EHCC 2018 Performance Final

We’re on to the playoffs! The last week of the regular season proved to be exciting as a couple playoffs spots and the eastern division bye were up for grabs. We even had a good old fashion call out for intentional tanking. The leader in top weekly score in 2018 was Weymouth in week 16 with 103 points. The leader? for worst weekly score in 2018 was San Fernando Valley with 24.5 points in week 9.

Line Drives
In my last post on 7/9 I said that Garret Richards was 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.”. The very next day Richards left his start with “forearm irritation”. Which we all know is code for a torn ucl. A week later he was under the knife with Tommy John surgery. Talk about calling a shot.

Only 8 teams took part in trade waivers this year (placed and/or claimed players on waivers). Don’t really understand why anyone wouldn’t want to take part in trade waivers. They are a great opportunity to add players on the cheap, sell players that are clogging your roster or just letting another owner that you generally interested in one of their players (laying the tracks for future trades). It’s a shame that all teams, at all stages of competition aren’t using this tool as a means to make their teams better.

SD won the claims on three LV relief pitchers during the waiver trade period (Filipe Vazquez, Corey Knebel and Seranthony Dominguez). Trying to improve their roster SD inquired on the value of these three players. They were told that all 3 players were essentially worth the same to LV. Really? “You serious Clark?”

The fancy new EHCC site is nice and all but why are only special owners allowed to post to it? Guess I’ll just stick to the old site…

The week 19 matchup between SD and QC was destined to be the matchup that defined the west. SD entered their week 19 matchup against QC with a precarious 2.5 game lead in the division. SD asserted themselves on the west by a beating QC 8-2. This essentially put the division out of reach for QC. Winning a matchup in week 19 of the regular season generally isn’t something to get overly excited about; but getting a week off in the playoffs is golden. What could end up being equally impactful is the SD/QC tie breaker situation. In week 4 QC had handily defeated SD by a margin of 8-2. With SD’s week 19 victory of also 8-2, their head-to-head record stands at 10-10. H2H record is the first tie breaker in the playoffs, meaning that the new tie breaker is now seed number. Which SD owns by virtue of their week 19 victory. Could mean nothing, but could mean everything…

WEY owes SD a twisted tea after week 21. Going into week 21 SJ held a 1 game lead over WEY for the eastern division title, and more importantly the first round bye. WEY held the division tie breakers, so all they needed to do was gain 1 game in week 21. WEY proceeded to lay an egg vs QC with a 3-7 loss. Bye bye bye?... Not so fast. Enter SD, SD beats up SJ to a tune of 8-2. Giving WEY the 1 game they needed to capture the division, and that bye.

Where does QC go from here? Last season QC sold the farm for a run at the 2017 championship; and it worked! Flags fly forever! Given the ages of many of the players that they’d acquired, it was apparent that their championship window would be short (1-3 years). But was that window only 1 season? Splitting the season into thirds, QC has seen declining performance as the season has progressed 78.1 – 72.9 – 70.8. This mixed with an early first round deficit to DUB has observers of the EHCC wondering if this is the end of QC being a serious title contender?

Feeling Unlucky?
Below is a summary of the PF and PA for the 2018 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 in 2018 were Dublin and Quebec City. While the most “unlucky” teams were Rakeville, Rio and San Fernando Valley.

In actuality the most unlucky team has to be Tijuana. The numbers say that they were the 5th best team in 2018. Instead they’re cleaning out their lockers as they’re on the outside looking in to the playoffs.

Also, you can claim you’re not tanking, but numbers don’t lie. A couple teams took a noticeable dip in the last third of the season. May the fantasy gods smite you.