League Updates Speculations Uncategorized

Tidying up after the 2018 season

Stuff lying around here I need to put away.

 

  • First: a conversation, hinting how our 2018 season may reverberate:

On my way across campus Wednesday morning, I ran into a fellow EFL owner. (I will keep his identity confidential, in keeping with my scrupulous policy regarding such things.)

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“Oh, OK, I guess,”  I said. “I didn’t win.”

“That actually makes me feel better,” he said.

“I will try to take pleasure in your happiness,” I said.

“On the other hand, the champion is my brother,” he said, “so my pleasure is tainted a little.”

“Will this be a source of stress in your family?” I asked. “Will he taunt you?”

“Probably not much,” he said. “He will be pretty gracious.  But it will still motivate me all offseason. I need to turn this around.”

 

Second: I found Sam Miller.  He’s my favorite baseball writer, but he disappeared… I don’t know when. A year ago?  I’d seen ONE link to something he wrote all season.  But tonight, scrolling through Twitter (which I joined in August, and dislike), I found Sam Miller.  He was offering the Twitterverse links to a few of his favorite pieces written for ESPN. (Oh, so that’s where he’s been. Totally explains his disappearance.  I never look at ESPN.) I read two of those pieces, and have reactions for your edification.  Yes, I’m trying to turn you all into edifices.

One was a speculative piece: “What If A Baseball Game Went 50”  (innings). (I don’t know how to link to things found in Twitter! I’m so sorry.)  It’s a brilliant piece.  Jackie Bradley Jr. figures prominently, Wade Boggs less so.  I had already wondered the same thing: could the Wolverines somehow have gained 5.5 games on the Rosebuds on the final day of the season if the Dodgers played the Giants for 50 innings?  On that day Rich Hill (who hadn’t escaped a game with an ERA less than 5.00 for six weeks prior) pitched 7 scoreless innings and was removed — that would have happened in a 50 inning game, too, because in the 7th you don’t imagine it might go 50.  Max Muncy didn’t start, but he homered as a pinch hitter in the 5th. In reality, Muncy was removed after another AB because the Dodgers were on the way to winning in routine fashion, 15 – 0.

But what if he wasn’t removed? What if the game was tied, and went on and on?  Eventually Alex Wood would relieve, and pitch maybe 5 shutout innings.  Max Muncy would keep blasting extra base hits and occasional homers, the latter answered by matching Giant feats, inning after inning.  The Giants would have to call on Madison Bumgarner to go 9 or 10 scoreless innings on 3 days rest. The Dodgers would have to do the same with Walker Buehler. By the 50th inning, I’d have 30 shutout innings of pitching, and Muncy would have gone something like 18 for 19 (he made an out on his second actual AB) with 30 extra bases. Then Muncy would end it with his fifth homer of the game, off a Giant position player.

I don’t suppose it would have been enough, but it would have been close. And Sam Miller doesn’t even discuss it. Why not? Well, as it turns out, he’s slipping. He’s on the downward path that leads inevitably from the “heights” of (an also-declining) ESPN to… unthinkable places.

I figured that out by reading his other piece,  “From Trout to Pujols: Inside MLB’s Aging Curve.”  Except it was really from Ohtani to Pujols, with stops at Trout, Kershaw, and Verlander along the way.  Really good stuff about how our body ages:  physically peaking at 23, but experience and resulting slyness helping us get better until 27, and then everything collapsing from then on out… except not Justin Verlander and his 99.24 mph 2018 fastball (could Felix rebound, too?)… except yep, even Albert Pujols.  All old news to a 62-year old who has just been pounded by a 30-something EFL upstart.

Perhaps I can manage Pujolsian dignity, so I can get the EFL equivalent of a Mariners fans’ standing ovation when I bloop my EFL equivalent of a 3,000th hit 1,000 miles from home.

 

OK, enough of my wistful channeling from my unthinkable place of a much-younger-than-me-and-better-than-I-ever-have-been Sam Miller.  On to actual EFL stuff.

 

  •  We will not have a mandatory expansion draft. We averaged about 86 wins, well short of the 90 that would have triggered this new rule.  Rats.  It would have been fun and excruciating.

 

  • In MLB, the various divisions were wildly different in quality.  Here is how far each division was above (or below)  .500
    1. * AL West:  +62        AL Central:  -104      AL East:  + 26
    2.    NL West:  – 4          NL Central:  +45       NL East:  -25

That disparity is telling.  The Indians, for example, only got to 91 – 71 even though they played 76 games against their own division, four teams who altogether were  -124 games under, averaging 31 games: something like 66 – 96. The Mariners, on the other hand, went 89 – 73 playing 76 games against the rest of the AL East, a group that finished 46 games above .500, averaging 11.5 games over .500, something like 86.5 – 75.5.  Who had the better year?

Or consider the Rays, with their 90 – 72 record.  The AL East wasn’t an easy division, but take away the Rays’ record and the rest of the division was only 8 games over .500: 82 – 80 on average.

If MLB weighted records with a measure of strength of schedule, the Mariners … well, they still might not be in the playoffs, but they wouldn’t have been eliminated until almost the very end of the season.

  • Note that the NL is +16 over .500, even though the toughest division is in the AL.

So what would it look like if we include the EFL teams in their MLB divisions?

  • AL West:  + 48         AL Central:  – 90             AL East:  +78
  • NL West:  + 30         NL Central: +47              NL East: – 23

The balance of power shifts to the AL East.  But the NL is still ahead as a league: +44 compared to the AL’s +36.

And — here’s the point of all this — we EFL’ers transform MLB’s zero sum game into one which produces 80 more wins than losses.  Better than alchemy. We make the world a happier place.