EHCC 2018 Performance ⅔

We’re two thirds of the way through the season and a week away from midraft day. This is an exciting time of the year as the vast majority of the trades in the EHCC take place in July, in the time leading up to the midraft and the non-waiver trade deadline. The leader in top weekly score so far in 2018 is a three-way tie between San Juan (week 7), Santo Domingo (week 8) and Santo Domingo (week11) with 100 points. Caribbean takeover? The leader? for worst weekly score so far is San Fernando Valley with 24.5 points in week 9.

Who Trade Who

Is it just me or is the trade market super thin this year? To quote an anonymous owner, “a lot of people still see themselves as contenders, and the clear sellers are pretty barren“.

Santo Domingo GM Manny Ramirez was planning on making a splash with his 2018 midp’s. As the season got going Ramirez believed that the SD farm system was in good enough shape where he could afford to punt his 2018 draft class to push for roster upgrades. After all the goal here is to win championships, not build the best farm system (it’s really hard for me to admit this). This started in early May when SD moved their 2nd rd midp for alleged scumbag Roberto Osuna. This was a gamble by Ramirez as the trade was made the day after his initial arrest when almost no information about his “situation” was known. This bet looks like it’s going to pay off for SD as Osuna’s suspension is scheduled to conclude on 8/5. Just in time for Osuna to get settled in for the stretch run.

That leaves SD with their 1st and 3rd round midp’s burning a hole in their pocket. The only issue is, the biggest name currently on the block is Matt Kemp. Yea, the 33 years old with the lengthy injury history. After looking like he was toast last year, he’s back and playing pretty well. 1st round midp well? Not in my opinion, but if anyone thinks so RIO will gladly engage you on a trade (preferably 2019 or 2020).

Starting pitching might even be more thin than hitting. Hell, the only active starting pitcher listed on anyone’s trade block is Garrett Richards. Decent enough numbers this year but a walking red flag as far as injury history is concerned. Seriously, any player who opts to rehab a torn ucl is just postponing the inevitable. 

With the lack of impact players available and the draft only a week away it’s looking more and more like SD will be making what’s left of their mi picks. Which is a shame because Manny was looking forward to not having to do any draft prep this year. Instead their improvements could come from within as SD has 3 players on mi contracts currently playing in the bigs. Could calling up one of Lewis Brinson, Ronald Acuna or Juan Soto be Ramirez’s best option at the deadline? Given the current market we might just get to see.

Line Drives

What’s it with the Claffey’s and Tom Murphy? To quote the immortal Heath Ledger, “What is it with this chick? She have beer-flavored nipples?”

Anyone else read that mock draft and think that there were a couple glaring omissions? Cute article dude; pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Ahhhh, a couple token roster moves by TKO. I can’t argue that 10 roster moves are more than the 5 roster moves from 7 weeks ago. Hummm, those additional 5 roster moves were either made on 5/27 or 6/5. So they’ve at least checked in twice over the past 2 months? Yay, progress! Also, you can’t miss a draft in which you’ve traded all your picks away for pennies on the dollar. **smiles and points to head**

What the hell happened to Weymouth in week 13? WEY put up a league worst number of 37.5. Can anyone remember the last time WEY put up the worst weekly performance in the league? Me neither. That’s because it hasn’t happened in the 6.67 years year that I’ve been tracking this crap. 

Love LV’s trade block: “looking for best possible return - all positions considered (focus on long term OF and 1B options along with all types of P - keeping options open)”. Seriously? How does this make a team want to make an offer? It might as well read, “I’m not pulling the trigger on any deal unless I’m the clear winner. If not, I’m going to shop the shit out of your offers to see if I can get someone else to be stupid.” Yes, sir. Please take advantage of me. I love me a good trade raping. How can I make your dreams come true???

SD currently has a season WHIP of 1.14 and is on pace to set the EHCC WHIP record. That record being 1.15, set in 2013 by Dublin.

Anyone else following the Juan Soto story? The 19 year old kid starts the year in low A ball with just 330 professional plate appearances under his belt. Fast forward 3 months and he’s batting cleanup for one of the better lineups in baseball. He’s shown elite plate discipline and significant power along with a high batting average. We’ve all been doing this long enough to know that this isn’t how prospect stories play out. Here’s hoping that this is just the tip of the Soto iceberg and makes the Nats think, “Harper who?”.

Feeling Unlucky?

Below is a summary of the PF and PA for the 2018 2/3 regular season. The PF shows how well you’ve performed on average on the 10-120 scale. As in my previous posts, 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 regards to performance against you. I’ve been doing these numbers for a long time now and I’ve finally come to the realization that the PF numbers aren’t going to necessarily gravitate towards 0 for every team. The reason being that we don’t play ourselves throughout the season. The worst team in the league’s PF is going to be higher than the best team because the worst team doesn’t get the benefit of playing the worst team in the league and visa versa for the best team. This is why generally we’re seeing the better teams have a positive PF∆ and the worse teams having a negative PF∆. 

Even so the most “lucky” teams so far in 2018 have been Quebec City, Dublin and San Juan. While the most “unlucky” teams have been San Fernando Valley, Rakeville and Rio.