Congrats to the Trappers for winning their first Boot! Series recap below:

The BLB playoffs are about two weeks away from beginning, so I thought I’d take a look at how the races and matchups are shaping up:

Ale

Edmonton (1) vs Newcastle (4) – Newcastle can still catch Narragansett for the top wildcard slot but they are 3 games back with 6 games in hand heading into the final few weeks of the season.  Assuming this matchup holds it should be an entertaining first round, as Ron has played me tough all season even though I’ve taken the season series 13-5.  Of those 18 games, 11 of them were decided by 2 runs or less, and I managed to go 10-1 in those 11 games. Needless to say, it should be a close and fun series if the standings hold.

Shiner (2) vs Narragansett (3) – Narragansett is only 3.5 games back of the division and with a sweep of Cincinnati can close that gap to 2 games.  These two teams face off one more time this season in the second to last series of the year that could have division title implications.  So far Narragansett owns the season series 5-10, meaning that in the event of a tie in Narragansett would take the division (no one game playoff since the loser of the tie still makes the playoffs as a wild card).

Lager

Ottawa (1) vs Dakota (4) / Woodbury (2) vs Nickel City (3) – Unlike in the Ale where the four playoff teams have been known for some time, the playoff teams and seeding is still up in the air in the Lager.  Ottawa is a lock to win the Bock division, but could still be passed by either Woodbury or Nickel City for the #1 seed.  Meanwhile, Dakota has a 7 game lead for the last wildcard spot over both Sudbury and recently hot Naptown (winners of 7 straight) with 2 series to go to catch up in games played.  Dakota can do well in those 6 games and effectively lock up the wildcard, or do poorly and open the door for either team to claw their way back in.

Meanwhile in the Pilsner, Woodbury owns a slim half game lead over Nickel City for the division with a series in hand (they go 1-2 in their games against Dakota and the division is tied).  Woodbury and Nickel City (just like Shiner and Narragansett) play one last time this season in the schedule’s second to last series.

See the link below to the page showing the updated single season BLB records, through the completion of last season:

https://beerleaguebaseball.com/blb-history/blb-single-season-records/

These include pre-online stats for most categories except batting average allowed and HR/9 (we didn’t track this on the previous leaderboard for some reason and it’d be too much work for me to go back and check now).

In reviewing the league leaders for this season I don’t see any of these changing after the completion of this year.

I just sent out an update on my team for the first half of the season, so I thought I’d do a post on here to review the first half results for the league as a whole:

Ale

In the IPA division, the Trappers hold a 13 game lead on 2nd place Newcastle.  Newcastle is running a mid-90’s win pace and currently holds the 2nd wildcard, 7.5 games up on Bridgeport.

Continue reading →

Figured I’d throw together a predictions post of how I think the MLB season will go down, so that in October we can either a) Mock how bad these look or b) Marvel at how accurate they are. I think “a” is faaaaaar more likely than b :).

Anyway, here we go:

AL East:

Red Sox

Blue Jays

Yankees

Orioles

Rays

Comments – I think the Red Sox are still the team to beat in the division despite David Prices’ health issues.  The Jays need their starters to be good and healthy again this year to finish 2nd and contend for the wild card.

AL Central:

Indians

Tigers

Royals

Twins

White Sox

Comments – Indians should walk all over this division. The Tigers will make some noise but the other 3 teams are on the outside looking in.

AL West:

Astros

Mariners

Rangers

Angels

Athletics

Comments – This division will be close I think.  The Mariners are going all in on pitching and defense (especially in the OF) so it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Wildcards – Jays and Mariners

Non-playoff team that could surprise and make the playoffs – Yankees (they have the young talent, their rotation will make or break the season for them)

NL East

Nationals

Mets

Braves

Marlins

Phillies

Comments – Nationals should win the division though the Mets could rival them if their young SP stay healthy.

NL Central

Cubs

Cardinals

Pirates

Brewers

Reds

Comments – Cubs should walk away with this one though the Cards always seem to find a way to win.

NL West

Dodgers

Giants

Diamondbacks

Rockies

Padres

Comments – I thought the Rockies were a bit of a sleeper team this year until recent injuries to Desmond, Bettis and to a lesser extent Murphy.  The Dodgers are stacked and should hold off the Giants.

Wildcards – Mets and Cardinals

Non playoff team that could surprise and make the playoffs – Diamondbacks (they had a lot of bad/injured seasons from key players last year; simple regression alone should improve them by a lot of wins not to mention the possibility of some of their young guys taking steps forward).

AL Champ – Boston

NL Champ – I’ll go with a surprise pick and say Mets on the strength of their SP

World Series Champ – Boston (sadly).

Awards:

AL MVP – Mookie Betts (tough to bet against Trout, but Betts is good and will be on a playoff team again)

Sleeper – Josh Donaldson (if the Jays make the WC he’ll likely be the main reason)

Dark Horse – Carlos Correa

NL MVP – Kris Bryant just edging out Bryce Harper

Sleeper – Yoenis Cespedes

Dark Horse – Yasiel Puig (make or break year for him I think; the talent is there)

AL Cy Young – Corey Kluber

Sleeper – Yu Darvish (health is the only question mark)

Dark Horse – Marcus Stroman (Jays fan here, but he legit made some changes in the 2nd half to his arsenal that I’m thinking could carry over into him having a big year)

NL Cy Young – Clayton Kershaw (never bet against him if healthy)

Sleeper – Noah Syndergaard

Dark Horse – Stephen Strasburg (only a darkhorse in the sense of health risks)

AL ROY – Andrew Benintendi

NL ROY – Dansby Swanson

Feel free to share your predictions/comments on my predictions in the comments!

Here’s what $116 worth of salary has gotten Newcastle through 9 games.

Francisco Lindor  .171/.227/.244

Freddie Freeman  .147/.310/.176

Buster Posey  .143/.302/.400

Also, Kendrys Morales didn’t wanna feel left out: .167/.231/.278

Thankfully Khris Davis has hit 6 homers in 9 games.

The Edmonton Trappers visited Newcastle tonight to kick off the 2017 BLB season:

Game 1 – Newcastle 4, Edmonton 0

Newcastle jumps on Rick Porcello early getting 3 runs in the first (including HRs by Posey and Davis), and Arrieta shuts the door for the 4-hit CGSO.

Game 2 – Edmonton 9, Newcastle 7

Wild game 2 as Newcastle jumped out to an early lead again only for Edmonton to come back to take a 7-4 lead.  Newcastle didn’t quit though as they came back to tie it on the strength of a 2 run HR by Kendrys Morales off of Jam RP Tyler Thornburg.  It stayed tied until the 11th when Edmonton got 2 runs off of Newcastle closer Dellin Betances. Chapman shut the door for his first save of the year.

Game 3 – Edmonton 2, Newcastle 1

Edmonton’s Ian Kennedy was caught scuffing the ball in the 3rd, earning an early shower and a 9 game suspension so the bullpen was strained in this one.  Newcastle got a run off of Bowman and the game stayed 1-0 until the top of the 9th when Edmonton scored 2 thanks to a HR by Jackie Bradley (jam turned it into a deep drive, but 92 was rolled) and an RBI double by Schimpf.  Andrew Miller closed out the narrow series win in the bottom of the 9th.

Great series to kick off the year, 3 close games. Look forward to hearing more reports about opening week games!

Mike

So, how did everyone feel about their auctions? I’ll kick things off:

I went in needing a starting 1B, 2B, and either 3B or DH (if I got a 3B I was gonna move Jose Ramirez to DH). I also wanted an ace RH RP (jam or very good non-jam), defensive SS to spell off Bogaerts, and other ‘pen and bench pieces as needed.

Donaldson ($33) – I was surprised by this and feeling great about this price until Beltre went for $18 later. I had them both jotted down for $35/40 of my budget. I like Donaldson better for future value than Beltre but Buneta got the better value for this year for sure. Still elated with this pick.

Pedroia ($26) – I was prepared to go into the low 30’s for Pedroia so I’m thrilled with this price too. He fits my needs and park well with his good defense, even splits, and the hit and run rating.

Belt ($28) – After dropping out on Freeman I knew I needed to get Belt. I had him marked down for $30 so while this isn’t a bargain, it’s not an overpay either in my mind.

Thornburg ($19) – Paid a few more dollars than I wanted for Thornburg but I knew I had the room with the savings above. Great opposite jam RH RP card.

Phelps ($9) – Also paid a few more bucks for Phelps than I wanted; I actually wanted Devenski but we saw how that went. Phelps has 5 spot starts too so that took away my need to get a decent #6 SP in the auction as he can fill in for the occasional injury.

Martin ($4) – Needed a solid 4th OF/CF and dropped out on Gardner and Pillar. Would have prefered Martin in the 1-2 dollar range but $4 isn’t too bad.

Reyes ($1) – Surprised I got Jose for a buck. Kills lefties (limited) and plays a few positions, good speed so can be a pinch runner too.

Treinen ($2) – Solid power arm for 2 bucks.

Butera ($1) – Surprised I got him for a buck as well. Limited but good bat vs RHP. With Lucroy I won’t need him much but he could PH from time to time.

Goins ($1) – This was the one guy I wanted from the mid-point of the draft on, as I love his A range at SS and I’ll need that with Bogaerts and his C range. Glad to get him for a buck, would have went a few dollars higher.

Ryan Schimpf ($3) – Ran out of guys to nominate at the end so threw him out as a sleeper/ringer bench card. For some reason I thought he had the % limit so when I noticed he didn’t I threw him out there.

Overall I’m very happy with this draft. A few overpays on the RPs but glad I got slight bargains on elite infielders to fill out my team. Not sure what grade I give myself in the report card but I’m happy nonetheless.

Now it’s your guys’ turn: Grade/comment on your drafts in the comments!

Mike

Folks,

So the BLB draft is TOMORROW, FEB 25, at 9 AM MST/11 AM EST. Hopefully all of you knew that but if not, surprise!

Please plan to show up a bit early, like 8:45 AM MST. Usually there’s a bunch of us on there chatting away and this way we aren’t scrambling to email a lot of guys trying to figure out if they are running late.

Note that I confirmed with Fantrax that there is no computer bidder (unlike on the CBS site). You can override the $1 minimum bid for players in your queue so that would be your only hope for winning non-$1 players. The only time your team would bid on a player is when you are nominating. So definitely don’t miss the auction!

Draft Information/Key Links

First of all, here is the link to the Fantrax site (which most of you have signed up for already):

FANTRAX

Second, click below for the final draft list:

blb-draft-list-final-feb-21-2017

For the new guys I wanted to point out a few things as reminders: Continue reading →

As we head into our 10th BLB season, I thought it would be a good time to review how the league got started, as well as some other interesting facts from our history.

League Creation

The BLB was first conceived of in one of those old MSN Messenger chats we used to have all of the time in the EJMA (for those that don’t know, the EJMA is a longtime league (25+ years) that many current and past BLB members are a part of).  This occurred in the fall of 2007, and I believe it was Christian Sumner’s idea to create a salary cap league/offshoot of the EJMA.

In reviewing my old emails (it pays to never delete anything!), the league ownership, structure, and rules were put together in early 2008 in advance of our first draft at the end of March 2008.  The man who spearheaded efforts to get the league off the ground also ended up becoming our first Commissioner: Brian Feig.  Despite how he ended up departing the league, and despite how many of us feel about his personality, there is no denying this one simple fact: The BLB would not exist today without Brian’s tireless efforts in the early going to recruit owners, set up the rules, and arrange for the auction.

The league began (and currently exists) as a 20 team league; however, it nearly started as a 15 team league.  According to those early emails (and this is a fact that I had forgotten), we were all set to run with the 15 committed owners before Brian got last minute responses to his post on the DLB message board site from five additional owners.  One other tidbit is that in our first season we excluded four MLB teams from the player pool, but we elected to draft from all 30 the following year for ease of drafting/auctioning.

The following table was sent out by Brian (I modified it slightly) and highlights our original ownership roster and team names:

Out of our 20 current owners, eight were with us in our inaugural season.  Six (Craig, Ron E, Ron W, Mike J, Brad, Mike S) have been in the league every season while the other two (Jon Buneta and Chris Minton) departed and subsequently came back.  Interestingly, only two franchises have never changed team names as the Edmonton Trappers and Sudbury Northern Ales have stood the test of time (and/or have owners that dislike change!).

The First Auction

The BLB’s first auction was held March 29, 2008.  We utilized a now-defunct site called fantasyauctioneers.com.  Perhaps one of the reasons it is now defunct is that the AI was HORRIBLE, which we discovered when we had 4 AWOL owners that were forced by the computer to bid outrageous prices for several superstar players until they ran out of money.  Examples of this include David Wright for $83, JJ Putz for $47, and Hanley Ramirez for $71 to name a few.

Not every high price player went to a computer drafted team though, as Ron Erdmann made sure to get Miguel Cabrera for $69, a fact that I ribbed him on in the draft report card that year.  My credibility was then undercut by the fact I traded for Miggy mere months later :).

One other interesting thing we did in the first year with the contracts was we allowed teams to select a certain number of players as 1 year, 2 year, or 3 year (plus possible extension) terms.  The logic behind this rule was, as a league just starting out, this would spread out the amount of players with expiring contracts rather than having every player expire after our third season.

The First Season & Inaugural Champion

The first season (as well as several after) were played with the old computer (ie Windows, not web based) version of the card/dice game.  For those who never played in a league pre-online, basically what you had to do was send “instructions” to each of your opponents for your road games for how to play your team. The instructions would include your 3 starting pitchers, your starting lineups (vs L/R), instructions for pinch hitting, bullpen use, defensive subs, etc. You’d also receive instructions from your opponents and then play the home half of the series. You’d then have to export the stats for the 3 game series and send them to your opponent (while receiving stats from them as well) and then copy them into excel to tabulate overall stats and W-L records.  If that sounds tedious (especially given how seamlessly the online game plays), well, it was.  Literally the only benefit I can think of for the old way of doing things was the flexibility to be able to bang out a half a dozen series when you had a free afternoon to play Dynasty, rather than needing to schedule games versus your opponent online.

Anyway, much like he did before the season to get our league going, Brian worked tirelessly throughout the first season to get everyone to play games, send instructions, and report records.  He dealt with a few owners that dropped out mid season as well.  Our season concluded in early/mid October with playoffs running through mid-November that year.  In the end, it was Ale League Champion Sudbury who ended up defeating the 2nd wildcard team (with an 81-81 record no less) Clearwater (managed by Howard Cake) to win the first ever BLB title!

Subsequent Pre-Online Seasons

The league kept rolling for the next three years as a cards and dice/Windows game before Dynasty’s online platform launched with the 2012 season.

In 2009, two longtime owners joined the league as Dan Treuden and Norm Larrett took over vacant franchises.  Sudbury managed to repeat as champion coming off a 101 win season.

2010 saw the BLB title remain in Canada and in the Stockhaus family, as Mike’s son Nick managed to win the title following a 107 win season.  This was also the year that five (!) Lager League teams won over 100 games, resulting in Granite City (managed by Ron Wright) missing the playoffs despite winning 105 games.  In a related note, only one (!) Ale League team managed to win more than 82 games (that would be Titletown, with 105; Jackson Park won 82 and that was it for above .500 teams).

2010 was also the year that I stepped in for Brian as Commish of the BLB, a role that I’ve held ever since.

In 2011, the BLB title finally left Canada, as Craig’s Titletown Corporate Raiders won the title in our final pre-online season.

The Move Online

Starting with the 2012 season, the BLB switched to Dynasty’s online web based platform.  The beginning of the season was held up by the late release of the website, and we had no other options for playing our games that year as Dynasty elected to discontinue the Windows version of the game that year.  We didn’t end up starting our season until the end of April that year, but with the online game not requiring you to wait for instructions/results to finalize records we were able to finish our season by the end of October which isn’t too bad.  Our first online champion ended up being the Rolling Rocks of Old Latrobe (managed by Aaron Peck).

2013 was a good year for me as the Edmonton Trappers set a (still standing) BLB regular season record for wins, with 121.  Alas, the Trappers ended up losing in the finals as Brian Feig’s St Louis Black Crowns ended up winning their first BLB title.

2014 was marred by the decision to remove a member (Brian Feig) from the BLB (for reasons of verbally abusive personal conduct and threats to play an entire season on autopilot) by the process of a 3/4 majority vote of league members.  I won’t rehash the entire history of what happened here but suffice to say the situation was a dark period in the league’s history, one I wish had turned out differently, and one I hope never to have to repeat again.

As for on the field results, Ron Wright followed up a 102 win season with his first BLB title.

2015 saw another first time BLB title winner, as Brad Pike’s Shiner Bock Rams ended up winning the title that year.

In 2016, Mike Stockhaus guided his Sudbury Northern Ale’s to their unprecedented third BLB title (in only nine seasons!).  Sudbury had an incredible regular season too as they challenged Edmonton’s record for wins, finishing three short with 118.

The Future

So what does the future hold for the BLB? Regrettably, we have had some owner turnover this offseason, but I am excited for the new blood we’ve been able to recruit from other leagues.  Joe and Larry have acquited themselves well in the winter Retro league that many BLBers take part in, and I know Rich will make a fine owner in the BLB from years of competing against him in the EJMA.

In 2017 we’ll be migrating to a new auction site at Fantrax.  The CBS site served us reasonably well from 2009 until last year, but several owners had been complaining about glitches for a few years now so it is time to try something new.

As for my future as the Commish, well, I’ll keep doing this for as long as you guys will have me! While it is a lot of work and at times can feel like babysitting (though less so since 2014, hmmm), I do enjoy running the league and trying to make the BLB one of the best Dynasty leagues out there!