“Look at that family!”
These were the first words blurting from Jamie’s mouth this afternoon, upon seeing today’s standings during the League Update Training session we just completed.
I wonder what he was talking about.
| EFL | ||||||
| TEAM | WINS | LOSSES | PCT. | GB | RS | RA |
| Haviland Dragons | 1 | 0 | .955 | — | 10.6 | 2.3 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 1 | 0 | .836 | 0.1 | 10.8 | 4.8 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 1 | 0 | .690 | 0.3 | 10.0 | 6.7 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 1 | 0 | .597 | 0.4 | 9.8 | 8.1 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 1 | 0 | .588 | 0.4 | 7.5 | 6.3 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 0 | 1 | .383 | 0.6 | 5.1 | 6.5 |
| Kaline Drive | 0 | 1 | .364 | 0.6 | 3.9 | 5.1 |
| Bellingham Cascades | 0 | 1 | .328 | 0.6 | 2.5 | 3.6 |
| D.C. Balk | 0 | 1 | .122 | 0.8 | 4.7 | 12.5 |
| Peshastin Pears | 0 | 1 | .038 | 0.9 | 1.9 | 9.4 |
| Cottage Cheese | 0 | 1 | .014 | 0.9 | 1.0 | 8.7 |
Before I go any further, I need to express my wonder and gratitude for the work Dave has done to implement our new pitching rules (especially the 10 active pitcher minimum with its penalty of a third of an inning per pitcher below the minimum per game in the month, giving up a third of a run). I have worked through how he set this up, and he’s done a clever and accurate job.
Given the difficulty involved in implementing these rules, Dave has set things up to start applying the penalty at the beginning of the month. This means if you had no pitching, your team will have suffered from 10 penalty units of 1/3 of an inning and 1/3 of an earned run, or 3.33 innings and 3.33 runs. You will have an additional 0.33 innings for not having a LH pitcher, with an attendant 0.33 earned runs, for 3.67 total for these penalties. And since you need to supply 7 ip for every game, you will also have 3.33 replacement innings at 7.50 ERA, generating 2.75 more earned runs, or 6.42 earned runs in 7 innings, for an ERA of 8.25. Add about 10% to the earned runs to represent unearned runs (if you have a defensive rating of about 36) and you could have allowed over 9 runs for the 9 inning game.
These dramatic penalties will diminish as your rotation rotates, and then keep diminishing as your pitchers get chances to pitch and your LH pitchers get a turn, etc. I have asked Dave to leave this alone for this month, since it will all work out by month’s end. But we will look for ways to smooth the penalties in May.
Haviland: W, 11 – 2. (8.7 ip, 0 er; 33 PA, .385, .485, .692). Tyler Glasnow tossed 6 shutout innings, and three relievers combined to get though 2.7 more innings with only 1 unearned run. Spring signings Gary Sanchez and Jake Cronenworth homered and tripled, respectively, as the Papa Dragon led his brood in occupying the top three spots in the EFL standings.
Portland: W, 11 – 5 (7.3 ip, 2 er; 49 PA, .317, .429, .585). Dylan Carlson showed why he was a great first-round rookie pick by homering and walking in his first game for the Rosebuds. Dylan Bundy spun 6 effective innings, allowing only 2 earned runs. The Rosebuds, seemingly the meekest of the Dragon family, bared their fearsome thorns to fend off the Tornados for the spot closest to Papa.
Flint Hill: W, 10 – 7 (9.7 ip, 4 er; 44 PA, .333, .364, .571) Veteran Tornados Teoscar Hernandez and Austin Meadows homered, and Paul Goldschmidt went 4 for 5, to lead the Flinty attack. Flint Hill sent two starters to the mound — Yu Darvish and German Marquez — achieving 8.7 innings of 4 er ball.
Pittsburgh: W, 10 – 8 (1 ip, 0 er; 36 PA, .308, .457 .537). Jorge Soler homered, and the Alleghenys accepted 7 walks and a HBP to supercharge their offense. They needed it because only Lou Trivino showed up to pitch, and while he allowed no runs, he only finished one inning, so the temporary penalties piled up until they can be erased. Still, the Alleghenys took up an Opening Day stance fitting for the EFL team with the most championships: poised to break up any Johnson dynasty.
Old Detroit: W, 7 – 6. (2 ip, 0 er; 44 PA, .265, .409, 471). By earl yesterday afternoon the W’s had blasted homers by expensive acquisitions Hayes and Buxton, and Old Detroit seemed off to a great start. Things cooled off after that, but not too badly, with the W’s getting 6 hits and three walks to keep barely ahead of the runs being surrendered by penalty and replacement pitchers.
Canberra: L, 5 – 6 (3 ip, 1 er; 39 PA, .226, .359, .387) Although Kolby Allard was DFA’d Wednesday, apparently no one told him, so he went ahead and pitched an inning, allowing an earned run. This achievement will be deleted by tomorrow’s games, and Allard will see the damage to his lifetime ERA instantly healed. Alex Bregman homered and doubled, and late FA Draft pickup David Dahl went 3 for 6 to provide the highlights in a fairly dreary Kangaroo day.
Kaline: L, 4 – 5 (8 ip, 3 er; 46 PA, .244, .304, .317). Max Fried completed 6 strong innings, allowing only 2 earned runs, but the Drive’s ten hits didn’t stir up much dust. The top-dog Johnsons have left Uncle Tom behind for the moment.
Bellingham: L, 3 – 4. (9.4 ip, 2 er; 36 PA, .206, .250, .265). Four Cascade pitchers combined for more than a complete game with only 2 earned runs, and Ronald Acuna led the offense with a double, a single, and a walk, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the early season penalty pitching.
DC: L, 5 – 13. (2 ip, 3 er; 32 PA, .259, .344, .370) The Balk were the first EFL team whose actual pitchers did poorly on opening day, starting the team off with 2 innings of 13.50 EA. The penalty pitchers piled on the runs allowed so much that even a creditable 5 runs scored featuring an Asdrubal Cabrera homer could not dig the Balk out of their pit.
Peshastin: L, 2- 9 (9.3 ip, 7 er; 28 PA, .154, .214, .192). Peshastin ace Jack Flaherty had a rough Opening Day start, surrendering 5 earned runs in 4.3 innings. Four other Pears twirled 5 more innings at the cost of only 2 earned runs. The good sign for Pear pitching: 0 walks. The bad sign for Pear batting: 1 walk. Also, only 4 hits with one extra base, a double by Yoan Moncada, acquired in the big Pear-Cheese-Wolverine deal.
Cottage: L, 1 – 9. ( 1 ip, 0 er; 27 PA, .083, .148, .125). Cody Stashak provided the only inning of actual pitching, a scoreless one. Then the Cheese hit the fan, with 3.3 penalty innings and 2.7 replacement innings piling up the runs allowed. As weak as the pitching was, the hitting wasn’t a lot better. One single, one double, one walk, and one hit batter: that was the entire Cheese offense.
OK, colleagues, we got through the worst day of the season. Except for the Johnson Family, whose days cannot possibly get any better. More normal days are ahead. At least some regression to the mean is inevitable in the long run — and for most of the league, the next few days will start our release from the bondage of pitching penalties. Fitting in its trivial way to the Easter season.
To be clear: the penalty for not having ten pitchers disappears entirely for the entire month, including retroactively, when your 10th pitcher pitches, and cannot reappear until next month. Same for the penalty for not having a LH pitcher: as soon as one appears, all penalty for that disappears.
Of course, you can wipe out replacement innings retroactively when you get enough real fantasy innings — and start over on accumulating replacement innings if you fall behind again.
So, just for clarification. The Dragon pitchers allowed 0 earned runs Opening Day and covered their daily 7-inning requirement. In the EFL they allowed 2.
Those 2 are a combination of the less-than-ten penalty plus maybe a tiny fraction of an unearned run?
Yes. Plus the penalty for no LHP, if that applies.
The effects are starker than I anticipated early in the month, which is why we hoped we could rig it so it didn’t start kicking in until the 10th or so, when most of us would have 10 pitcher appearances, and those who didn’t would be accruing a much smaller penalty for missing only a pitcher or two. Given all the work Dave had to do to get the basic mechanism set up — the laypeople once again dumping their problems on the IT people and asking for miracles — he did not have the bandwidth to solve this problem.
I have asked Dave whether we could smooth the introduction of the penalty by multiplying it by the date over 30 or 31, so on day one we would only get 3% of the penalty, and on day two only 6%, and so forth. This may or may not be implementable immediately, but I think it would smooth both the accrual of the penalty and to some degree its disappearance as we get closer to meeting the 10 pitcher standard.
He’s already done a lot to smooth the disappearance of the penalty. Today I should have my first three starting pitchers, giving me at least 5 pitchers with appearances. The way he’s set it up, I will get a three-pitcher reduction in the one game’s worth of penalty I already earned, although I’ll accrue another game’s worth of penalties for being short by 5 pitchers. So there will be a little more net penalty, but not a lot. Then tomorrow I am supposed to get Paddack, and who knows, maybe by then Kimbrel will relieve, and by that time my already-accrued penalties will be disappearing faster than my ever-smaller newly-accrued penalties. If the Mets ever get to play, Stroman may be my 10th pitcher on Tuesday, but even if not, Jameson Taillon is finally scheduled to pitch April 7, by which time I am expecting my pitching penalties to entirely disappear.
All this is not ideal, so we will fix it asap, no later than by the first of May.
Maybe a careful read of the rules would clarify this but I’ll be lazy and ask. On Thursday one of my pitchers faced four batters yielding three walks and an error (no IPs). I’m assuming that counts as one of my ten (obviously he is very likely to pitch again and get at least one out which would make this moot but still…)
Reminds me of the time before this league had any Dragons that some team (Pittsburgh if memory serves) needed an appearance by a LHP and finally his lefty was summoned by the manager, but somehow he injured himself on the way to the mound and never threw a pitch, sticking Pittsburgh with the penalty.
The rule is in the same terms as the one about LHRP: the player has to provide “innings” which we interpret as at least 1/3 of an inning. I think this is because we don’t want to have to dig through box scores looking for 0 inning (or 0 PA) appearances. Maybe this is no longer an issue?