Pool A - Synopsis

Before I start...

There is a constituency in the league that thinks that stats, predictions and trends aren't worthwhile.  They believe that "anything can happen" in the playoffs.  I sort of agree.  However, I believe that the "anything that can happen" can be explained if you understand the stats and trends before making predictions.  For instance, just say that the neither the Brew Jays nor the Red Dogs got the bye in their pools and ended up playing elimination games.  Would you be surprised?  I would.  But if I knew in advance that both teams earned the 3rd most points (wins and ties) in their pools when compared to only the teams they'll be playing, its somewhat less of a shock.  

And what if you found out that the Hot Tub Woody's (4th seed in pool B) got a bye?  Surprised?  Not me, because they have the best record in the pool.  2 wins against the Red Dogs, splits against the Beer Bros and Tap Masters and winning their one game against the Banshees.  

Head to head records, who's hot, offense vs. defense...blah, blah, blah.  In short, if you don't like it, ignore.  If you do...use it.  Either way, comments are always welcome!
 

The Group

To Alfred:  I liked your comment.  And I completely agree, the team that is the hottest, healthiest and stays the most sober Saturday and Sunday will win.  Healthy we can't control, sober we can control and hot we can try to explain.  Teams don't suddenly "turn it around" in my humble opinion.  They get the right draw to get through the round robin and then they start believing.  Hopefully this will help explain.....

There is a lot of data on this graph and unfortunately that's as big as I can make it, hope you can read it.  For those of us in Pool A, let me welcome you to the Pool of Death!  As you'll see when I do the same stuff for the other two groups over the next couple of days, this is without a doubt the toughest pool.  You may think I'm saying that because my team is in here, but there is more too it than just that.

• Coming into the playoffs the Brew Jays have lost 1, Grisslies lost 1, Gruesome Devils tied 1, Hurtin Units unbeaten in 3 and the Dusty Cleats unbeaten in 2.  
• 3 of the 5 teams in the pool are over .500. 
• Half of the 1st seed Brew Jays 6 loses this season came against this group.  
• 5/7 games the Brew Jays played were decided by 4 runs or less. 
• The Brew Jays who led the league in +/- are only a +3 against this group. 
• The 2nd seed Grisslies have the fewest losses and are tied with the most wins. 
• The Grisslies 2 losses in the pool are by a combined 7 runs. 
• 4/5 Grisslie wins were decided by 4 runs or less.
• The Grisslies lead the pool in fewest runs allowed. 
• The 3rd seed Gruesome Devils are tied for the most wins in the pool. 
• The Gruesome Devils lead the pool in +/-. 
• The Gruesome Devils lead the pool in runs scored. 
• 6/8 Gruesome Devils games were decided by 4 runs or less.
• The 4th seed Hurtin' Units had half of their games result in a tie or a 1 run loss. 
• The Hurtin' Units are last in runs allowed and 3rd in runs scored. 
• The Hurtin' Units had the 2nd (21) and 3rd (19) highest run output games in the pool. 
• The 5th seed Dusty Cleats earned 7 of their league low 11 points against the other members of this pool.  
• The Dusty Cleats are the only team in this pool to have earned a double digit win against another member of the pool. 

Teams are reviewed by order of finish. 

Its a long season.  Its easy to think of the Brew Jays as wire to wire winners of the season championship, but thats really not the case. 

Your league champs opened the season with a loss to the expansion Tap Masters, a win against the eventual 4th place Dodge City Rounders before losing to the Dusty Cleats, Gruesome Devils and Banshees.  They eked out a one run win over the Hurtin' Units to fight back to 2-4 for the season and then things just got silly.  13 consecutive wins saw them reach 14-4 and from there they were never headed in the standings as they cruised to the regular season championship. 

There's lots to talk about on the offensive side of this squad.  What's most interesting to me is the balance.  Yes, Roger Gaudet had a spectacular year.  Yes they were benefited by having Rob Hayward for 9 of their 24 games.  But there really is so much more.  Del Greco, Cloutier, Polny, Foerster (Lynn), Duggan, McClean and Gaudet all saw their averages improve over last year.  And their worst declining average was Matt Foerster who still hit a gaudy .702.  No holes, no weaknesses with the bats. 

Defensively the Jays more than held their own.  Only the Dislocated Joints, Red Dogs, Beer Bros., Grisslies and Hot Tub Woody's gave up fewer runs this season.  And they were also the landslide winners in +/-.

For the sake of arguement I'm going to call a 3 run differential a "close game".  By that account, they played 8 close games so they are well accustomed to finding ways to win.

For the Brew Jays to do well:  In short, the 1st place team doesn't need anyone pumping their tires to say their awesome; but this teams biggest asset is their balance 1 thru 11.  Shutting one guy down does nothing for you, because their weapons keep on coming.  As long as mulitple players don't slump, they should be good. Because they keep coming at you and there are no gift outs, they are hard to defend.  However, when they do get into trouble is when their bigger hitters try to hit homers and their "almost as big" hitters try to do likewise.  If they hit liners they can hit doubles and triples all day.  If they hit it in the air, their giving you a chance.

For those of you that follow standings year over year, you shouldn't be at all surprised by the Grisslies season.  For the 4th consecutive year you can categorize their season as brutal in the 1st half and pretty damned good in the second half.

As has become the norm, we tried people at various positions and drank a fair bit in the 1st half.  Then  we settled on a batting order and a positional lineup and ran with it.  Sometimes it works, sometime you stink.  This was a worked year.  On July 3rd the Grisslies were 4-8-1 having lost 7-6 and 8-7 games to the Red Dogs and one run decision to the Hurtin' Units and Hot Tub Woody's.  You could make an argument for a better record, but who cares, the standings are black and white.  For the second consecutive year, the Grisslies had the best record in the league in the second half despite an 0-2-1 finish.  

And black and white showed some interesting data.  One, we weren't great offensively.  By "not great" I mean 11th in a 15 team league.  However, in what has become the hallmark of Grisslie baseball we were great on defense (2nd).  With the exception of 1 out of 24 games this season our defense led the way.

Offensively, Rick Cudnik's contribution can not be understated and he was well complimented by Jeff Sagert to give us power threats from both sides of the plate.  However, with the exception of  Rick, every other player went down in average from last year.  5 players went down by 100 or more points.  The numbers are almost unbelievable.  However, all these hitters had good seasons the year before and even with these drop offs we still managed to finish 11th overall in average.

Over the course of the season the Grisslies played 11 close games and held the opposition to under single digits in runs on 13 occasions.       

For the Grisslies to do well:  Defense needs to continue to lead the charge for this club as well as its normal charactor of not panicking with runners on.  Responsible base running to cash in opportunites is a must.  This isn't a team that can afford to run itself out of innings. The primary infield around the horn Sagert/Smith/Argue with either Dwyer or Veinneau at 1st base is among the top 3 in the league (If anyone wants to debate I'm down with that) and is among the leaders in double plays, although we don't officially keep that stat.  Scoring 7 runs an inning is not a must for this team.  Scoring 1-3 runs every inning is critical. 

The expansion Gruesome Devils had a fine rookie campaign.  After tumbling as low as 13th place in week 11 of the season they battled back to a .500 record (11-11-2) and a seventh place finish!  Nice job. 

The Gruesome Devils were not an offensive club.  Having scored a single run more than the Grisslies over 24 games put them at 10th overall in the league.  Their defense was right on the league average of 277 which pretty much screams "we're really average".  The Devils were involved in 10 close games but what is more telling are the games that weren't close.  They either got beat up or did the beating up in fairly equal amounts. Once they found their consistency and most specifically, their defensive alignment, just passed the half way point, they ended up doing a lot more of the beating up than vice versa. 

Robin had a slower than normal start to the year but when he started firing the team took off.  He continues to be an elite fielder in either the infield or outfield.  Simon Smith is a threat at the plate and his shored up the defense on the left side of the infield.  Bob McCullough has shown superiour shortstop player and actually his arm looks better than I've seen in several years.  Maybe I'm just noticing more, but I don't remember Bob throwing quite that hard.  Jens had a tremendous start, hit a little speed bump but now seems to be back on course.  And DeLand in his second year as a P1 has found consistency on the board.  He's a different pitcher than a year ago. 

Cliff Stacey led the 5 improved hitters on the club this year, however when you average out the improvments and the tail offs, they net out to zero.  So overall, you probably got about what you expected on draft day.

One of the more interesting anomolies in the stats world is that the Gruesome Devils ended the two long winning streaks in the league this year.  They ended the Brew Jays 13 game streak by defeating them 15-6 on July 31st and they also killed the Grisslies 8 gamer by defeating them 7-3 on August 15th.  And of course, both are opponents in this pool.  

The Devils have a healthy respect for the opponents and play the game the right way, but they really don't sweat anyone.  Weather in the pool or later on they have the potential to be giant killers.   

For the Gruesome Devils to do well:  This pool is tough for a number of reasons, one of the biggest reasons are the regular season records amongst the pool itself.  It is completely feasible that a 2 win team could get a bye from this pool.  Because of that, the ability to rebound from a loss is paramount.  The Gruesome Deviils are easily good enough to get out of this group, but not if the sting of a defeat lingers.  Also, health and attendance could be factors for these guys.  Hoping neither are, but it hasn't been a good run of late in either category.  

Few teams have been hit harder by injury than the Hurtin' Units.  They put the Hurtin' in the Units.  

 Between week 3 and week 9 the Units bounced back and forth between 14th and 15th place.  They didn't have Olliffe who was trying to rehab his leg and had lost their rookie.  They replaced their rookie with Mark Butler who also got hurt.  They replaced Olliffe with Davey Stamp who also got hurt.  Anicete got hurt in the final few weeks and they got hit by shift work from two of their key cogs. Through all that, the Units defied logic and climbed the standings.  They were in 9th as late as week 14 before falling down to 12th in the final 4 weeks of regular season play. 

    

The Units have a nice line up.  Not a healthy one, but nice. 

They had the exact number of players increase their average as decreased.  So it would seem to balance out for the most part.  Over the course of the season they played in 10 close games (42%) however, 5 of those games came against members of this pool (62% of their pool games).  Despite the 1-6-1 record against their opponents, the are accustomed to playing these teams close and hard.  

Clayton Avery has had a terrific year finishing 4th in the league in hitting and being one of only 4 players to crack the .800 mark.  Gord Robinson flirted with the 40 mark with a stellar second half.  And Cam Clark was Cam Clark, leading the club in hits.  Rob Rumboldt several out of the park blasts this season and Anicete is a huge on base threat (.781) and responsible defender.  

For the Hurtin' Units to do well:  There outfield is in great shape with Anicete, Cam, Clayton and Jamie Allan. The infield is shift and health dependent.  Rumboldt and Robinson are great in the middle, Robertson is excellent on either corner and James has improved greatly pitching this season.  For them to move on that infield has to be lock down and a couple of hitters that had second half swoons need to return to form.  And they need to be healthy.  With out Anicete or Stamp this will be really tough sledding.

 

 I've been singing the prasises of the Cleats since the draft.  It would be easy to say "I'm wrong", but I suck at admiting things like that.  So instead, I'll explain why the Cleats will be in the semi finals. 

Well, sure, if you look at their record THAT way, you're just going to dissmiss them.  I think that would be dangerous.  The Cleats finished the season with a tie and a win.  Okay so its only two games .... But lets look at who they beat this year:  Banshees (7-16-1), Brew Jays (18-6), Gruesome Devils (11-11-2), Hurtin' Units (9-13-2), Lucky Stiffs (10-12-2) for a total record of 55-58-7 or a winning percentage of .487. A better record than eight of the teams in the league. 

There is a lot of the Scott Barton on this list, and their should be.  But its not quite as representative as it may have been in the past.  Scott played the first 15 games of the season before being felled by injury.  He came back to play only one more game as a playoff readiness test and by all accounts he's good to go.  The Dusty Cleats had a similar offensive club to the Grisslies.  Worse in some ways, better in others.  The worse is they were dead last in runs scored and while there is no stat for this, several Dusty Cleats will swear that they led the league in leaving the bases loaded.  On the better side of the ledger, they had 7 players who's averages went down over last year.  That may seem bad, but not as bad as the Grisslies. 

The Dusty Cleats defense was among the league leaders for much of the year but had a poor second half to finish a tie for last. Not coincidentally, that's the same period that Scott was out and there were a number of people playing out of position.  

However, its not all doom and gloom.  They have one of the best fielding shortstops in the league in Doyle, and I'm not alone in saying that.  They have the return of Barton at 2nd base which is an impovement over the lousy also rans that have been subbing there (like me), and they have made the surprising and successful move of Cliff Joseph to 3rd base.  Add Dane or Wayne at 1st base and CP pitiching and you move from having a run of the mill infield to an elite infield almost over night. 

For the Dusty Cleats to do well:  I trust their infield as its currently constituted, the pitching is top 5 in the league for my money and the bats (specifically Dane and Cliff) have sprung to life in last 4 games.  They can play with anyone right now.  The difference maker is the outfield.  The routine catches have to be made to have a chance in games.  And the then the ball has to be returned crisply and responsibly to the infield.  Doyle and Barton know how to work an in infield and the cutoff, and CP is more than adept at backing up.  When you have 5 wins on the year you have to do the little things every single time without fail.  Maintain force plays, no extra throws and protect the ball.  If that happens, these guys are playing on Sunday. 

Tomorrow:  Pool B!