Reversal of Fortune

As my team sits at 1-6, I was hoping to find some interesting fact that falls under the category of “Misery Loves Company”. Luckily, I found one. Only one team that had a winning record last year has a winning record this year. Here are last year’s .500 or better teams with their 2015 win/loss records in parentheses.

2014:

Applebaum (2-5)

Jacoby (3-4)

Randell (2-5)

Carlin (1-5)

Wallman (2-4)

Beilis (7-0)

Teams that have won the championship this decade(Lapine, Pollock, Harris, Jacoby, Applebaum) are a combined 11-24.

The flip side to this is teams who had a season to forget in 2014 are having much more success this year. Captains who  were 9-13 or worse in 2014 are 26-11 in 2015.

Power Rankings

Here are the power rankings with no commentary. Hopefully I'll be able to write something up this weekend:

1. Goldarb

2. Beilis

3. Younger

4. Bykofsky

5. Paladino

6. Feldman

7. Harris

8. Marrone

Championship Indicators

This championship prediction is based solely on recent trends. I acknowledge that most of these trends are based partly on coincidences. For instance, it’s been awhile since a championship team has had a member from the previous year’s winning team as well. Does this mean any team with a member from 2014 Applebaum is less likely to win it all in 2015? Of course not. But just for fun, let’s look at recent championship trends to help determine the most likely champions of the 2015 season.

Here are the facts I find most interesting:

1.  Only one team since 2004(and possibly even further back than that) has won the championship while drafting a shortstop in the first round.

                   That’s amazing! Only 2013 Team Jacoby bucked the trend when they won with Darren Kay as their first round pick. Just look at other recent first round picks of championship teams:

2014 Applebaum(JZ)

2012 Harris (Callow)

2011 Pollock (JZ)

2010 Lapine (Roland)

2009 Randell (Greenspan)

2008 Mesmer (Mesmer)

You see my point. It’s pretty incredible. This year the teams who drafted a non-shortstop in the first round are:

Applebaum, Jacoby, Feldman, Goldfarb, Carlin, Pollock, Wallman, Bykofsky.

2.       Since 2002 there have only been two players to appear on back to back championship teams. It hasn’t happened since 2010.

First of all, yes, it’s sad that I researched this information. Being that we drafted Herm Suarez and Ken Glazier this year, we don’t believe drafting returning champions is a curse, but it is an interesting coincidence. There should be no reason why a winner can’t repeat the feat the following year. Law of averages says when a team of 13 players is spread across many teams the following year, one of them is bound to repeat as champions. For whatever reason, it just has not worked out that way. Teams that have zero members of last year champions are:

Harris, Younger, Lapine, Beilis, Feldman, Goldfarb, Carlin, Granese, Marrone

3.       For the last five years, the championship team ranked in the top half of runs scored.

I did not project how many runs each team would score this year, but we can at least look at the recent trends for the only two teams who fit criteria 1 and 2.; Teams Carlin and Feldman.

Team Carlin Offensive Ranks 2010-2014:

2010: 4^th

2011: 4^th

2012: 9^th

2013: 6^th

2014: 3^rd

Team Feldman Offensive Ranks 2010-2014:

2010: 14^th

2011: 16^th

2012: 4^th

2013: 3^rd

2014: 13^th

Although Feldman has had a few seasons near the top of the offensive ranks, Carlin has been there more consistently.

This is why after looking at the three key indicators that have (largely by mere coincidences) predicted recent winners of the Marlboro Softball league, Team Carlin is the favorite to win the 2015 Marlboro Softball Championship.

As far as my own personal prediction, I have to go with the team that is #1 in my own pre-season power rankings, Team Younger.

My team will be happy to prove my own prognostics wrong. So will your team. Let the games begin.

Pre-Season power rankings

Instead of doing a league wide breakdown, I’m only going to focus on the top 8 teams. This counts as the pre-season power rankings which will be updated next right before the first Wednesday night softball game.

1. Team Younger:  While it’s no secret that my brother and I tend to draft more offense laden teams, we appreciate that drafting pitching and defense is a safe way of ensuring, at minimum, a consistently competitive team. Clampffer/Kay/Younger gives this team the best up the middle defense in the league. The rest of their defense is above average as well, but the player who will make the biggest difference is newcomer Joe Joroski. I feel his outfield presence will help Team Younger overcome what might be just a moderately successful offense and mirror what Team Younger looked like in 2012 and what Team Jacoby put together in 2013 and 2014.

2. Team Harris: The big news story at the draft(ar at least from watching it on the computer) was the trade that made Dave Silverberg, one of the most feared sluggers  in the league, essentially a 4^th rounder. They may have the best 1-5 in the league and with late round pop from Messinger and the Trittos, the lineup has good depth as well. Defense is solid, if not spectacular. Getting Kastner as their pitcher in the 5^th round is a great bargain. One of the best teams in the league.

3. Team Pollock:  I’m aware I’m putting our team higher than where most experts have us, but let me start with an anecdote. After a fantasy baseball draft around 10 years ago, I asked my friend, who now has a second job writing for FanGraphs, how he felt about his team.  He said confidently, “If my own projections don’t have my team as being the best then something went horribly wrong”. Sure we like our team a lot. We would not have drafted the players we did if we didn’t feel like it would make us the most successful. In typical Pollock fashion, our offense is our biggest strength; we have the deepest lineup in the league. While some questions about defense might be fair to ask, we know we will hold our own, especially with Herm on the mound.

4. Team Wallman: I love the depth of this lineup as well as how solid they are at practically every position. Roland, Carlin, Jackson, Schwartz are all proven all-stars, but the sleeper here is Mark Stewart. He had a great season two years ago along with being one of the best third basemen in the league. Wallman’s draft is full of players who could have and should have been drafted a round earlier than where they went, especially Carlin, Schwartz, Rosenblum.

5. Team Carlin: Every year Carlin puts together a solid team, and this year is no different. Carlin’s offense is balanced with big power threats like Goldstein and Conti along with some of the best on base guys  like Carlin, Hor, Silbermans. Ronnie Carlin also drafted doubles machine Wayne Sherman, who used to be the most underrated hitter in the league but will finally be getting his due this year. Overall, I see Team Carlin’s squad as being very similar to Team Harris. Great hitting team with enough defense to keep them at the top of the standings.

6. Team Feldman: There are certain teams who you can pretty much copy and paste the same pre- season thoughts only needing to replace same player names. Team Feldman is one of those teams. Great outfield defense, but will there be enough offense to carry the load? I liked their offense a little more at the beginning of 2014, which is why they landed at the #1 spot of 2014’s Pre-season rankings. Still, they have enough hitting to give Feldman hope he can improve upon his decade worst 3-11 playoff record.

7. Team Goldfarb: Goldfarb’s team will be a challenger for best defense in the league, which is enough to put them in the top 8 of the pre-season rankings. Their overall success will largely depend on pitching which at this time seems to be a question mark. I’d also feel more comfortable predicting a 13+ win season if they had one or two more big bats, but they’re still a team that will be in contention all year.

8. Team Bykofsky: With an outfield that includes Mamone and Bykofsky, an infield that has solid defenders throughout, and perennial Cy Young candidate Rob Bykofsky on the mound, this team should be the best team Justin has had as captain. Whether or not the lineup has enough pop is yet to be seen, but they have enough to contend for the #1 or 2 seed.

"I Get No Respect": A Look At The Relationship Between Projections aAnd Actual Records

There is so much excitement leading up to the draft each year that it’s easy to forget the long down time afterwards before the season actually begins again. There’s one post draft ritual which we can look forward to satisfying our thirst for anything softball. . . projections! While most captains receive favorable write-ups(The overall Win/Loss predictions always total more than the .500 record it should be), there are some players whose excitement turns a little sour after reading about a predicted poor season ahead. As a member of a projected 8-14 team, I know that feeling well. I’ve had numerous experiences with the disappointment as two of my recent teams were projected to go 7-15 and 9-13. This feeling of déjà vu got me thinking a few questions. Which captains continuously get the best and worst projections? And most importantly, Which captains have done the best job of exceeding and falling short of projections? Ask no longer; here are the results.

First, here is a ranking from best to worst of each current captain’s collective projected records from 2011-2014. I left off 2015 because I just want to compare projected records with actual records:

(Note: Some projects equaled more than 22 games for some reason. In these cases, I took it off the win total. For example, if a team was projected to go 12-11, I counted it as 11-11.)

1. Jacoby .652 (43-23)

2. Wallman .568 (50-38)

3. Randell .545 (48-40)

4. Carlin .534 (47-41)

4. Feldman .534 (47-41)

4. Harris .534 (47-41)

7. Beilis .511 (45-43)

8. Lapine .500 (44-44)

8. Goldfarb .500 (44-44)

8. Younger .500 (44-44)

11. Marrone .477 (21-23)

12. Granese .466 (41-47)

13. Applebaum .455 (40-48)

14. Pollock .443 (39-49)

15. Bykofsky .341 (15-29)

Here are the actual combined season records for each team 2011-2014:

1. Wallman      .611 (54-34)

2. Jacoby         . 606 (40-26)

3. Carlin           .568 (50-38)

3, Younger       .568 (50-38)

3. Applebaum  .568 (50-38)

6. Pollock         .534 (47-41)

7. Goldfarb      .511 (45-43)

7. Feldman        511 (45-43)

9. Lapine          500 (44-44)

10. Beilis      .  489 (43-45)

11. Harris        .477  (42-46)

12. Randell      .432 (38-50)

12. Granese     .432 (38-50)

14. Bykofsky   .409 (18-26)

15. Marrone     .295 (13-31)

Here now is the ranking that I care most about for this study. Here's a ranking of captains in order of how much they have exceeded projections by percentage points since 2011. 

1. Applebaum .113

2. Pollock       .091

3. Bykofsky    .068

3. Younger      .068

5. Wallman     .046

6. Carlin          .034

7. Goldfarb     .011

8. Lapine         same as projections

9. Beilis          -.022

10. Feldman   -.023

11. Granese    -.034

12. Jacoby      -.046

13. Harris       -.057

14. Randell     -.113

15. Marrone    -.182

A few notes about the results:

1. A few team's placement on this list are surprising given their overall success and lack thereof. Bykofsky is listed as a team that has overachieved expectations yet only has a .409 winning percentage. On the other end of the spectrum, Jacoby is listed as a team that has not lived up to expectations, yet they have the second best winning pecentage since 2011. It shows you just how consistency high expectations are for Jacoby's teams.

2. I'm surprised my team isn't #1 on this list. Every year I call Matt and tell him I think our team is being underestimated. Usually I'm right since we ARE still #2 on the "exceeding expectations" list. Applebaum's #1 ranking is largely thanks to a 19-3 campaign which would have surpassed even an enormous projection, let alone the 11-11 prediction they actually received. 

3. What our team and Applebaum have in common is that we're generally built around offense, I think teams built around hitting are wrongly dismissed a lot quicker than teams built around defense. That's a study for another day. 

4. On a final note, with this year's projections, Team Pollock now has the lowest collective predicted record from 2011-present. We look forward to continuing our history of exceeding expectations.

Does Draft Position Matter?

With the draft coming up, captains are busy trying to plan for every hypothetical situation. "If I have an early first round pick, do I go with option A or option B? What if I pick at the end vs. in the middle?" At this stage captains plan for every scenario because they don't have any idea (for the most part) if they are picking early or late in the first round. The possibilities start to come into a little more focus when captains are told on Bensi Night if they are picking 1-8 or 9-16 (R.I.P. Bensi Night). All of a sudden, half the planned scenarios are pretty much meaningless unless you work out a trade.

But does draft position matter? Here are the overall winning percentages that correlates to where teams picked from 2009-2014.[1] I won't offer any analysis this time around. I'll let the numbers do the talking.

  

1: .534 (71-62)

2: .474 (63-70)

3: .504 (67-66)

4: .602 (80-53)

5: .391 (52-81)

6: .526 (70-63)

7: .598 (79-53)

8: .579 (77-56)

9: .504 (67-66)

10: .414 (55-78)

11: .421 (56-77)

12: .455 (60-72)

13: .504 (67-66)

14: .429 (57-76)

15: .579 (77-56)

16: .489 (65-68)

Draft Positions 1-8: .526

Draft Positions 9-16: .474

Draft Position of Championship Teams By Year:

2009: 7

2010: 16

2011: 7

2012: 4

2013: 3

2014: 8

---

[1] I started with 2009 because that is the first year where the draft was not dominated by protected picks. For instance, in 2008 it did not matter much where a team drafted in the first round because 12 out of 16 teams came in with a protected first round pick.

Captain of the Decade

We’ve reached the halfway mark of the decade. As somebody who is fascinated by lists like “Greatest movies of the decade”, I think it would be fun to start the conversation of who is best positioned now to win “Best Captain of the Decade”. Of course there is no set formula so opinions will vary. When considering this title, I feel the following should be considered in order of importance:

1. Championships won
2. Other Playoff Success(finals/semi finals appearances)
3. Regular Season Success

Is crowning a winner as simple as awarding the captain who wins the most championships? Some may say yes, and maybe they’re right. Because the playoffs can be a crapshoot, and we get more data from regular season games, I think the first 22 games we play should be taken into some consideration also. Before taking a look at individual captains and weighing their status for potential Captain of the Decade, let’s take a look at a few lists.

Current Captains’ Regular Season Winning Percentages 2010-2014

1. Jacoby .606(40-26)
2. Carlin .591 (65-45)
3. Wallman .573(63-47)
4. Goldfarb  .564 (62-48)
5. Younger .545 (60-50)
6. Pollock .534 (47-41)
7. Applebaum .527 (58-52)

     7. Lapine .527 (58-52)

     9. Feldman .486 (53-56)

    10. Beilis .482 (53-57)

    11. Harris .464 (51-59)

    12. Randell .459 (50-59)

    13. Granese .427 (47-63)

    14.  Bykofsky .409 (18-26)

    15. Marrone .295 (13-31)

Current Captains’ Playoff Winning Percentages 2010-2014

1. Jacoby .667 (10-5)
2. Pollock .625 (15-9)
3. Marrone .583 (7-5)
4. Lapine .565 (13-10)
5. Goldfarb .556 (15-12)
6. Beilis .545 (18-15)
7. Harris .519 (14-13)

   7. Younger .519 (14-13)

   9. Applebaum .500 (9-9)

   9. Randell .500 (12-12)

   9. Bykofsky .500 (5-5)

   12. Wallman .429 (9-12)

   13. Carlin .389 (7-11)

   14. Granese .333 (5-10)

    15. Feldman .214 (3-11)

Now it’s time to take a look at a few captains who have made a strong case for “Captain of the Decade” based on the first five years. Obviously this discussion can(and most likely) will change drastically over the next five years. These are the captains, though, that have a head start at capturing the prize.

Justin Jacoby:

Pros: It was a bumpy first year, but phenomenal back to back regular seasons and one championship puts him on the short list of captains who can claim they’ve had the best first half.

Cons: He was only captain for three of the five years, and his two non-championship seasons ended in first round exits (Almost three first round exits: See Barth Frank Catch).

Matt Pollock:

Pros: One of only two captains this decade to both win a championship and make another trip to the semi-finals (Harris is the other). If we completed our 2012 run then I don’t think there would even be an argument for whom the most successful captain for the first half of the decade is.

Con: The 2013 regular season happened.

Marty Beilis:

Pros: Marty’s captain of the decade consideration begins and ends with the amazing feat of making three finals. Just like the Buffalo Bills in the early 90s(except the Superbowl against the Giants), Beilis was the underdog once he made the finals and hasn’t been able to pull one out. Regardless, making three finals puts him right in the middle of the conversation.

Cons: No captain can be crowned unless he has won a championship. If other captains catch up to Beilis’ number of finals total then Beilis’s subpar regular seasons can hurt him in a tie breaker.

Bobby Harris:

Pros: Like I mentioned before, Harris and Pollock are the only two captains to both win a championship and make a separate final four trip.

Cons: Harris’s regular season record holds him back so far.

Brian Applebaum:

Pros: Each of the five captains who have won a championship so far have a leg up on the rest of the captains, and Applebaum’s 2014 team will almost definitely go down as the most dominant team of the decade.

Cons: Maybe last season is the beginning of a hot streak for Applebaum whose playoff record this decade was 1-8 before 2014.

Dennis Lapine:

Pros: Like I said for Applebaum, every captain who has won a championship this decade should be listed as a viable contender. His regular season record is good enough now that a few more strong seasons will solidify his place towards the top of the “best regular season winning percentage” list.

Cons: After 2010, Lapine has had three first round exits and one second round exit.

Ronnie Carlin:

Pros: It seems odd putting a team on this list who hasn’t made it past the second round this decade, but Carlin is here because of regular season consistency. Carlin’s WORST regular season this decade was going 10-12 in 2012. Every season we’re talking about Carlin’s team being potentially one of the best. If he starts having playoff success, “Captain of the Decade” could be his because he’ll already have the regular season component to his resume.

Cons: Right now the disappointing postseasons only makes Ronnie a potential pick for the title if his luck starts to change.

There are other captains too who have built up a solid resume this decade but because they’ve fallen short in the post-season, they are only on the radar if they win championships. This group includes Goldfarb, Younger, Wallman. Of course every captain has a chance depending on how the next five years unfold, but it’s been fun looking back to see who has taken an early lead for Captain of the Decade.