News from The Tower

I was summoned to The Tower today to consult with the Oracle. 

We can call Dave that (“Oracle”, not “The Tower”) because while he was employed by the State of Oregon, he spent considerable time working closely with the Oracle corporation.  Some of Oracle rubbed off on Dave. (Or as he put it, “I learned a lot from them.”)

AND because when you go to meet with Dave, you enter an actual tower, which Dave calls “The Tower.” It’s the imposing centerpiece of Capitol Manor in West Salem. You can see The Tower in the featured image above. It’s not a dark tower like Orthanc or (heavens no!) Baradur.  Nor a happy skinny tower like Astoria’s.

Capitol Manor has a no-nonsense, we-mean-business-and-lots-of-it Tower.

 

I was there to receive insight, wisdom, and direction. A good Oracle is full of such stuff.  

We talked about how Dave and Rob could design our revamped database to handle a weekly schedule and a head-to-head format.  Dave came away reassured, and I came away directed. 

Here is where we stand at the moment. 

• We will run a 27-week season, like last year. Each week’s results will be permanently recorded, so we have 27 separate segments of the season, again like last year. 
• Each week will have 6 games. 
• The end-date for each week will have to migrate, to get the 27 weeks into the 26 1/2 week MLB window. Most weeks will be 7 days, but a half-dozen or so will be six days — like last season. No matter how long the week is on the calendar, it will be six games long in our database. 
• The All-Star break will be between weeks. 
• We will have six months, like we always have, tied to mid-season monthly meetings so we can draft players and make trades.
• We will not have head-to-head matchups with MLB teams. During the 7 weeks your team isn’t facing an EFL team, it will face generic MLB competition, which will always score as many runs as it allows. So our raw predicted winning percentage will be equal to our adjusted winning percentage for each of those weeks.  You will never again face the Pirates in the one week they run up a .700 predicted winning percentage!!
• We will go head-to-head against each other EFL team twice. The second time will be in the last 11 weeks of the season, seeded according to our standings at the All-Star Break — again like last season. 
• Stats will be calculated on the revamped database, with daily snapshots of team performance available and team statistical reports so you can track innings, plate appearances, and replacement player usage. These will be much like what we had in 2021 and earlier, although Dave is hoping to implement helpful improvements.

Most of you will rejoice to learn that all my beautiful spreadsheets — more than 320 of them last season — will be retired. Replacing them: just one big, solid, database.

Like Capitol Manor.  

When Rob and Dave get done, we should probably call our improved database “The Tower.”

 

(By the way: Dave does not LIVE in The Tower. He and Karen live in a very nice two-bedroom “villa”.  Look at this photo:

If you look very closely you can see, not too far from the lower left corner, a red dot.  A quarter of the way over and 1/6th of the way up. That’s a car. Next to it, just down and to the right, is a white rectangle. That’s an empty driveway: Dave’s empty driveway, I believe.  

The massive white building toward the top is The Tower for which our database will soon be named.