EHCC 2015 Performance ⅔

This is an exciting time of the year. The season is two-thirds of the way through. The mi-draft is upon us. Trade talk is filling the message board. The west is so competitive that members are debating a rule change. Doesn’t get much better than that.


The leader in top weekly score so far is still Las Vegas with 107 points in week 1. The leader? for worst weekly score so far is Augusta with 19 points in week 8. Think about that for a second. 12 is the lowest possibly, AUG had 19. Wow!

Time to Shut Up You!
Weymouth has long held bragging rights on having the most championships in league history. The Shaddupu won 4 championships in the first 5 seasons, with the last coming in 2005. His detractors are quick to point out that those championships were all won when the league was in its infancy and when the level of competition was admittedly low. Since then, the league has crowned 9 additional champions with Weymouth nowhere to be found. In fact, the closest that Weymouth has come since 2005 is a finals appearance in 2011 where they were unceremonially stampeded by the Quebec City Piglets 8-1.

Things may be a changin’ in 2015. Weymouth is crushing the EHCC this season. The Shaddupu have 50 more homeruns than the next closest competitor. 50! That’s almost a third more than the next closest team. In turn WEY is also skunking the league in runs and rbi’s. WEY is 34-5-3 (0.849) in those three categories including being 13-1-0 in hr’s. Weymouth is averaging 11.4 hr’s a week, this puts WEY on pace for 250 this season. The record is 241. Weymouth is on cruise control to a playoff berth and a first round bye with a 15.5 game lead on the next closest team.

WEY has only lost one matchup all season, a week 1 loss the QC. Since then it’s been 13 consecutive matchups without a loss. Additionally GM Yukon Cornelius has been aggressive (only in talk so far) in trying to improve his squad. In other words, the rest of the league is just playing for silver. Good f’in luck vs WEY come playoffs!

East vs West
I’m calling it. The eastern division is over! With only a third of the season left it’s going to be hard, if not impossible for any of the bottom 3 teams to makeup the 16 games and claim a playoff spot. The bottom 3 teams in the east should be ready to deal veteran players. Are they paying enough attention to do so? Rakeville is!

On the other hand, the west is still anyone’s game. Stick all 6 teams in a hat and pick 3. The competition in the west is probably going to make for a seller’s market this trade deadline. With so many teams in it and so few impact players available, prices are going to be high.

As for the 5th place team in the west, Santo Domingo general manager Manny Ramirez isn’t sure what he’s going to do yet. His All-Star Factory were hangin’ tough in the “meat grinder” (aka west) up until a couple weeks ago. A few injuries and a few bad losses have dropped SD from 2nd to 5th in the division (8.5 games out of a playoff spot). If this keeps up Ramirez could be coerced into selling. If this keeps up SD could be prepared to listen on any player on the wrong side of 30 and hell, maybe a couple others.

Stealing Las Vegas
LV starters Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon are 1-2 in all of baseball in stolen bases. They've accounted for 77 of 112 of LV’s league leading steals. LV is 12-1-1 in steals. The current league record is 173. LV is on pace to accumulate 176.

Welcome to ‘The Show’
2015 has been the year of the call up. We’ve seen an abnormally high number of top prospects getting the call to the show this season.

Baseball America’s top 15 prospects coming into 2015 were Bryant, Buxton, Russell, Correa, Seager, Gallo, Giolito, Pederson, Lindor, Urias, Syndergaard, Soler, Sano, Crawford and Rodon. Only 4 of those 15 haven’t seen big league action yet (Seager, Giolito, Urias and Crawford). And that list doesn’t even include Rodriguez, Matz and Schwarber who were all good enough to coax waiver claims out of EHCC owners. I can’t ever remember a year ever where so many top prospects got the call all at once. Some top prospects spend years in the minors, so to have them all up at in a 3-4 month span… What are the odds?

As a result, the rankings of the remaining prospects are in a state of flux. The prospect guys all have different opinions on who the new crop of top prospects are going to be. As far as best available, it varies greatly depending on who you read. This is going to make for an interesting mi-draft.

It’s hell on the team holding the #1 pick. I have four players in play for #1. They’re all ranked drastically differently depending on who you read. I’m having flashbacks to 2012 when I chose Dylan Dundy over Gerrit Cole. Cole is one of the best young pitchers in the game. Bundy? Well, it’s not looking good.

And what’s up with Moncada not being available in this draft? That rule needs to be looked at. Dude was signed almost 5 months ago. Shit ain’t right.

Feeling Unlucky?
Below is a summary of the PF and PA for the 2015 regular season. The PF shows how well you’ve performed on average on the 12-120 scale. The delta(∆) column is your PA minus 65 (65 being the average). This number gives you an idea of how “lucky” you’ve been.

In the last update I said that, ‘As time moves on the ∆ will eventually regress towards 0’. For the most part this has been true. At the 1/3 mark the average ∆ was 6.8; at the 2/3 mark (currently) that number has lowered itself to 4.7.

Do they sell scratch tickets in China? If so, Toyko GM Enkidu Ishtar should be playing. According to the numbers TKO has been the 3rd worst team in the league yet somehow sits 0.5 games out of the division lead (and a first round playoff bye).

The luckiest teams in the EHCC through 2/3 of the season have been Tokyo, Weymouth and San Juan. The unluckiest teams have been Quebec City, Rakeville, Tijuana, Bridgewater and Santo Domingo.