which? See if you can guess from the evidence I’ve given. Answer below.

Flint Hill: “L”, 6 – 3. (7 PA, .500, .571, 667; 1.7 ip, 0 er, o.oo ERA). One of the beauties of the EFL: if your team managed to pile up lots of extra PAs and IPs, and then they all went on the DL on the 25th of the month, your team would still score runs and prevent them at its normal pace for a while. You’d be drawing down on all that wealth of stats you’d stored up. Eventually the team’s performance would begin to deteriorate as you ran out of banked IPs or PA’s and had to start using replacements, but for a while your team could coast on its established level of performance.

You can see a pretty good example of that here. Only three Tornados showed up to bat, and Austin Barnes and Adalberto Mondesi both went 0 for 1 and quit (although Barnes walked first). Marcus Semien is an Oakland Athletic, so of COURSE he showed up and of COURSE he had 4 plate appearances and of COURSE he went 3 for four with a double… but that’s all the offense the Tornados had Monday, and they still scored almost 6 runs! Similarly for pitching: two relievers appeared. Mychal Givens gave an entire scoreless inning. Brad, on the other Hand, quit after just 2/3 of an inning, even though it was also scoreless. With at least 5.3 innings entirely unc0vered, the T’s still surrendered only about 3 runs.

Cottage: DNP. 0 – (-2). (24 PA, .182, .250, .409; 1.7 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA).Max Kepler went 2 for 4, accounting for half the Cheese’s hits even though he was only 1/7 of the Cheese’s hitters. (Xander Bogaerts accounted for the other two hits). Kepler tripled and homered, accounting for ALL the Cheese’s extra bases even though he was still only half of the Cheese’s hitters. It was an off-day, so maybe I should go easier on the other Cheeses. But didn’t they read what I just wrote about the value of stored-up stats? There is no such thing as an off day for an EFL team — just days when the win/loss results are postponed. Max Kepler clearly understands. Perhaps we should take his last name more seriously.

Kaline: L, 4 – 4. (21 PA, .250, .286, .350; 6 ip, 2 er, 3.00 ERA). Chase Anderson did solid work as the starting pitcher. No relievers appeared. Steve Pearce keyed the modest offense with his pinch hit double. Kaline treaded .500 water — well, .497, but still close enough you can breathe through a straw.

Haviland: L, 3 – 6. (15 PA, .214, .267, 214; 2.3 ip, 0 er, 0.00 ERA). I don’t remember there being so many teams with such short PAs and IPs at this stage of the season. Perhaps we’ve always done this, and I just didn’t notice. Now I am putting the PAs in every day, so maybe it’s just more visible. But these shortages lead to replacement players, and that makes it hard to stay above .500. (I didn’t forget to write about Haviland’s highlights from Monday. There wasn’t anything to write home about. I suppose that would have been Yasiel Puig’s pinch-hit single… which didn ‘t drive in a run or lead to him scoring…)

Peshastin: W 1, L (-1); 1-0. (28 PA, .346, .393, .423; 4.o ip, 3 er, 6.75 ERA). Kevin Kiermaier went 3 for four with a double to successfully lead the Pears to a fine day at the plate. On the other hand, Peshastin sent its own Colin McHugh in to give up three runs to the Mariners in the 8th inning so they could beat the Astros. No greater love hath a fantasy owner for his favorite MLB team…

DC: L, 2 – 4. (23 PA, .217, .280. .261; no pitching). The Balk cooled off a little Monday, but they are still well within range of escaping the EFL cellar.

Two Final Notes:

1. On late season strategy: I assumed in my comments on Haviland and Kaline that they would like to finish above .500. They’d also like to finish above .501, or .550. They’d even prefer to finish a .424 than .423. But some of those preferences are pretty thin. I assume the difference between finishing .499 and .501 is pretty significant, maybe more significant than the difference between .501 and .599, if .599 isn’t good enough to win the pennant.

But I realize we don’t all think alike on this. A couple of years ago Ryan and I got into a debate about this general topic. I explained to him that, although I want to win every year, and a year in which the Wolverines win is distinctly better than one when they don’t, it is more important to me to be in the race every year than it is to win in one particular year. I defended this on three grounds:

* Being in a race is much more fun than being out of one. Winning is even more fun, but it’s not 4 or 5 times as fun. I’d rather lose 5 close pennant races than win one and be out of the running the other 4 times.

* If your team is in five close 3-way pennant races, odds are it will win 1.67 of them. Making a special, future-killing effort to win one might cost you a chance to participate in the next 4. It’s not certain, but it’s possible that succeeding in being in 5 close pennant races will result in more pennants than putting all of one’s eggs into winning one season, future be darned.

* I am the Commissioner. The more the Commissioner is having fun, the more everyone benefits. It doesn’t always feel that good to lose to someone who has overdone trading the future for the present. It would feel even less good if the Commissioner did that to you.

So my goals for the Wolverines are like this:

* Basic goal: finish above .500.

* Preferred goal: be in the race in September, the later the better.

* Premium goal: win the pennant.

This is why I assume finishing .500 is a big deal. It was big deal to me last year, an important consolation for finishing 8th. (Of course, then I went out as Commissioner proposing rule changes to make it harder to finish over .500 in 8th place. This was not an ideal sequence of events.)

I thought my approach was admirably reasoned, and Ryan would be impressed. He was anything BUT impressed. He insisted that the bottom line goal in any competition is to win. (Win honorably and within the rules, of course — this is Ryan we’re listening to, not Keith Hernandez.) Accepting any lesser outcome means you aren’t giving the competition your all. It cheapens everyone else’s win if you weren’t trying your hardest to win. This was the essence of Ryan’s argument.

I tried a fourth line of argument to respond to this: what if I am seeing the game as a multiple year competition? (Which, of course, Mark Weinert is dominating.) I want to win every year because those are the key units in a multi-year competition. So I compete hard every year. But not extremely hard, not sacrificing a half-decade to get one win. I asked Ryan if that would meet his objections.

I can’t remember precisely how Ryan reasoned this, but he clearly thought it did not answer his objections. I think his point was that no one gives out trophies for having the most World Series wins. Each season is a competition unto itself. It also cheapens the win if the winner was playing a different game than his competitors.

I don’t think Ryan sees this as concretely as I’ve just expressed it. He has sold off future assets in the past, but only when the Kangaroos were hopelessly out of the running in the season, and never to the extent of just tanking a season.

Ryan, feel free to fill in the gaps I’ve left in your philosophy of competition, and please be sure to fix anything I’ve said that is inaccurate.

Anyway, here’s a possible point of agreement: it’s most fun when your team has a meaningful objective it can reach, but isn’t certain to reach. Last year, for me after about the All-Star break, that objective was to finish above .500. I made some present-for-future trades, but I tried not to make so many I would finish below .500.

A few years ago, my late September goal was to finish within 20 games of the Alleghenys. I did — barely — which meant I also finished second, a nice bonus prize. That 20 games had no inherent meaning. I gave it all the meaning it had, and thereby reaped a modestly valuable reward — that value I had given it before I was sure I could get it.

Is that really any different than the value we give to winning the EFL? Maybe so — I’d like to see that extra, non-artificial value articulated. Unless it’s “if I win I can lord it over everyone else.” Because if that’s it, then Mark W has committed a utilitarian crime, since he almost never lords his wins over anyone. At least, not to their faces. Although maybe he understands how scarcity increases the value of things…

2. Hint for the Estrada – Yarbrough quiz: one of them clearly has more e r a than the other.

Combined MLB + EFL Standings for 2018

AL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Boston Red Sox	88	38	.698	—
Old Detroit Wolverines	79	47	.631	8.5
New York Yankees	78	46	.629	9
Flint Hill Tornadoes	65	61	.519	22.6
Tampa Bay Rays	64	61	.512	23.5
Toronto Blue Jays	56	69	.448	31.5
Baltimore Orioles	37	88	.296	50.5

NL East
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Atlanta Braves	69	55	.556	—
Philadelphia Phillies	68	56	.548	1
Canberra Kangaroos	66	58	.536	2.5
Washington Nationals	62	63	.496	7.5
New York Mets	54	70	.435	15
D.C. Balk	54	70	.432	15.5
Miami Marlins	50	76	.397	20

AL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Cleveland Indians	72	52	.581	—
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	66	58	.530	6.3
Minnesota Twins	59	65	.476	13
Detroit Tigers	51	74	.408	21.5
Chicago White Sox	47	77	.379	25
Kansas City Royals	38	87	.304	34.5

NL Central
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Brookland Outs	71	52	.579	—
Chicago Cubs	71	52	.577	0.2
Milwaukee Brewers	70	57	.551	3.2
St. Louis Cardinals	69	57	.548	3.7
Cottage Cheese	63	60	.510	8.5
Pittsburgh Pirates	63	63	.500	9.7
Cincinnati Reds	55	70	.440	17.2

AL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Houston Astros	75	50	.600	—
Oakland A’s	75	50	.600	—
Seattle Mariners	72	54	.571	3.5
Los Angeles Angels	63	63	.500	12.5
Kaline Drive	62	63	.497	12.9
Haviland Dragons	61	64	.491	13.7
Texas Rangers	56	71	.441	20

NL West
TEAM	WINS	LOSSES	PCT.	GB
Portland Rosebuds	78	47	.620	—
Arizona Diamondbacks	69	56	.552	8.5
Colorado Rockies	68	56	.548	9
Los Angeles Dodgers	67	59	.532	11
San Francisco Giants	62	64	.492	16
Peshastin Pears	57	68	.453	20.9
San Diego Padres	49	78	.386	29.5

1 Comment