September 14,1999

It All Comes Down To This

Chapter Six.  It all comes down to this.  For some teams, it's simply the end of a long, long season.  For others, it's a final opportunity for post-season glory.  When all is said and done, eight teams will advance into the first-ever BDBL playoffs.  The rest will join the majority on the sidelines and begin planning for next year.  What lies ahead for the contenders?  Let's take a look. 

I've put together the following table to outline the strength of schedule for each of the three current division leaders and top-four wild card contenders.  I weighted opponents winning percentage (OWPCT) based upon number of games played versus each opponent in Chapter Six.

Ant: .562
Lit: .552
LA: .541
Bbn: .540
Sal: .529
Oak: .527
Akr: .521
SCA: .489
Stm: .489
Del: .488
Pla: .484
Mas: .480
BG: .476
Cal: .457
 

In the Butler Division the Zoots have held onto a tenuous lead for more than a chapter now.  They have switched places with the Antioch Angels several times this year, and have led by as many as eight games at one point.  As we head down the stretch, Antioch trails the Zoots by just three games.  Unfortunately for Antioch, the road ahead isn't pretty.  While the Zoots enjoy one of the easiest schedules of all the contenders (.489 OWPCT), the Angels have the toughest of all schedules (.562).  Every team Antioch faces in Chapter Six is vying for either a pennant or a wild card.  The series to watch: a four-game series between these two teams that may decide the winner of this division.

The pride and joy of Salem, New Hampshire appear to have a comfortable eight game lead in the Benes Division over the Plattsburgh Chumps- er, Champs.  However, Salem faces some tough opponents in Chapter Six including eight games against Butler Division-leading Stamford.  Plattsburgh, on the other hand, enjoys the easiest schedule of all the contenders in the Ozzie League with a .484 OWPCT.  Salem and Plattsburgh go head-to-head for four games in Chapter Six, adding some excitement to the Benes Division race.  The past two meetings between these teams have been sweeps - one by Salem, one by Plattsburgh.  Meanwhile, third-place Akron is still in the hunt.  Akron is in position to help themselves with four games against division and wild card rival Plattsburgh.  However, they must also survive a tough eight-game series against Antioch.

Over in the Griffin Division, the Undertakers carry an eight-game lead heading into the final chapter, yet they can't seem to shake the ever-annoying Litchfield Lightning.  Litchfield continues to compete in that division race despite chasing the team with the best record in the Ozzie League (and despite a manager who has no interest whatsoever in his team.)  Both teams face a tough schedule in Chapter Six (.541 OWPCT for Los Altos, .552 for Litchfield.)  These two rivals meet not two, not four, but EIGHT times in Chapter Six.  This series could provide a sneak preview into the playoffs if Litchfield's manager decides to put any effort into his team.  If the season ended today, these two teams would match up together in the OL Division Series.  

The Ozzie League wild card race is a dead heat between Litchfield, Antioch and Plattsburgh, with Akron trailing not far behind.  The advantage in terms of scheduling definitely goes to Plattsburgh (.484 OWPCT), while Antioch (.562) faces the toughest road ahead.

Over in the Eck League, the Southern California Slyme are simply dominating the competition, and have been for most of this season.  Their magic number is now into the single digits.  With Glavine, Wells and Colon at the top of their rotation, this team is not only the odds-on favorite to win the Eck League pennant but the BDBL Championship as well.  Second-place Bowling Green has no shot at the Higuera Division title, but still has an outside shot at the EL wild card. 

The Petralli Division title has been up for grabs all season.  For a long time, it appeared as though no one wanted this title.  It now looks as if the race boils down to two teams: Massillon and Delafield.  Both teams face similar schedules (.480 for Massillon, .488 for Delafield) in Chapter Six.  These two teams face each other for four games in Chapter Six - four games which may decide the winner of this division.

The Hrbek Division has featured a dogfight between Bourbannais and Oakville all year, and that fight promises to continue into the final chapter as well.  If either team should lose the division title, it will then have to worry about winning the wild card, where California is making a late surge in the standings.  As if all of this weren't exciting enough, Bourbannais and Oakville meet EIGHT TIMES in Chapter Six.  If one team dominates this series, it could knock the other team right out of the playoff picture.  Like the Ozzie League, where division rivals Los Altos and Litchfield would meet in the Division Series if the season ended today, the same applies to Oakville and Bourbannais in the Eck League.

While the second-place team in the Hrbek Division is the current favorite to win the wild card, don't be surprised if a team like Delafield, Massillon, Bowling Green or California from slips in through the back door in the eleventh hour.  Of these four teams, California faces the easiest schedule (.457).  In fact, of all the Eck League contenders, only Oakville and Bourbannais face a schedule with an OWPCT above .500.

The two series to watch this chapter in my opinion are the eight games between Litchfield and Los Altos and the eight games between Bourbannais and Oakville.  These games should provide plenty of drama and excitement down the stretch, and may even provide a sneak preview into the playoffs.  Another possible playoff sneak preview is the eight-game series between longtime, bitter rivals Salem and Stamford.  If the season ended today, these two teams would face off in the OL Division Series.  Rest assured, though we're at the end of our season there's still plenty of excitement ahead.

Now that we've looked ahead, let's take a minute or two to look back.  Everyone has a different opinion on how to build a team, and there is no greater opportunity to test a particular theory than an inaugural draft in a league such as this one.  Last spring (or winter, really) when we held our own inaugural draft, I remember reading heated arguments between those who believed pitching wins games and those who believed in hitting.  Our draft seemed to be divided almost in half when it came time to test these two theories.  I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the results now that our season is nearly complete.

The most influential picks in the draft - those that have the greatest impact on each team - occur during the first five rounds.  Therefore, I took a look at the first five rounds and separated teams into five different categories depending upon how many pitchers were chosen in those rounds.  I was surprised to find that there were eight teams that chose no pitchers at all in the first five rounds and nine that chose three.  Only one team - Litchfield - chose four pitchers, while three teams chose one or two pitchers each.  Below is a table displaying the winning percentages for each of these groups:

No pitchers: FtL, Mad, Oak, VA, NMM, MHP, PLA, CAL (8, .474)
One pitcher: Del, Chi, ANT (3, .492)
Two pitchers: Stm, Bbn, MAR (3, .520)
Three pitchers: Sal, Gil, Mas, LA, Akr, NMB, SCS, BG, SCA (9, .510)
Four pitchers: Lit (1, .576)

If you divide the teams into two groups, the eleven teams that drafted one or less pitchers among the first five rounds have a .479 combined winning percentage while the thirteen teams choosing two or more pitchers have a winning percentage of .517 (or .539 without the New Milford Blazers.)  Only five of the thirteen teams in the latter group have winning percentages below .500, while only four of the eleven teams in the first group have winning percentages above .500.  In terms of this relatively small sample, those who favor building a team around pitching seem to have justified their theory.

Of course, a lot of teams were playing with long-range goals in mind right from the start, and therefore opted for the more predictable hitters high in the draft as opposed to spending big bucks on less reliable pitchers.  For the most part, this strategy was justified since top-five pitchers like Maddux, Dreifort, Clemens, Park, Glavine, Hermanson, Ligtenberg, Leiter, Wood, Neagle, Wells, Gordon and Tomko have all proven to be unworthy of their inflated salaries due to either injury or poor performance.

However, there seem to be just as many - if not more - hitters who have failed to justify their high salaries this season.  For example: Caminiti, Greg and Mo Vaughn, Eric Davis, Knoblauch, Todd Walker, Lawton, Edmonds, Easley, Bichette, Derek Bell, Alou, Erstad, Salmon, Posada, Bonds, Grieve, Fryman, Galaragga, Kendall, Travis Lee and Neifi Perez.  Of course, nine of the twenty-two players in this group have failed to justify their salaries because of injury.  Only four of the thirteen pitchers mentioned above can use this as an excuse.   (And you thought pitchers were more injury-prone, didn't you?)

In my most humble and completely unbiased opinion, here is a list of the biggest bargains and disappointments (excluding injured players) for each round in terms of their outlook for the 2000 BDBL season:

Round 1: Jeff Bagwell (Mar), Roger Clemens (Mas)
Round 2: Rafael Palmeiro (Stm), Greg Vaughn (Del)
Round 3: Roberto Alomar (Cal), Darin Erstad (Chi)
Round 4: Bobby Abreu (Pla), Travis Lee (Cal)
Round 5: Jose Lima (Gil), Chan Ho Park (LA)
Round 6: Fernando Tatis (FtL), J.D. Drew (VA)
Round 7: Edgardo Alfonzo (Stm), Andy Pettitte (Ant)
Round 8: Sean Casey (VA), Mark Kotsay (Ant)
Round 9: Luis Gonzalez (SCA), Joey Hamilton (Chi)
Round 10: Magglio Ordonez (Stm), Gary Gaetti (Sal)
Round 11: Dave Nilsson (FtL), Russ Branyan (VA)
Round 12: Omar Olivares (Del), Juan Acevedo (Ant)
Round 13: Matt Mantei (Cal), Bobby Smith (Akr)
Round 14: Mike Lieberthal (Akr), A.J. Hinch (MH)
Round 15: Reggie Sanders (Mar), David Ortiz (Ant)
Round 16: Paul Byrd (Del), Jose Guillen (Mar)
Round 17: Kent Bottenfield (SCS), Darryl Strawberry (Gil)
Round 18: Carlos Febles (Sal), Jeff Abbott (SCS)
Round 19: Lee Stevens (Sal), Chris Hoiles (Lit)
Round 20: Jeff Suppan (VA), Derek Lee (MH)
Round 21: Homer Bush (SCS), Ryan Bradley (Sal)
Round 22: none, none
Round 23: Fred McGriff (Chi), Karim Garcia (FtL)
Round 24: Geoff Jenkins (SCA), Robert Fick (Akr)
Round 25: Preston Wilson (Lit), George Lombard (Akr)
Round 26: Randy Velarde (Chi), George Arias (BG)
Round 27: none, Mark Wohlers (Pla)
Round 28: John Snyder (Pla), Bobby Bonilla (Stm)
Round 29: Joe Randa (Sal), Brian Rose (Cal)
Round 30: Corey Koskie (FtL), Midre Cummings (Sal)
Round 31: Robert Person (Sal), John Wasdin (SCA)
Round 32: Chili Davis (Bbn), Jin Ho Cho (Ant)
Round 33: Steve Karsay (Lit), Ryan Minor (Mad)
Round 34: Jermaine Dye (Cal), Jon Nunnally (Ant)
Round 35: Ed Sprague (Oak), Cliff Politte (Sal)
Round 36: Nick Johnson (Stm), Brian Reith (Gil)
Round 37: Freddy Garcia (SCS), John Curtice (VA)
Round 38: Warren Morris (SCS), Brent Butler (Cal)
Round 39: Mike Restovich (Sal), Darnell McDonald (Mar)
Round 40: Ramon Ortiz (Cal), Mike Tyson (Pla)

As you can see, there were some pretty decent bargains to be had at the end of that draft (especially in Round 31.)  Of course, the higher in the draft, the bigger the bust.  It's kind of hard to have a "disappointing" pick in the 35th round (but if there were one, it would be Cliff Politte.) 

There were bargains to be had on the free agent market this year as well.  Among them: Jeff Zimmerman, John Jaha, Scott Williamson, Kevin McGlinchy, Brian Daubach, Bruce Aven, Sean Lowe, Ron Villone, Chris Singleton, Tim Hudson and Eric Owens.  Of course, there's a reason why all these players were still available after 960 had been chosen: they were all longshots.  That's why I believe the free agent system should remain the same as it has been.  Finding one of these eleven free agent bargains is about as likely as finding a free thinker at a church revival.  Those who were able to find these players - whether by intellect or good fortune - should be rewarded by keeping their finds.

As for this strategy of drafting with the future in mind more than the present, this idea seemed to backfire on many owners as well.  I count fourteen players with $3 million salaries who were drafted mostly with the future in mind.  (Note: if a player has been used on a semi-daily basis in the BDBL this year, and hasn't caused his team to suffer in the process, I haven't included this type of player even if he was drafted much higher than his 1998 performance warranted.  This eliminates success stories like Chris Carpenter, Fernando Tatis and Magglio Ordonez from this group, but also eliminates disappointments such as Kerry Wood, Carl Pavano and Ramon Martinez.)  Of these fourteen "bonus babies" drafted in the first ten rounds, there were only three successes (Adrian Beltre, Dennis Reyes and Sean Casey) in my opinion.  The list of disappointments, on the other hand, is long and painful including, among others, Eric Chavez, J.D. Drew, Troy Glaus, Matt Morris, Bruce Chen and Jose Cruz.

If you look at the $2 million "bonus babies", you see a much higher success rate: twelve successes, eleven disappointments.  Still, a 52-percent success rate isn't much greater than simply flipping a coin.  And despite the success the Stamford Zoots' front office has enjoyed while using this method, coin-flipping really has no place in the arena of baseball talent forecasting.

As if the situation didn't look bleak enough for those of us who work long and hard trying to predict the future without the benefit of magic crystals, we eventually turn to those players who will miss more than half of next season due to injury.  Poor rookie performance - or even poor performance from reigning Cy Young hurlers such as Clemens and Glavine - is at least somewhat predictable (if you're a chronic pessimist.)  Injuries, however, are completely random, yet just as devastating (if not more so) to their teams.  The list of players who will be riding the pine most of next year due to fluke injuries includes no less than THIRTY-FOUR players who were drafted in the first ten rounds this past winter.  There are some pretty heavyweight players on this list: Kerry Wood, Tom Gordon, Andres Galaragga, Jason Kendall, Denny Neagle, Matt Morris, Tim Salmon, Moises Alou, Javy Lopez, Jim Edmonds, Kerry Ligtenberg, Ken Caminiti, Eric Davis and Todd Stottlemyre to name not even half of them.

Taking everything into consideration, you end up with the following painfully ugly table:

Round(s)    Worth It    Injured           Disappointment

1           18 (75%)    1 (4%)            5 (21%)

2-5         57 (59%)    13 (14%)    26 (27%)

6-10        69 (58%)    20 (17%)    31 (26%)

First 10 rounds   144 (60%)   34 (14%)    62 (26%)

So basically, in the first ten rounds of last winter's draft, your chances of picking a good, useful, productive player were about 60-40.  Your chances of drafting a player who would far underperform expectations: about 1 in 4.  Your chances of drafting a player in the first ten rounds who would be injured for most of next season: 1 in 7.  Kind of scary, huh? 

Let's face it - baseball is an unpredictable game.  You would think that the top five players for any team would be solid, consistent, predictable stars.  After all, we are only talking about the top 120 players in the game of baseball.  Yet I found only one team whose top five picks all performed as well, or better, than expected: the Ft. Lauderdale Marlins (Alex Rodriguez, Durham, Thome, Damon and Rondell White.)  Ironically, this is the one team no one seems to want.  The team with the worst luck?  The Chicago Black Sox, whose first five picks included two players (Alou and Salmon) who lost most (or all) of this season to injury and one other (Erstad) who has suffered through an unexpectedly awful and disappointing season from beginning to end.  Oddly enough, however, both the Marlins and Black Sox are well situated for success both next year and in the future thanks to moves they made (or didn't make) during the season.

Despite all of these long odds, there are some teams that seem to thrive season after season.  These teams must therefore be either extremely lucky or extremely good.  I think it's a little of both.  Just like it takes outstanding pitching and offense for a team to win in any given year, it takes outstanding luck and knowledge for any given team to win year after year.  That's what makes this hobby of ours so fun, challenging, and yes, maddening.