Week 18 Review:

INTRO ....

I'll be honest, the same thing happened last year and I had to wait for the final game(s) and ended up doing these stats twice.  Oh well.  So twice it is, no way around it. 

However, this will be thin.  Just the player stuff.  And a brief run down of all the fascinating statistical information that I'll be bringing your way between the Red Dogs / Rebels game and game one of the playoffs between The Brew Jays and either the Hurtin' Units or Dog Catchers.

Besides, its a beautiful day, no one should be inside reading the BLOG for too long today.

Now once all the seedings have been determined there will be 4 BLOG editions that will come out in fairly rapid succession.  Here they are:

1. Wednesday September 5th, 6am - The final BLOG of player and team stats as you've seen presented in the weekly review all season. 
2. Thursday September 6th, 6am - A preview of Pool A 
3. Friday September 7th, 6am - A preview of Pool B
4. Saturday September 8th, 6am - A preview of Pool C
5. On Wednesday September 5th there will also be 3 polls that appear on the BLOG asking you to predict who will get the bye (top 2 teams) for each pool. 

So what do the previews include?  I'm so glad you asked!  First you'll see head to head match ups of each individual pool.  This is a great view as far as I'm concerned, here's an incomplete sample of pool A,

This will change once the 3rd team is added, but you can see already some strange anomalies.  First, there is only one team with a positive +/-.  Second, the Brew Jays who only had 6 losses all year had 50% occur in against their pool opponents.  You'd have to think that while their favourites, its about as tough a draw as they could get.  Third, the Dusty Cleats who had only 5 wins on the year had 60% of them against their pool A brethren.  While they have to be overwhelming underdogs in the 15th seed overall, they probably couldn't have drawn a more favorable schedule.

Then I'll have each team's "star" based on the stats I've kept this year.   I'll use the Brew Jays to stay consistent with the whole Pool A thing, and because I have that one done.

I don't think this will help too much for the playoffs, but it gives some recognition to people for some outstanding accomplishments!

So, here is another thing, because it suits my obsessive compulsive nature.  I have a graph (building it actually) of where every team ranked through each week of the season.  Here is the jumbled mess and the Brew Jay version.  I'll give the pool view and the stand alone team view I think.  A couple of notes about this chart.  First I'm not an excel expert, I'm an excel manipulator.  I find ways to make things work, sort of.  You'll notice that the positions on the left are from -15 to -1.  That's because its the only way I could find to have the #1 (first place) at the top.  Otherwise it goes to 15 at the top and 1 at the bottom and visually it looks like you fall to first spot.  I didn't like it.  Also, I took out the week by week axis.  That should go along the bottom, but it appears at the top of the chart because the numbers on the left are negative.  I didn't like that either so its out. 

   
The chart below is mostly accurate, but remember that we still don't know the final standings of 5 teams.

And this is the stand alone Brew Jays View

STATs
I'm pretty confident that this is the end result of this year's .800 club.  Baring Mark Kolsen going 12/12 in the final game, I think we're locked.  There have been lots of great years, but these 4 guys were spectacular, congrats to you all!

40 runs, that's a WoW!  Scott, Al and Roger all came within a run of scoring 2 per game which is outrageous.  When you consider that all them missed at least one game this year, their averages are actually over 2.  Hugh Armstrong (2), Kevin Moon (1), Brad Young (3) and Mike Candy (4) have shots at joining this list on Tuesday. 

Congrats to the Quarter Average Leaders, Scott, Kevin and Jamie!

If you're having trouble trying to figure out who to vote for in the "most improved" category there are some fine names on this list.  Some good players had 'career years', some people bounced back from poor years and others continue to show what we had always guessed was a steady progression, but now have numbers to back it up.  Congratulations!

Way to go Al, Rob and Roger!

This would seem to be Scott Mason's.  Considering that it would take Brad having a 9/9 night on Tuesday to tie him, I think we're probably locked down.  But I save the congrats just in case. 

So this one could have some changes by the time the last game is finished.  First off, Roger Burton (who doesn't get nearly enough publicity) can climb into 3rd spot by duplicating his 5/5 night of last game.  Kevin Moon could tie Scott Peters with 6/6 night but finish 2nd with anything better than 2 hits.  For the Red Dogs, Diamond Jim Rouleau is 6 hits away from the top 10. 

This one too seems likely to have changes.  Roger Burton and Hugh Armstrong will be the 3rd and 4th players in the league to achieve 100 at bats if they manage to get up 5 times.  There doesn't seem to be anyone else able to crack the top 10 baring something crazy happening.  And Piero isn't in this last game of the year so I'm not betting on crazy. 

I've had a lot of fun following this one this year.  We still have Jon Hardy and Brad Wadden alive for this last game.  Jon is 4/4 night away from having .700 season in rookie campaign.  Brad just needs a 2/4 night to ensure he holds a .700 average.  Top to bottom in this list have been great and solid additions of ball skills and character to our league. 

These guys produce.  Geoff, Jamie, Scott, Al and Roger all score in half of their plate appearances.  I don't know where to go with this stat exactly, but the regularity of success kind of blows me away.

This stat didn't turn out like I thought it would.  There are only 4 people on this list who didn't show up on the one above.  What I expected were people ranked 7-12 who get on less frequently but make a huge difference to their team when they do.  Those guys start showing up on the list around the #20 spot but the best (the guys listed here) are still the best no matter how you carve it. 

And that's it.....Back on Wednesday and then it it gets crazy busy!