OFF THE WALL
THE SECOND SEASON
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Before we get into how the "Second Season" will play out, we need to address how the Regular season ended.
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In the past, MLB has needed to employ tiebreakers to determine who was going to the Post-Season. While they have eliminated that process, this season was altered by Hurricane Helene and the postponement of 2 regular season games involving the Braves and Mets.
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There have been questions why those games - which were played on Monday - would not count in FullSlate. Simply put, there are 27 weeks in the 2024 season and they run from Monday thru Sunday, ending on Sunday September 29. The cumulative stats for those games would not have been provided by our service until Monday October 7, necessitating a Week 28.
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Keep in mind, that during the regular season there are postponements where games are not made up until later in the season. And, FullSlate teams are deprived of those player stats for the weeks when they were postponed.
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So, now the task at hand is your playoff teams. PostSeason rosters have been posted, and those players claimed over the final 4 weeks of the season have been removed.
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It was previously shown on the News page that playoff lineups were due on Monday October 7 ... that has been revised to Monday October 14 to allow for those owners who use the US mail to submit lineups.
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There are different rules for the PostSeason, and they are addressed on the website by going to the Downloadable Forms tab, and selecting the PostSeason Rules & Instructions doc.
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Results of the LDS will be posted on October 28, followed by results of the LCS on November 4.
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Good luck to all!
EVALUATING PLAYERS
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It seems the "good old days" of judging a player's ability by looking at Batting Average, Home Runs, Earned Run Average and Strikeouts is long gone.​​
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With StatCast and AI now firmly entangled in creating metrics and evaluating players, it can get way beyond the stuff Billy Martin and Walter Alston used.
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So, what are the metrics that have become the (latest) industry norm? There are a LOT of them, but according to some of the premier sites, for hitters, it's wOBA and WRC+ and for pitchers, it's FIP. But, make no mistake, these are only 3 of many, and Saber metricians argue over which of any of them is the "perfect" predictor.
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So, what are these?
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wOBA - is Weighted on Base Average. Designed to measure a player's overall offensive contributions per plate appearance. It is formed from taking the observed run values of various offensive events, dividing by a player's plate appearances, and scaling the result to be on the same scale as on-base percentage. Unlike statistics like OPS, wOBA attempts to assign the proper value for each type of hitting event.
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WRC+ - is Weighted Runs Created adjusted to important external factors - like ballparks or eras. It measures a player’s total offensive value by estimating the number of runs they create. It is adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average.
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FIP - is Fielding Independant Pitching . It is
intended to measure a pitcher's effectiveness based only on statistics that do not involve fielders (except the catcher). These include home runs allowed, strikeouts, hit batters, walks, and, more recently, fly ball percentage, ground ball percentage, and (to a much lesser extent) line drive percentage. By focusing on these statistics and ignoring what happens once a ball is put in play, which – on most plays – the pitcher has little control over, FIP claims to offer a clearer picture of the pitcher's true ability.