Armchair Thoughts

The updated standings can be found here.
 (I have retired the Weekly Projections portion since they aren't that fascinating.)

Caff is still hanging onto the top spot, and has been there for as far back as I can remember. Though, Mooch is hot on his heels. But I'm playing a different game. I'm playing in a world of hypotheticals projected outcomes. I'm playing for the title after Week 23, not Week 8. I choose to live in this virtual reality where Mooch and Caff are projected to be the 2nd and 3rd worst teams going forward and have to fight for a playoff spot.

And yet, in both the reality and fantasy worlds, I am losing. For the first time all season, we have a new projected winner: I got Matsui!
I don't know how Riley is doing it, but by golly we've got to take him down. His batting stats have skyrocketed over the course of 7 days, and to boot, he's still got Votto on the DL

Looking closer at the rest of season projections, another team that rivals Riley for one of the best teams of the rest of the season is Goose's Flock. Let's have a looksie at them.

Batting

What have they done?
They have a winning percentage of .615, which is only 2nd to Mooch (.625). That's quite remarkable. They have had very few holes in their offense with only SBs (3-4-1) dipping below .500.

What will they do?
Make no mistake, their results aren't far from reality. They're projected to win at a clip of .529 the rest of the season, largely relying on HR and RBI to do the heavy lifting

	HR
Giancarlo Stanton	39
Brandon Moss	30
Paul Goldschmidt	29
Freddie Freeman	27
Brian Dozier	22
Pablo Sandoval	21
Michael Cuddyer	20
Salvador Pérez	13
J.J. Hardy	13

That's an awful lot of homers from just those starters. Giancarlo has YET to hit 39 according to Steamer's projections. Moss for 30? DOZIER for 22? I guess I can't argue since I've invested so much in the narrative of "numbers know more than you". So, there's that.

Pitching

What have they done?

Sucked. Sucked badly. Almost as much as Dave's pitching staff. Only Losses (4-3-1) and Saves (5-3) have been above .500.

What will they do?
They will monumentally bounce back.  Wins will climb back toward .500. Their rate stats will also have a heavy climb back toward contender status.

What we have here is a power-laced team that has had some back luck in their pitching stats thus far that will potentially ride the coat tails of their offense to a playoff spot.

The updated standings can be found here.

So, since my projections are based on a team's lineup for a given day and presume "here's what will happen if no one could make any batting changes the rest of the season", it's subject to an abundance of fluctuation. Let's say your best player is in the lineup one day, and has a day off the next. Well your projections are gonna smell a little funky.I apologize. Take Riley's team for instance. As of last week, they were projected to win 57% of their hitting categories for the rest of the season, and now they're only at 49%. Why? Joe Votto went on the DL. If that's the case, then we know that he's worth 8% over a replacement player for all hitting categories over the course of the rest of the season.

8% * 6 categories * 16 weeks left = 7.7 wins in the standings.

Better hope he gets back soon, Riles.

But we're not here to talk about Riley, we already talked about him. We're here to talk about our newest member of the top 4, Yung's $1 Store.

Coming into the season, the limitations on weekly transactions were a big talking point in regarding to whether it would affect Joe's strategy. He was certainly the dominant force to be reckoned with last year, and now we see him clawing up the standings. Well, what's he got in his arsenal?

Well firstly, Joe has YET TO LOSE A STOLEN BASES CATEGORY this year. (No other team is totally undefeated in any one category, so congrats Joe!)

So he must have a lot of good speedsters then? Well not exactly.

He's only tied for 4th in the league in total SB this year. If anyone should be undefeated it's the FCG, who have 8 more than 2nd place and is also projected to churn out the most SB for the rest of the season.

But we're not here to talk about Mike, we already talked about him.

So if Joe isn't a particularly fast team, what are they good at?

While they are particularly strong at SBs, they really don't have much left for offense. They are projected to have the 2nd least HRs and the 2nd least RBIs from here on out. Granted, I haven't checked his starting lineup to see if he's playing his best players today.

Pitching-wise, things get a little better, but it's still only mediocre. Joe is another relatively low SP, high RP kind of guy. But like with JP (though not as extreme), the K category is his biggest pitfall ....

HOWEVER HOWEVER HOWEVER the regular rules don't pertain to Joey Ballgame.

We've played 7.5 weeks of baseball with 7 max acquisitions per week. Joe has made 50 moves already. Almost the maximum each week. While it doesn't particularly boost his hitting stats, his pitching stats have been shored up quite a bit. To put it into context, he's projected to win 34% of his Ws categories and 30% of his K categories for the rest of the season, and yet he's .500 and .714 in those categories respectively.

You all should keep that in mind when you look at my projections, they don't yet take into account the streaming tendencies of managers. So while the numbers say Joe is finishing 9th, he has 112 moves left to make before the regular season is over.

The updated standings can be found here.

I had to make some changes to my code again after seeing a few discrepancies. Forgive and forget. The good part is that it's better now than it was yesterday. And the day before that. And so on.

We've got a real hodgepodge at the top with the top 7 teams all within 3 games of each other. Here's a W% graph:



So who haven't we covered?

Looks like New Team Name is on the bill.  Amazingly, this squad has gone 17-5-2 in the last 2 weeks since changing their name. Let's hope JP changes it soon.

Should we be worried? Yep. They now have a 64% chance of making the playoffs and are likely to be the 3rd best performing team from here on out.

What's their secret? Hitting hitting hitting.

What kind of hitting? All of the hittings. They don't have a weakness.

Runs, HRs, SB, you name it. They got it. It helps that they've got Adrian Gonzalez and McCutchen as solid foundations, and from there it's a lot of one or two category players that ultimately spits out a balanced, evenly distributed machine.

How's their pitching? Well. It's not great. In fact, it's projected to be the 2nd worst pitching team from here on out.

JP is one of them new age thinkers who thinks that the less pitching you have, the better your pitching stats will be as a whole. Yes he's tanking on Ks and Ws, but he's going to win Ls and SVs with the idea that fewer pitchers means better chances of winning ERA and WHIP. It makes sense on paper, but JP hasn't perfected this art just yet.

Wins
JP has the fewest total pitching wins this year to date, yet has a .500 W% in that category. I anticipate that to not be sustainable in the slightest, mostly because he's projected to have the least wins for the rest of the season.

Losses
This is a strong category for him. It's tough to lose this category if you're only sending out 4 SP per week and a few relievers.

SV
JP really doesn't have a lot of closers, however. Nathan, Romo, and Street are good, but there are other teams with a full starting rotation that have 3 true closers, so now SVs aren't really a lock for him anymore.

K
This one is futile. Read what I said about Losses and apply the opposite to this category. Except while he is projected to win 80% of Losses for the rest of the year, he may only win ~8% of Ks. Those two trades don't balance out to a positive.

ERA and WHIP have the most variance from week to week in terms which team wins. All it takes is one bad outing and you may lose that category.  I project he with ~55% of his WHIP and ERA categories the rest of the year. Hardly locks.

It essentially boils down to the fact that the categories that JP wants as locks aren't as certain as he may have hoped for, and the categories that he IS tanking in, are more sure to lose than the rest are to win.

That hitting though, can carry this squad to a playoff appearance.

The updated standings can be found here.


We are now 5/23 of the way through the season.

That's 21.7%

That's over a fifth.

That's seemingly quite a bit.

Strictly from looking at the standings we have a two way tie at the top for supremacy. Riley and Mike both want the glory but it will come down to who wants it more this year. It looks like Caff's current squad has more staying power than Riley's, who is projected to get nipped out of that 4th playoff spot. Then again, a couple moves here and there and we have a whole new outlook on the season.

And yes, it's starting to be that time of year. Trade talks. Talkin' trades. Proposals, rejections, counter offers. It comes with the sport. I'm hoping some people start looking at their farm squads and bad future contracts and say "screw it, let's go for it all this year". Remember, flags fly forever, gentlemen.

Going top down on the standings, finding the first team that I haven't covered yet, and we arrive at Seductive Wendepunkt,. A scrappy hodgepodge of misfits who have the most cohesive team chemistry since JJ's Maple Sausages from 2011.

Offensively, they'll kill you with their power and speed, but their rate stats are abysmal.  My team is projected to hit .267 for the rest of the season. To put that in context, Wilkin Ramirez hit .272 last year.

On the pitching side of things it's a bit of the same story. Wins, Saves, Strikeouts; they can hold their own. But those rate stats can hinder my quest to assemble the most beautifully run baseball team since Joe's Torn Ligament from 2010. Man was that team a joy to watch. They could do it all. I'd stay up late on my computer just to watch Joe make transactions in real time. It was a real thing of beauty the way he would drop one pitcher that pitched that day and pick up another pitcher who was pitching the next day. I would always think "Dang, that Joe is sure smart! Why didn't I think of that?!".

Anyway. Back to my team. I am going to tear all of your hopes and dreams into pieces. I am a savage and ruthless manager who is destined to go top of the league after 23 weeks. My computer program says so. I will then extract all of your best players and make you pay for the majority of their salaries, because it's written in the stars. All of you will finish below .500 since I will simply be that far above you all in the standings. You have been warned.

The updated standings can be found here.

I don't think there's much that went on over the course of the last week. The season is still but a pup. Slowly, teams are getting sucked to the top or the bottom of the standings, hovering toward their rightful places.

I'll be brief this week since I have things to do.
But let's focus in on a team. Starting from the top of the current standings, we've already looked at Funky Cold Gardena, so let's dig deeper on I got Matsui!.

Side note: It's odd that I'm 3 for 3 in chronicling the teams that are highest in the standings, and also the team I am facing for that given week. I think I found the answer though. It's because everyone plays me after Dave, and so they come off a fresh whooping of Bats Hit Crazy and propel themselves toward the top of the league and then get to play me.

I got Matsui! (or IGM) is one of two teams that has zero categories of undefeatedness or total defeatedness (I am the other).
Observe here.

That said, don't sleep on them as a totally unremarkable team. Offensively, they're the best power squad in the league. Miggy Cab Cab, Joey Vee, and Tulo, all help shore up HR and OPS matchups. Respectively, I have Riley ranked 2nd and 1st in those categories for the rest of the season. The Achilles heel on offense? You guessed it; the opposite of power is speed. Runs and SBs are lagging behind, but all in all, they've got a slightly above average offense going forward.

Pitching is a different story. A lot of extremes here. Home of the 2nd lowest Wins projected for the rest of the year, the 2nd lowest Losses for the rest of the year (which is good, remember), and predictably it's because they have a bevvy of closers. Saves galore. This approach yields few Ks, but all in all he's shored up a slightly below average, if not average pitching staff. It's not as extreme as Outfield Fly Rule (thought it is better), but it's surely a new age hybrid of the Less-Starters-More-Closers strategy. So far they're winning pitching categories at a 60% clip, and I'm thinking that will shrink down to earth in the near future.

They're projected to slide in to a playoff spot, but will need to keep the momentum going to feel safe about it anytime soon.

To Whom It May Concern,

Disappointment. Shame. Astonishment.

At this point in time, I ready myself to receive the attack of those previous sentiments upon from all of you; for I have failed you all. These emotions and placeholders for an opinion of a man can come about in many forms. Perhaps someone has wronged you by stealing from you. Perhaps they hurt you. Perhaps they kicked your dog. I clench and brace myself as I write the following words, since I have done something leagues leagues worse than the previous examples.


I discovered a typo in my projections.


Stone me, yell at me, slap me, verbally assault me all you want; though none of those would bring about the proper justice that I am entitled to after such an error.

Whilst looking through the weekly projected results column for Week 4, I saw that Goose's Flock's numbers were rather low and did some digging. I found out that on two occasions I had Outfield Fly Rule instead of Goose's Flock on the schedule, which meant an overinflated place in the standings for JP, and an under-inflated place in the standings for Goose & Co. The error has been corrected and I was sure to check that there were no other typos in the schedule. I had to scrap the previous projections since they are now useless and I have no way of going back and updating them to contain the correct numbers.
Forgiveness is such a lofty thing to ask for at such a time. But here I am, on my knees.

The updated standings can be found here.

Let's continue our trend of checking in on the league leader each week. Funky Cold Gardena (a saucy mix of Tone Lōc and Totino Grace folklore) has capture our hearts and the first place position with a mix of intimidation on the mound and speed on the basepaths.

As you can see here, they're 15-2-1 in all pitching categories this year (.861 W%). While it's not sustainable in the slightest, it's a huge headstart. They're projected to have a .529 W% in pitching categories the rest of the year (Good for 3rd in the league behind Goose's Flock and myself) which puts them at about a .572 clip (just for pitching) at the end of the year. That's absurd.

Of the four pitching categories that F.C.G. hasn't conceded this year (SV, K, ERA, WHIP), my money is that Ks will be the first to give way. By my projections, I've got about a 65% chance of winning in Ks this week, but even if we want to go by past results, F.C.G. are 6th in the league in terms of total Ks so far this year. He's benefited from having played Outfield Fly Rule (last in total Ks), Clown Question Bros (7th), and Bats Hit Crazy (9th).

On to the positives. Well, their Saves category is 2nd to only Riley's, and there seem to be no glaring weaknesses. Lots of Ws, mitigated Ls, and great rate stats. A solid foundation to work with.

We haven't really touched on the offense. Though, I'm running out of time. Bottom line is, for the most part it's below average, but not enough to counteract their strong pitching. They're strong in SBs and could use some RBIs.

Bottom line of the bottom line is, their pitchers are nothing to mess with and you should hope to take as many offensive categories as you can if you want to keep your matchup close.

Rieser out.

Week 2 in the books. Everyone is hot on Mooch's heels, who is riding the wave from his 10-2 week 1 thrashing over Ryan. A narrow defeat (7-5) was had this week over Dave, who has retreated to the bottom of the Armchair league standings, ready to make his resurgent comeback to the holy land of playoff contention. Last year's last place finish left an insatiable thirst that he will attempt to quench without mercy.

Mooch, however, is picking up right where he left off. The defending champion has swept all offensive categories up until this point, except for SB. Dave was fortunate enough to nip him 5-4 in that category last week.  It may come as no surprise that SB was the category that ruined a couple of perfect offensive weeks for Mooch, since it is quite noticeably his weakest offensive category. Extrapolating out the rest of the season (with the players he has starting today) he'll have only 73 more predicted SBs the rest of the year.  Only Goose's Flock is predicted to have fewer swipes, with 53.  However, Mooch should be in good shape since he's got a bench full of regular base-swipers with Ben Revere, Alexei Ramirez, and Kolten Wong.
Moral of the story: If you think you found a weakness with Mooch, he's already found a way to fix it.

Here are the ROS projections (make sure you're on the W2IR tab):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7QDJjNuysoTVqrCjYSnP5x5P1cgeLDA78QXHKFhncg/pubhtml

Happy Hunting.