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.