Final Real Rankings for 2017

NOTES

Congratulations to Kyle on winning his first regular season championship and completing the very difficult “worst to first” transition with almost no statistical support from the Real Rankings. Heartbreaking loss for Donkey, who has been a mainstay in the Actual Standings and Real Ranking all season, but who fell victim to a streaming buzzsaw in the revitalized One Nut Wonders.

What an incredible end to the season – by far the most suspenseful in league history.  Think about what we saw:

·         A perceived three-way battle for the final two spots by One Nut, Ring, and Montezumas, which was won by… All three of them as Thor’s gets booted the minute Luis Severino converts the final start of the week into a QS and shuts down a BOS offense to give Keep Off Groin a 0.14 lead in ERA.  Sal Ramono nearly converted a QS earlier, but fell 1/3 of an inning short.

·         Thor, boosted by 2.5 games thanks to Stroman missing the innings limit one week, ultimately lands in 9th, where he would’ve already been had Stroman reached the inning limit.  While unfortunate for Shomphe, it would’ve been awful to have a team miss the playoffs due to such a direct and silly mistake.

·         In the process of attempting to battle his way back from the depths of the standings only a few weeks ago, One Nut sweeps one of the best teams of the past few seasons in Donkey Punchers, vaulting him from 9th to 6th – and knocking the long-time top seed to second place.

·         The top seed, with 25% of the winnings coming his way, is Kyle, who finishes the year SEVENTH in Real Rankings. This shows a level of luck never witnessed before.

·         In such a tight and meaningful battle for playoffs spots, One Nut, Ring, and Montezumas post the three highest Real Rankings for the week.

This season tested the viability of the Real Rankings in a way we have never seen, not even close.  SIX teams ended with Real Rankings three or more places away from the actual standings. My only explanation is that, thanks to the 10-day DL and a shockingly busy trade market, there was more roster turnover than ever before, meaning the teams that registered scores in week 1 were far different than the roster at the end of week 21.

That said, the Real Rankings weren’t too far off in terms of reflecting the playoff picture. The Real Rankings would’ve replaced One Nut with Thor, but otherwise the constituency of 1-8th were the same, if not ordered correctly.

In addition to being the top Real Ranking teams to end the season, the same three teams dominated the final four weeks of the regular season. Coming in fourth is your regular season champion.

	LAST FOUR WEEKS
1	Ring of Fire	5.05
2	Montezuma's Revenge	5.55
3	One Nut Wonders	5.75
4	The Angry Pirates	6.38
5	Cowhide Joyride	6.55
6	Stroman my Cobb Odor	6.68
7	Livin' on a Correa	6.83
8	Donkey Punchers	7.25
9	Sexual Napalm	7.73
10	Thor's Hammered	7.83
11	Anal Hershiser	8.03
12	Keep Off Groin	8.20
13	Brokeback Moundmen	8.80
14	Moose is Loose!	9.38

Among the playoffs teams, Anal has slid the most as the regular season came to an end. Donkey didn’t do much better either. Both teams appear at risk of early exits if their teams don’t turn it around quickly.

If you look at the ranking over the second half of the season, you see some rather severe slides by LOC and Anal.  Meanwhile, the last 4 and last 10 numbers confirm that Stroman might have been better off buying instead of a selling.  Jeff could’ve easily been one of the hotter teams heading into the playoffs. 

While it doesn’t often get discussed the “VAR” column in the overall rankings calculates the variance among a set of values. Essentially, it shows who has been the most volatile and most stable for the season.  This number should give Jeff some relief that his confusion on how to move forward with his team was warranted. The most volatiles teams were Stroman (4.3), Montezumas (4.2), and One Nut (4.1). Stroman decided to sell and his team still competed; Montezumas roster always looked better than the production; and One Nut decided to buy when the numbers said to sell. 

Meanwhile, VAR shows the most consistent teams were Thor (1.7), Keep Off Groin (1.8), and Moose (1.9).  For Moose, this a horrible affirmation of what was a lost season that started with missing the draft entirely. For KOG, it supports Dan’s decision to sell, as there were probably more parts needed than he could acquire to compete. And for Thor, this seems like just the opposite end of Angry Pirates luck spectrum – his team competed consistently and was incredibly balanced (6th place for hitting and pitching), despite losing Syndergaard early on and dropping Conforto and Gallo outright. Shomphe had all the makings of a playoff team.

	FINAL 10 WEEKS
1	Donkey Punchers	5.87
2	Montezuma's Revenge	5.89
3	Ring of Fire	6.29
4	The Angry Pirates	6.41
5	One Nut Wonders	6.51
6	Cowhide Joyride	6.75
7	Stroman my Cobb Odor	6.87
8	Sexual Napalm	7.21
9	Thor's Hammered	7.31
10	Livin' on a Correa	7.36
11	Anal Hershiser	7.65
12	Keep Off Groin	8.07
13	Brokeback Moundmen	8.51
14	Moose is Loose!	9.22

With that in mind, the first six picks in the draft will be:  (1) Thor, (2) S. Napalm, (3) Stroman, (4) Keep off Groin, (5) Brokeback, (6) Moose. At least there’s that, Shomphe. Gibby was two games away from having the first and second overall pick (if Montezumas ended 9th).

Five teams hit the transaction limit of 60  and Thor was 59. We will need to do something about the transaction limit next season. I’ve started to at least question whether one is necessary. While I don’t like streaming your way to victory, the lack of quality pitching this season makes this practice even less likely to be successful. But do we want teams streaming rosters on a daily basis? Conceivably, you could dedicate spots just to matchups. It would not be difficult to get 162 games from the catching position simply by streaming the position in perpetuity (I know I would consider this). One thing I am quite sure of it whether the team is active or passive managed has little to no correlation on the success of the team.  After that, the question is how liberal we want to allow game play to be.

With most teams rostering 8-12 starters and so few of them producing, we may see far more SPs kept than every before. Traditionally, the league has been pretty consistent at around 30% SPs and the rest hitters.

Three DL spots seemed to be plenty, but there could be an argument for more. We could consider allowing more picks to be traded during the season (maybe just restrict 7-9). There’s a few other things that could be tightened up, but now is a good time to note anything you would like to see change in the league since it’s fresh in your mind.

Every team (including non-playoff teams) gets three adds per playoff week. There are no injury exemptions this year.

Finally, if you are planning on leaving the league or even just considering it, please let me know asap. You don’t have to let anyone else in the league know, but it helps me plan going forward and allows me to start gauging interest from people who have previously expressed interest in joining the league