USPBL BEACON - October 2023
USPBL COMPLETES IT'S 44th SEASON - THE RIPTIDE WIN 124 GAMES
LAKE SUPERIOR RIPTIDE ARE the USPBL's 2023 CHAMPIONS!
For the first time since 2018 the USPBL began and ended with all 20 teams. Three new managers joined
as teams 17 and 12, which had been open for the prior season, and team 11 which was just vacated
last season all found new owners. (See Archives for further information)
The Riptide #17 nearly ran away with it all while winning 124 games. The Champs #4did pretty well themselves winning 113. The Menace #1 and Marauders #16 were among the 100+ winners as well.
On the other end, the Cardinals #9 finished with a 32-134 record. Not the worst of all time, but nobody's lost more than 120 since the 2000 season. The Hammerheads #11 were 53-113 ending in the next to last spot
in the standings. Entering the league late in the off-season and taking over for a team dreadfully depleted
in pitching, they still managed well. The Manatees i#3 n rebuilding mode were 65-101 and was the 3rd 100+ loss team.
Six of last year's playoff teams will be returning, with Santa Cruz #16 and Virginia #2 joining Lake Superior,
Chicken League, Midwest #5, Blue Ridge, Ottawa #7 and Wisconsin #10.
BRM over WIS in 6 OTB over SCM in 6 LSR over MIX in 5 VAV over CLC in 5
OTB over BRM in 6 LSR over VAV in 6
LSR over OTB in 7 This was Dustin's first appearance in the Championship series, while this is
Brad's 5th USPBL CHAMPIONSHIP.
NEW DIVISIONS
The new Divisions are on the right sidebar. They were arranged by a seeding process within each league.
1-4-5-8-9 for the Ruth and Mays, and 2-3-6-7-10 for the Rose and Mantle.
The Off-Season can now go into full swing.
The BEACON'S USPBL ALL-STAR TEAMS will be announced next week.
The Beacon will announce it's own USPBL All-Star Teams. Players from every team will be represented and
a league file will be created so you can play games with these rosters.
MONEY DRAFT and BEYOND
Besides the Playoffs which only affect 8 teams, the entire league can look forward to the Money Draft.
The Year-End-Bonuses have been included. They range from 238K for teams losing 100+ games down to
0K for those having won 100+. Team #9 has already amassed more than 1 Mil ! Still, the average will stay
about what it usually has been.
Then comes the Range Ratings. We never know when Strat will release these, but it's generally sometime in
Mid-December. The Range Ratings are always exciting to see. We mostly have a pretty good sense of what
to expect on the player cards. But the defense is a Great Unknown.
In Mid-to-Late January, we get the Strat Ratings guide. This will have all the card ratings for all players.
It's nearly the same as having the cards.
The Rotation Draft will be sometime in early February. Normally we held it the Saturday after the Super Bowl
which will be played on February 11th this season. After the NFL added a Week 17 to their schedule this
was too late for our draft. So we've been holding it the Saturday before the Super Bowl in recent years. This would give us a draft date of February 10th.
The exact date, time and format will be announced later.
RULES & REGULATIONS
There were some rules voted on during the summer. The need to address the rules was brought on by a
combination of Major League Baseball incorporating new rules over the past few years, and Strat bringing
these changes into the game. When these rules are added as "MAXIMUM RULE OPTIONS" they are easy
to deal with. All we need to do is check or not check it. Now the options involve the myriad of MLB Rules.
After the MLB shortened-season of 2020, Strat started offering MLB Rules options. We hadn't fully
addressed this until the past summer when we voted to use the "Current MLB Rules" in the USPBL.
The biggest change which didn't need a vote as it was unanimously decided upon was the move to change
the usage format to a simple +110% rather than using "Tiers". Now that the season is over it's agreed that
this change worked out very weill.
The complete "SEASON IN REVIEW" story will appear after the Championship series.
SIM SEASONS IN HINDSIGHT
Before the season started Mark C of SRR #15 and Jim W of WIS #10 ran Sim Seasons.
Both ran 10 seasons, and compiled the results which provided the predictions for the 2023 USPBL Season.
Rather than jump back and forth between the Sims and the Actual season, I'll just lump everything together.
The 2 Sims showed nearly identical results for the R League. The only difference was they had MIX-GGM
flip-flopped for 2nd and 3rd. The SRR Sims placed MIX ahead of GGM. They chose wisely.
The other wrong prediction was both Sims had EHH and SAS flipped. The veteran manager fared better.
For the M-League, the Sims didn't do as well with their predictions. Both Sims had BRM and WIS finishing
on top followed by SCM, WDW and CON. It turned out SCM far surpassed the 85 wins the Sims predicted
and secured a playoff spot finishing with 101 wins. In the Mantle Division, the WIS Sims's only miss was flipping FMM and SSB in the final two places. SRR's Sims missed on the all-important division winner
placing the SRR team on top. It was OTB that actually finished first, just as the WIS Sims showed.
As for the Sims predicting the playoffs teams which they normally do quite accurately, the SRR Sims had
7 of the 8 teams picked correctly. The one miss? Having SRR in the playoffs instead of SCM.
The WIS Sims missed on two playoff teams. They also had SRR instead of SCM, but additionally picked
GGM over MIX in their virtual tie.
The "scoring" for Sims is simple. Lose 1 point for every "place off" with the prediction. Playoff misses count
for 2 additional points.
SRR Sims lost 2 points in the Ruth, 0 in the Rose, 2 in the Mays and 6 in the Mantle. Plus 2 playoff points.
WIS sims lost 2 points in the Ruth, 2 in the Rose, 4 in the Mays and 2 in the Mantle. Plus 4 playoff points
WIS total of 14 points. SRR total of 12 points. So the SRR Sims did the better job.
Now you know who to believe when the 2024 Sims come out.
RUN DIFFERENTIALS - or "The Curious Case of the Connecticut Crush"
(submitted by Jim Walsh of WIS #10)
I often look at the odd stats provided in the game.
Like Grand Slams. WIS led the league...by a lot! The Dairymen had 16 grand slams easily surpassing the
previous franchise total of 6. The next most was 8 by BRM.
There's also stats like SAC Attempts (63 by LMD) and Hit & Run attempts (81 by SAS).
And there's "BOARD GAME STATS" like Clutch Hits (13 by CHC!) and Runner Held Hits (19 by GGM).
The stat that I was checking out this time was the RUN DIFFERENTIALS. This is the number of runs a team
scores versus the runs that a team allows. The findings of coarse aren't going to be all that surprising.
Obviously the greater the spread between these two, the further up and down the standings a team will land.
But I did notice a few oddities while checking out these stats. (which are located on the STANDINGS page,
the last column on the section breaking down the monthly records for individual teams).
The 2 highest numbers: LSR has a +479 RD. CHC has a -551 RD.
These are arrived at with LSR scoring 965 runs while giving up just 486.
CHC scored 498 while giving up 1043.
These are the RDs you'd expect from the teams that finished 1st and 20th.
So I thought maybe you could reproduce the standings using the RD.
I arranged the teams in order of RD, then compared this to the final standings so see how close or how far
off the two standings are. The expectation is that the bigger the Rd, the better or worse a team will rank.
Seven of the teams finished in the same position with 5 of those 7 being at the top 3 and bottom 2.
The other two were in the middle, 11th and 12th place. Six of the teams finished just 1 place off. One finished
2 places off. Four finished 3 places off. And two finished 4 places off. Overall this averages to just 1 place off.
So the RD seems to reflect the standings fairly well.
But curiously CON, one of the teams off by 4 places, finished in 17th even with the small negative RD of -51. This seemed weird as multiple teams finishing far ahead of CON had RDs of -100+. So CON scored nearly as many runs as they gave up, yet finished in 17th place with a 68-98 record. What caused this?
I believe the answer is found on the Overall Record chart. CON had 58 games decided by 1 run, the 2nd most in the league. They lost 37 of those, the most 1-run losses. If they had split those 1-run games which would give them 8 more wins, they'd move up 4 spots in the standings, ending up right where their +51 RD
should place them. Furthermore, the OTHER team that finished 4 spots of their expected spot in the standings, but on the Plus side, we have SCM. Their +73 RD is also 4 spots off, but in their case they're
4 spots better. Again, looking at the 1-Run list, we find SCM also had a lot of them....55. But SCM fared well
going 40-15. If they had lost a few more of those 1-run games, they too would move into the position that
their RD places them.
So the Run Differential reflects the standings fairly well, but those 1 run games can cause some unexpected
results.
Perhaps not earth-shaking news, but another of those little things that can affect the standings.
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I found the average runs scored, and therefore the average runs given up is 672.
So with this, it's not just a matter of the RD determining the Wins and Losses, but this also shows us whether
a team is a hitting or pitching team.
LDM scored 671 runs, almost exactly the league average. But they gave up 788, the 5th most. They also
finished 5th from the bottom. WIS scored 863 but gave up 698 runs, making them the only playoff team
giving up more runs than the league average.
And some of this can be attributed to the Ballpark. Again, WIS finished 87-79 while giving up 698 runs
while CON and WDW finished behind them in spite of giving up fewer runs. WIS's basic game strategy is to score more than they give up. The choice of Ballpark can be a major factor in that simple strategy.
(Ballpark Ratings aren't released until the Full Card Ratings come out in January).