Tournament Championship Semi-Finals

Congrats to our final 4 who are starting the semi-finals on Monday - sphilipp8, davehaller, gritch, Lee300. One of those 4 will be our 2023 champ! It's an interesting group of really good players - 3 of them were in the Commissioner's Top 12 rankings at the start of the tournament. Really tough break for a few of you who came oh so close to making the playoffs in this championship - it was a fascinating playoff race down to the last day.

First of all - it can't be said enough - thank you JuicedJC for another fantastic job as commissioner.

Second, here's my Playoffs preview:

One playoff series features the team with the best record, davehaller’s Westworld Jam, against the Wild Card - sphilipp’s Get Your Wings. It figures to be high scoring since Wings finished 1st in runs scored and 6th in pitching while Westworld finished 3rd in hitting and 8th in pitching. Although Nilsson is out with injuries for the first 3 games, I see Wings as the slight favorite here. After Game 42, the Clinton Colts cut Juan Gonzalez despite a tellingly high number of hbp, jaywalker considered adding him, but no one actually picked him up til sphilipp got him for Game 76 and he ended up hitting 99 RBI in little more than half a season. The Wings also have Kevin Mitchell, Ray Langford, Mo Vaughn and last year’s post-season MVP Rob Deer. The Wings pitching is more than formidable with 3 starters ranked in the top 13 pitchers led by Pedro and Denny Martinez with WHIPs of 1.09 and 1.19, respectively. The relief core is also solid with Jeff Shaw and Rob Nen. It’s the kind of team that I look at and wonder how so many top players can fit under the cap. Westworld Jam can keep pace with hitting led by Piazza (1.076 OPS) and Thome and about 90 RBI each from Burnitz, Carl Everett, and (surprisingly) Geronimo Berroa. Another top hitter is the (at least temporarily-healthy) Harold Baines. Where Westworld falls short is pitching and outfield defense. After ace Mike Mussina, there doesn’t appear to be much quality starting pitching, Schilling looks to be on a bad year (5.07 ERA, 1.42 WHIP) and the rest is non-descript at best. The relief staff looks better with Lee Smith and the Gloved One, Mike Jackson, having very solid years. Having Piazza behind the plate doesn’t look to be a problem since the Wings hardly steal (tip of the cap to jaywalker’s experimental roster of all essentially “D”-rated runners who picked up an astonishing 1 steal for the entire season). Hallerose didn’t make this year’s finals but davehaller picked up the mantle of making-the-playoffs-with-a-bad-fielding-outfield as their outfield made a cumulative 95 outs in 155 x-chances.

The other playoff series is between 2016 Tournament Champ Lee300 and the Final’s runner-up of the previous two years Gritch. Lee’s Hammers feature outstanding starting pitching – Maddux, Rijo and Viola, and even 4th starter Pete Harnisch put up decent numbers. Fielding is solid all the way through. Hitting could be the issue for the Hammers. The top RBI guys (98 each) are Matt Williams and Eric Karros. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Eric Karros used on a Strat team. Also, Matt Williams had an early-season injury reveal for a so-so season - I would have cut Williams but Lee’s patience was rewarded with productive hitting to go along with a gold-glove at 3rd. The Hammer’s best hitter is the healthy (but oft-injured) Tim Salmon (.956 OPS). This series is likely to see a lot of steals since neither team has a particularly good catcher. The Hammer’s have four players with double digit steals including speedster Lance Johnson (50 steals in 67 attempts). Gritch has 5 players with double-digit steals. Gritch led the league in steals, which is especially interesting because Gritch is a statistically-sophisticated manager who made the playoffs in the Finals with a 60s team that had the league’s fewest steals. So, I’d be interested to hear what changed his mind about stealing. Gritch’s primary catcher is Greg Zaun who has a +1 arm and a T13 rating – even so, he had only 6 throwing errors for the season – which is proof that T-rating is not very important in selecting a catcher. Nomo is a +4 on holding runners so watch out when Nomo is starting. Other than McGwire (69 hr), the hitting is so-so. The fielding is also good but not great. The pitching is what makes Gritch a special team. Starter Frank Castillo (who?) has a 3.24 ERA, 1.11 WHIP. Stieb, Nomo, and Mark Davis are also probably on excellent years and Sid Fernandez doesn’t have a bad year. The relief staff is stellar. Closer Trevor Hoffman and an injury reveal for a year that is an out on every roll, yet, he has an ERA of 5.42 and WHIP 1.52. For Hoffman the regular season has been an all-time epic underperformance of his card. I’m guessing the post-season will right the ship and Gritch will prevail in a wildly fun series.

Other Comments
I won’t be posting a full league analysis this year because my team started out so poorly. If my team is doing well in the finals, I’ll be analyzing the other teams to see who I might face in the playoffs. But this year, at the halfway point I was 35-46 and 60-76 after 136 games. So, I never thought I had a chance and didn’t look at teams outside my division. My team got lucky at the end winning the last 10 series, going 21-5 to finish the season a respectable 3 games behind the first place Gritch in the Central. I’ll be doing an autopsy on my team and my draft once the players’ years are shown.
Finally, I can’t make a long post without a trade rant, so here goes: djkalle had the smartest first five picks in the draft: Griffey, Alomar, Jeter, Brett Butler, and Gwynn. Roberto Alomar turned out to be on his worst year and was cut – didn’t work out but still a solid pick. Jeter was a steal in the middle of Round 3. The Butler pick was a surprise because he already had Griffey and they both can only play CF. But it made sense because (1) Griffey has one bad year where he needs to be cut and (2) you can trade Butler if you keep Griffey. Butler is an excellent fielder and all five hitting years are basically the same – excellent obp and no power. Gwynn in Round 5 is insane. What was I thinking taking Steve Howe in Round 4 and Wade Boggs early in Round 5 while Gwynn was still on the board? Turns out Gwynn was on a great year, probably not his .394 year but ‘97 when he hit only .372. By the way, Gwynn’s ’97 card is one of the best in the set and can easily carry a team to the Championship. Anyway, Griffey on a great year in CF and ’97 Gwynn in RF – choke on that MFs. Strangely, with those top 5 draft picks djkalle selects Fenway? He’s not even a Sox fan. Ok, back to the trade thing, not surprisingly, several teams could use a great CF, djkalle’s Moondogs happened to have 2 of them, so a trade makes sense – right?? Apparently not because the Moondogs play all season with Butler at DH. Really? Yeah, he’s ideal batting in front of Gwynn, but that’s 5.92 mil for a high obp great runner with no power in Fenway. Butler finished with very Butler-like obp of .412, slg% of .383, and OPS of .795. Albert Belle was available as a free agent. He wasn’t injured and was cut after just 12 games – definitely worth a try in Fenway. And the Moondogs could have gotten something good in return for Butler – maybe some badly needed pitching help. But nooooo, hang onto Butler til the bitter end. People tend to overvalue players on their own team. This year, after stupidly cutting Lenny Webster, I pick up Jim Leyritz and in 20 games he bats .220 with zero homers and zero doubles and one triple (which doesn’t exist on his card) but I’m reluctant to cut Leyritz because I think he could be useful – but I do cut him figuring I could pick him up later. But after he wasn’t on my team anymore I realized there was no way he was worth his salary.

Let me also thank JuicedJC, this tourney always runs smoothly.

Regarding going more for speed, I would say that the 60's finals two years ago and my faring worse in the 60's versus other leagues highlighted the value of baserunning to me. I continue to have a low value on sb's and catcher arms but value baserunning much more highly. I think I saw your (Franky) team greatly outperform its OPS in the 60's although it might have been another league and took a much deeper dive there. Scoring on a single from second is worth much more than stealing second base. Versus the more plodding Succotash Wish, I was 177/37 advance/outs and Succotash was 124/34. If you assume half of those advances were to home, that's 25 extra runs that helped make up the gap in HR's, etc.

If you look at the team stats, you can see my team this year is an outlier to its OPS versus the other teams. Strong baserunning was not my initial choice but felt forced into it once my lotto cards sorted themselves out. My hope was to fare well in low-scoring games given my SP and known strong cards from Hoffman and Honeycutt. Hoffman definitely hurt that plan at times.

Regarding Hoffman and Castillo, I know both of their cards (first for Hoffman, third for Castillo). For every ten pitcher rolls, Castillo will allow one more hit than Hoffman. Castillo somehow allowed only 124 hits in 155 IP on 305 pitcher rolls, meaning Hoffman would have allowed only 94 hits in 155 IP against some strong offenses had he had Castillo's luck. Conversely, Hoffman allowed 87 hits in 83 IP (despite essentially no hits on his card) on 168 pitcher rolls, so Castillo would have allowed 104 hits in 83 IP with Hoffman's luck. You could say they evened out but I will say the nightly Hoffman blow up was much harder viewing.

Finally with Piazza, as I said I don't think SB matters nearly as much as the baserunning. Westworld's SP are -4/-5/-1/-1 so the net rating isn't much worse than many and better than some. Piazza does make it very tough to roster a +1 or higher hold rated SP. The net Westworld SB/CS allowed stats were 68/31 which was better than league average so that worked out quite well for them.

Ben

semi-final recap and finals preview

The Wings came back from a 3-1 deficit to prevail in a hard-fought series. davehaller's Finals Jam won the Games 1, 2 and 4 by scores of 2-1, 5-4 (on a Jeremy Burnitz double in the 11th), and 3-2. sphilipp's Wings won Game 3 by a score of 4-3. Game 5 was tied 3-3 in the 8th until Mo Vaughn hits a 3 run homer to win it for the Wings. Mo Vaughn is the series MVP as hit hit key homers in Games 5, 6, and 7. Game 6 isn't close 11-3. Harold Baines hits a three run homer to cap a five run bottom of the 5th in deciding Game 7 to put the Jam ahead 5-3. But in the top of the 6th, Mo Vaughn hits another 3 run homer as part of a 5 run outburst that puts the Wings ahead to stay. Jeff Shaw and Robb Nen close out the last three innings giving up just one hit. Jam's best hitter was Thome with 4 home runs in just 22 AB. Interestingly, the Jam's Tony Castillo pitched in Games 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7. He didn't give up a hit or a run in three and a third in Games 2,3,4 and was credited with 2 wins, but he didn't pitch effectively in Game 7 and along with no run support, that proved to be the difference. Great series and I'm sure a disappointing finish for davehaller who managed great all season to have the best regular season record.

In the other series, things weren't so close as the series finished 4-1 for Gritch. Other than a Rijo shutout in Game 2, Lee's Hammers didn't put up much of a fight. Neither team had a good defensive catcher but Gritch finished with 8 steals on 11 attempts while the Hammers didn't attempt a steal all series. Part of this was strategy by gritch giving Dave Stieb (-4 hold) two starts and Nomo (+4 hold) zero. Nomo would have started Game 6 if it got that far. Stieb gets Series MVP going 2-0 and giving up only 3 runs on 10 hits in 16 and 2/3. I think Lee may have been asleep at the switch since Rey Sanchez (0 for 14 with the team's only error) inexplicably started ahead of Edgar Renteria for the entire series. Renteria was injured for 15 games in Game 143 and it looks like Lee just forgot to put him back in the lineup. The Hammer's Tim Salmon and Brian Jordan hit very well and Lance Johnson was decent (except he never attempted a steal), but the rest of the team was just miserable batting a collective .058 for the series. Except for Rijo, the Hammer's pitching wasn't good either. Time for the Hammers to smoke up extensively to wipe out memories of this series and try for better luck next year.

It looks like the spectators are going to get their money's worth watching the Finals World Series as the best two players in the Mystery game match up. Both teams are healthy. sphilipp had the best record through the entire Mystery Tournament and gets to the World Series with great pitching led by Pedro and Denny Martinez, a lineup full of sluggers but so-so fielding. This is the third straight trip for gritch to the Finals World Series. Gritch has great pitching and base-running, but hitting is not as formidable as the Wings. Although not league MVP, no player was more consequential than Juan Gonzalez. Early in the season he got 6 hbp showing his 1.000 OPS 1993 year but he got cut. He remained on waivers for 24 games until picked up by sphilipp at Game 76. I think the Wings wouldn't have made the playoffs without Gonzalez and 6 of the teams that missed the playoffs (including mine) would have made the playoffs with Gonzalez. So, there ought to be a lesson there. Anyway, it should be a great Series between two very good teams. Overall I'd say the Wings are a slight favorite because they're more likely to hit more home runs.

A few things to comment on:

1) Thank you Juice doing a great job as commish.
Please come back next year.

2) Ideally I do not have a +2 catcher, but Piazza was by far the best player on the board near the end of the first round, so I had to take him. Yes indeed, I chose SP with negative holds to balance. Piazza's defense was a non-issue.

3) I desperately needed defensive help in CF. Moondogs would not trade me Butler! I think a Berroa and his .900 ops card would have been a good get for Moongogs at DH for him, but the money didn't work out.

4) my Castillo has a decent card, in game 7 he had 4 ip, 2h, 2 bb. Regrettably these got bunched together for 2 er that cost me the game 7. I had several chances in games 5 and 7 for 9th inning comebacks, but did not happen. Valentine at 3b2 e17 had 2 errors game 7 leading to 2 unearned runs that killed me more.

5) It's really hard for me to drop a pitcher when I think they may be on a below average card but him and my team are performing well. So many times I drop a 6 million pitcher and 10 transactions later end up with a one million pitcher on a good card, but worse then the 6 million guy. Had my sights set on a few dropped SP but couldn't make the call to drop Schilling.
Live and learn I guess. Had a great time competing with all you legends.