Baseball Triweekly Cover - Special Championship Edition

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General Manager Robiano da Costa Fired by Rio

The Rio Times and O Globo have reported that the Rio de Janeiro Cristos have fired General Manager Jose Robiano da Costa.  This does not come as a surprise, Rio has yet to capture an EHCC title under Robiano da Costa.   "We need a fresh new mind for this organization's future" said President of Baseball Operations Mark Claffey.  Claffey Continued, "We've had some good teams in the past under RDC but he wasn't able to take us to the promised land."

In 5 years with Rio, Robiano da Costa had a winning percentage of .537 with a record of 559-477-64.  In 2012, he lead the Cristos to the chamiponship, only to be bested by Rakeville.  .

The search for a new Genereal Manager has begun for Rio.

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EHCC 2015 Performance Final

 
The regular season is over. For some of us it’s a sweet relief to officially enter into postseason mode. For others, the fun (and stress) of playoff baseball is just getting started. Good luck to everyone still in the playoffs. Remember, flags fly forever!

The winner for top weekly score in 2015 was Las Vegas with 107 points all the way back in week 1. The loser for worst weekly score was Augusta with 19 points in week 8.

Speak Up U!

In my last post I went on and on about how unstoppable the Shuddapu have been through the 2/3^rd mark this season. Since then WEY has suffered some serious regression. Injuries to Stanton, Franco, Freeman, Leake, Kendrick, Harper, Fernandez. Crashes back down to earth for Vogt, Fraizer and Scherzer.

Weymouth once looked like a team that was steam rolling to a championship, now they’re looking just as beatable as any other team in the playoffs. WEY has 2 losses in their final 6 matchups. Not so bad, but 3 of those 4 wins came against the dregs of the East. Which really means that Weymouth only has 1 quality victory in the past month and a half. Weymouth is still a good team and a serious title contender, but nowhere near the lock that they were early in the season.

I'll stay (I also like to live dangerously)

Rio de Janeiro, Dublin and Tokyo all chose to stand at the trading deadline. These teams either believed that their clubs were strong enough to compete for a championship as is, or that they were so far away from being a legit title contender that making a trade wasn’t going to do it. Either way, a bold decision as QC, WEY, LV and SJ all made moves to strengthen their teams for the playoff run. Their chief competitor in the west, the QC Piglets brought in Edwin Encarnacion, John Lackey and Brad Ziegler to bolster their already talented squad. These moves propelled QC from outside of a playoffs spot to the #2 seed and nearly a first round bye. The Omyoujis found themselves as the kid without a seat when the playoff music stopped. Tokyo dropped 4 of their last 5 matchups including a week 22, 8-2 beat down by the aforementioned Piglets.

Santo Domingo’s Rebuild

Santo Domingo GM Manny Ramirez wasn’t kidding when he said they were selling. In a rebuilding effort, SD shipped off Jose Bautista, Shin-soo Choo, John Lackey, Brad Ziegler, Mark Melancon and Alex Rodriguez to contenders. SD’s return was mostly draft picks. SD now holds an unprecedented 7 picks in 2016’s mi-draft, including 3 in the first round. Also, 4 picks in the first 2 rounds of 2016’s ma-draft.

SD may not be done yet either. Ramirez doesn’t have a problem using these picks (and a keeper protection or two) to improve his squad over the offseason. This could open the door for trades with teams struggling with cutting down to 21 this offseason. SD is officially open for business…

Part Deux

On August 10^th Chief Lawless published the post “EHCC Minor League Draft Recap Part 1”. At the end of this incomplete draft recap Lawless promises, “Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion! Round 2 Analysis coming soon…”. Well over a month later, and still no exciting conclusion. Hell, the minor league draft being recapped was 2 months ago. Will the “EHCC Minor League Draft Recap Part 2”?  go down in history as a forgotten post? Much like infamous SD 2013 winter magazine submission that never saw the light of day.

Update The Freakin’ Trades!

Seriously, what does a guy have to do to get trades posted to the website. Like, they happened.
 

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.

- Neither of the best teams in each division (QC or LV) got the bye.

- The 6 best teams did make the playoffs.
- The award for the luckiest team for 2015 is a tie between Weymouth and Tokyo. This propelled WEY to a first round bye but wasn't enough to get TKO into the dance.
- The award for the most unlucky team in 2015 goes to Tijuana. According to the PF numbers TIJ still didn't deserve a playoff spot. Still, averaging 74.2 PA per week must've made for a long season.
- I'm a little surprised about the variance in ∆ this season. In 2014, all of the variances fell between ±3.5. This season the variances ranged from -9.2 to +7.7. Statistically, as more time passes, the more likely it is for the variance numbers to be closer to 0. So such large variance numbers are surprising. I guess we can chalk it up to a small sample size. 22 weeks is the full season, but in the grand scheme 22 samples isn’t very many.  

 

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2015 EHCC Playoffs By The Numbers

Take a deep dive into the 2015 EHCC playoffs with Hubert Fitznerdlinger! Revised and Expanded for the 2015 playoffs!

4   - Times that Weymouth has won the EHCC championship, an EHCC record

0   - Number of times that Weymouth has won a championship so without being a #2 seed

1   - Incredibly, the number of times that Weymouth has been the #1 seed in the playoffs. Despite the record number of championships, this is the first time Weymouth has actually been the best team in the league during the regular season.

2   - Times that Rio has been the #2 seed in the playoffs. The last time, in 2012, they were defeated in the Championship game by #4 seed Rakeville.

6   - Times in 15 seasons that the #1 Seed has won the championship, including the last two seasons (Quebec City in 2014, and Santo Domingo in 2013).

4 - Times in 14 seasons that the #2 Seed has won the championship. The last time it happened was in 2008, when Las Vegas took home the title.

2   - Number of times the #6 seed has won the EHCC championship (Arlington in 2007, and Bridgewater in 2010)

0   - Number of times the #3 seed has won the EHCC championship (Rakeville won as #4 in 2012, and Bridgewater as #5 in 2009, comprising the remaining seeds to have won the 14 EHCC championships prior to this tournament)

5 – Number of times that the previous season’s EHCC champion has failed to make the playoffs the following season.

3 – Seasons in a row that has happened, a streak halted by Quebec City’s inclusion in this year’s playoff field.

3 – Number of times the #2 seed has actually had the 3^rd best record in the EHCC (due to the division format, the team with the best record in each division gets the Bye). Despite having a better record, Las Vegas ends up with a 3 seed, while Rio gets the #2 seed. The same thing happened most recently in 2012, again with Rio, who ended up with a 2 seed despite Weymouth’s superior record. Rio would go on to beat Weymouth in the 2^nd round of the playoffs that year on a tiebreaker. It also happened to Tokyo in 2010 (they would go on to lose in the first round to Bridgewater).

2 – Number of teams who made the 2015 playoffs that did not make the playoffs in 2014 (Dublin and San Juan replace Rakeville and Tijuana, who both flamed out spectacularly in the first round last year, losing 8-1 and 7-2, respectively).

11  - Number of consecutive years that Bridgewater made the EHCC playoffs, an EHCC record

0    - Number of times Bridgewater has made the playoffs since that streak ended in 2012

4 – Consecutive years both Bridgewater and Augusta have missed the playoffs, tied for the longest active streaks in the league.

10  - Respective number of dollars STILL owed by Augusta to each various team he wagered with, after losing his playoff bet in the 2014 season.

14  - Number of times Weymouth has made the playoffs, extending their EHCC record. They've only missed the playoffs once (in 2010) in the history of the league

7    - Number of different teams to have won the EHCC championship (Weymouth, Las Vegas, Arlington, Bridgewater, Quebec City, Rakeville, and Santo Domingo), a number that remains the same from last year’s version after Quebec City’s 2^nd Championship in 2014.

6    - Number of those teams still competing in the EHCC (Arlington was contracted following the 2012 season)

1    - Number of teams who will be left standing in 3 weeks. Good luck to all the teams still playing meaningful games in the EHCC this year!

Hubert Fitznerdlinger is the EHCC Junior Historian. He's hoping to be promoted to the Senior Historian someday, but has so far balked at the horrible, horrible things he'd be required to do in order to make it happen. Horrible things.

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