Newsletter for Games Through 4-15

Commentary

So I evidently set up the timezone on the Microsoft Azure server as being about 5 hours ahead of California time, which as near as I can tell is somewhere in the Atlantic ocean…you’d figure that would be a natural advantage for the Mariners…or Rays…or Marlins…Marlins and Rays were both in positive WOR (wins over reality) territory, so I guess the advantage goes to the sea creatures…Big news of the week was Danny Wildes and his Atlanta Braves, who finished first in the league at 4.5 games ahead of the real team and are first in the NL East…I’ll add games back to the standings by next week but for now I’m glad not to have to confront how far behind I am after a single week….Jeremy Moore’s  Cardinals were just as impressive, at +4 WOR and in first in the NL Central…and Al Benedek has the Padres in first in the NL West…that warms the heart of every baseball fan with any love for a small market team…AJ Minter of Atlanta pitched 11 innings, recorded 11 strikeouts, in 11 games, and registered 11 saves…that’s my vote for player of the week…another feature that I don’t have up and running yet…he was born on 9/2, which of course adds to 11…In the AL, Boston, Minnesota, and Anaheim are in first place, just like they are in reality….KC, Oakland, and Baltimore are each 3 games ahead of their actual teams…Alan Minsky finished +2 WOR in his first week in the ASFBL…so he’s on track to finish 48 games ahead of the actual Rays….which would be a league record…and may be possible, the way the Rays are playing…Matt Chapman, an actual and fantasy Oakland Athletic, and more importantly former CSUF Titan, leads the ASFBL with 10 homers…the Athletic’s have shoulder patches with pictures of elephants, which is true to his CSUF roots…JP Crawford of the Phillies leads the league in sacrifices with 6…since he’s hitting .147, that’s really finding a way to help your team out…no fantasy player has walked more than Mookie Betts, who has watched his way to first base 24 times…he’s only scored 9 times….Jameson Taillon of the Pirates started the season with 27 scoreless innings…Keynan Middelton of the Angles has tied Rick Porcello for the ASFBL lead in wins with 4….but Middleton is a reliever…no ASFBL games were won or lost because one team had more than 6 trips to the mound….that’s an improvement over MLB…and the fantasy Trevor Bauer made no complaints about shorter warmup times…Thanks to all of you for being so patient this first week, and generally for being so cool…I’m really looking forward to this year!

Technical notes

Per our vote last year, we’ll merge the stats of guys with low MLB AB or low IP totals with thier AAA stats, starting next week.  Also, next week that stats will start adjusting….and remember that we have an over-use cap of 150%, so anyone under 150% of their real AB or IP won’t be adjusted down due to over-use…and remember that it’s a long season…and as a random aside, when I first ran this thing in 1991 on an x286 computer, the games took 90 seconds…they were down to under a second last year…now I am running them on a desktop but saving to the server, and that takes 30 seconds….All waivers for week 1 were erased, and everyone starts with 2 free waivers…from here on out, if you move a guy off of the active fantasy roster you have to either waive or protect him, and remember that if you have a guy on the DL you have to move him off the active roster to get the free waiver…

Feats and Failures

Ildemaro Vargas of ARI had 5 hits against SFG on 9/25/2017
Matt Chapman of OAK struck out 4 times against SEA on 9/26/2017
Domingo Santana of MIL had 6 RBI against CIN on 9/26/2017
Addison Russell of CHC struck out 4 times against STL on 9/26/2017
Javier Baez of CHC struck out 4 times against STL on 9/26/2017
Randal Grichuk of STL struck out 4 times against CHC on 9/26/2017
CHC and STL played 16.5 innings on 9/26/2017
Sal Romano of CIN had 13 strikeouts against MIL on 9/27/2017
Cliff Pennington of LAA struck out 4 times against CWS on 9/27/2017
Logan Morrison of TBR struck out 4 times against BAL on 9/29/2017
Corey Dickerson of TBR had 5 hits against BAL on 9/29/2017
Kris Bryant of CHC robbed 3 hits against CIN on 9/29/2017
Chris Sale of BOS had 13 strikeouts against HOU on 9/30/2017
Mike Morse of SFG struck out 4 times against SDP on 9/30/2017
Rafael Lopez of TOR struck out 4 times against NYY on 10/1/2017
Madison Bumgarner of COL had 11 strikeouts against LAD on 10/1/2017
Justin Verlander of DET had 11 strikeouts against NYY on 10/3/2017
Corey Kluber of COL had 11 strikeouts against MIL on 10/7/2017
Stephen Strasburg of WAS had 11 strikeouts against ARI on 10/23/2017
Max Scherzer of WAS had 11 strikeouts against ARI on 10/24/2017
Kenta Maeda of BAL had 11 strikeouts against HOU on 10/26/2017
Stephen Strasburg of WAS had 12 strikeouts against ARI on 10/27/2017
Stephen Strasburg of WAS had 11 strikeouts against BAL on 11/6/2017
Max Scherzer of WAS had 13 strikeouts against BAL on 11/8/2017

Advertisements

ASFBL OPENING DAY!

Quick “Dry Run” update — the majority of lineups weren’t updated by owners, which is not a big deal (nobody really needed to do the dry run), but setting them correctly plus the normal range of first-day hiccups meant that it took me longer to set up the dry run than usual. I did manage to get some games pushed through the system (everything seemed to work well), but then had to delete them all to do this morning’s updates.

WHICH BRINGS US TO THIS MORNING! Break out your digital bunting, today is opening day! Not a single owner will be prevented from entering lineups due to weather!

Quick reminders:

1) The only 4 links you really need to click are for team settings (you’ll get the defaults if you skip it), rosters, lineups, and the “set rotation” link.  Working on a dashboard that shows when everything is good to go, but in the meantime just make sure you have everything set correctly on the rosters, lineups, and rotation links.

2) All waivers from the first week will be cleared for next week, so you can add and drop at will and just waive the players. Then I’ll delete all the waivers. This is easier than coding the program to skip the waivers but only for the first week. Starting next week everyone will get 2 free waivers.

3) No matter who you are, how much experience you have, or what your karmic status is in the number of lives lived or karma points in the current one, your catching situation is better than mine. Freaking Plawecki is on the DL.

4) Lineup deadline is tomorrow nigh, April 17 at midnight. So enter your lineups and then do your taxes 🙂 Results will be posted Wednesday AM. Changes made after midnight will be accepted as a courtesy, but we make no promise that your lineup at midnight won’t be the one used for the games.

5) I may be making random coding changes during the day; let me know if you hit access problems.

Good luck to all this week! May all your hitters swing the bat like Ohtani and may all your pitchers throw the ball like, well, Ohtani.

Quick announcement — opening day

Real quick — Opening day will in a week. Stats uploaded on Monday the 16th, lineups due on Tuesday the 17th, games played through Sunday the 15th.

We’ll do a dry run the weekend before to work out the preseason kinks.  With luck, I’ll have stuff uploaded by Friday, but maybe not till Saturday.

 

Opening Day Stuff!

On this, our most important secular holiday (baseball season’s opening day), I’ll welcome you to the ASFBL spring training.  Since we don’t start  until a few weeks into the season, the next few weeks are when I try to work out the kinks and get the 1s and 0s into mid-season form.

BIG NEWS: The website has been overhauled.  The new one is up and prototyping; please take a moment and test your login, give it a spin, try to break things.  It’s set up with the last lineup from the last week of last season, so you should have something to fiddle with.  ALL of this stuff will be wiped out on opening day, so don’t enter anything meaningful.  Waive players (and revoke them), enter a bogus trade or two, fiddle with the rotation, play with the lineups (we finally have drag-and-drop capability)!  The curb appeal should be better, the pages more responsive, and under the hood we have switched servers and databases and upgraded the program code into a language Microsoft has not left for dead.  Box scores are the only link that hasn’t been completed yet.

The new site is at: https://asfbl.azurewebsites.net/

All he links off of this blog will soon be updated, but use the link above for the test run.  Annoyingly, I’ll be rolling out more changes over the weekend.  Very soon the old website at godaddy (http://www.asfbl.net/) will be disabled.

COMMUNICATION: The best way to email everyone in the group is asfbl@googlegroups.com.  All owner individual emails are available after login.  I’ll try to get direct email blasts through the site directly, but many email systems start to mark the incoming messages as spam.  Hopefully the shift to the new server can avoid that, but that won’t be ready until closer to ASFBL opening day.  New owners should be added but if you get an invite from google it’s safe to accept.  You can, of course, create your own list from the emails listed on the website.

OPENING DAY: Leo and I will use our normal method of consulting the schedule, astrological chart, and witch doctor to announce opening day.  We have 3 new rules changes for the coming year (can trade free waivers, AAA+MLB stats will be combined for MLB players with low AB & IP, 40-man roster expansions), but none will matter for the first week.  Look for announcement soon.

Hot stove: First post of 2018!

The following teams are available in ASFBL, A Simulation Fantasy Baseball League:

1. Pittsburgh

2. Texas

3. Toronto

4. Detroit

5. Tampa Bay

Entry fee is $100 for the 2018 season and you start with the Opening Day roster of your chosen team. Unlimited trading and use of AAA players are a few of the many highlights of this simulation league that follows the real-life schedule of your selected team.

Check out the Rules and Technical Info above and then then contact co-commissioner Leo Leckie at yellowstone.leo@gmail.com to acquire your team today!

Chuck Ballingall and Sports Illustrated

https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/10/24/los-angeles-dodgers-world-series-houston-astros

World Series Wrapup

GAMES: The upstart Baltimore Orioles were facing a Washington team that had run the NL playoffs rolling off 8 wins without a loss…and utterly unintimidated, they took the first two games, in Washington, allowing only 5 runs in 18 innings….the Nationals got the wake-up call and won 3 straight, ending with a 2-0, 4-hit shutout that Alberts closed with 2 strikeouts in 2 perfect innings of work…Baltimore took game 6, with Chen beating Scherzer in a 4-HR efforts (and with fantasy imitating reality a little bit)…that set up a decisive game 7, where the Nats got a complete game shutout from Strasberg and homers from Zimmerman and Murphy to claim the championship.  With Strasberg, Murphy, and Zimmerman carrying the load in the final week, it was a clear reminder that sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make 🙂

Mark Chen has been in the league since 2002 and managed the Orioles every year, making the playoffs each of the last 5….he put up a +20 WOR his 4th year in the league, and took his first World Series appearance to 7 games to close off a mad, dark horse run.  He’s always got a good word to share on email and seems to genuinely have fun every year.  Congrats on another fine season, Mark!

Andy Somers joined on in 2010 and has made the playoffs in every season he’s been in the league…in Nuke LaLouche fashion he has announced his presence with authority, winning his 3rd League Championship since he’s been here and his 3rd in 5 years…he’s never had a season with fewer than 89 wins…and he’s a guy who always seems genuinely interested in trades that make both teams better.  Someday, Andy, you’ll have to explain to me how my game works so that I can give you a little competition in the division 🙂

That’s a wrap on a great season…THANK YOU to all of you for helping to share my crazy idea, and a special thanks to Leo for keeping all the gears run and the wheels from falling off.  Couldn’t do it without it, friend.

Enjoy the rest of the actual playoffs, and we’ll see you next spring!