Month: July 2020

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 21-22: A Glimpse of the Other League

Sim League Baseball’s standard schedule uses 24 teams divided into two leagues and six divisions, with four teams per division. You play each team in your division 14 times (42 total), and each of the other eight teams in your league 12 times (96 total). The other 24 games are brief two-game series with each team in the other league (one home, one away). You only get a taste of interleague play.

My interleague schedule began with P Niek! at the Disco (praised in an earlier post for that name), and we will get to see six of these teams over the next 19 games. And that will be it, unless we are fortunate enough to get to the World Series.

Mike Cuellar made his sixth start of the season and though it was actually one of his better ones, that’s not saying much. Cuellar gave up 4 runs in 8 innings, but his ERA actually dropped to 6.64. Only one of his starts has met the criteria for a quality start (3 runs or fewer in 6 innings or more), and only barely met those minimums that time. For a second-round pick, he sure isn’t doing what I need.

Meanwhile, our opponent’s namesake Phil Niekro had his famed knuckleball working and pitched into the 9th inning en route to a 5-2 win. 

Game 21

Our one trip to Comiskey Park followed, and Teddy Higuera put up another excellent performance with 6 shutout innings to improve to 4-2. Ryne Sandberg continued a hot stretch with 3 hits, including a pair of run-scoring triples, as we returned the favor with a 3-1 victory. 

Game 22

This put us at 10-12, one game back in the division. Still pretty early to know if this team is just going to be average or has a chance to make a good run, though. Our next short matchup in interleague play is against Three Rivers Blues, who sit at 11-11. They’ve given up the most runs in the league and also have one of the top offenses. 

Categories
Baseball Covid MLB

What Can Happen in a 60-Game Season?

Because baseball naturally lends itself to an obsession with numbers (and I cannot say for certain whether the game draws me to the stats, or vice versa), even non-fans tend to know the significance of certain milestones like hitting .400 or 60 home runs. As Major League Baseball begins its shortest scheduled season by far this week, announcers and writers have offered a variety of opinions on whether an individual achievement like hitting .400 would “count” in a 60-game season.

I think we can wait to see if anyone gets halfway through this season with a legitimate chance before devoting too much brainpower to that question, but I do think there is a number very much worth thinking about from the outset: 2.7. That’s the multiplier we get from the ratio between a full 162-game schedule and the 60-game Covid-shortened one, so essentially every game “counts” like 2.7 games normally would. Winning 3 in a row is the equivalent of winning 8 in a row in a full season, relatively.

We can use 2.7 to gauge what an outstanding individual performance might look like across 60 games. For instance, 20 home runs would equate to 54 in a full season. In 2019, when players collectively reached record-breaking totals yet again, the highest individual total was 53 by the Mets’ Pete Alonso. 

At the 60-game mark last season, the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger had hit 20 and wasn’t close to leading the National League. The Brewers’ Christian Yelich already had 25! That’s a pace for 68 in a full season, but he missed 32 games and fell well short at 44.

So we shouldn’t be the least surprised to see someone get to 25 or even flirt with 30 in this short season, because it’s much less difficult to sustain that level of performance for a shorter time period. Hitting 60 homers in a season remains surprisingly rare and hasn’t been achieved since Barry Bonds hit a record 73 in 2001. 

(The 60-homer mark has only been reached eight times in MLB history, in fact. A particularly fun stat is that Sammy Sosa did it three times, more than anyone else, but he failed to lead his league any of those seasons. He finished behind Bonds in 2001 and Mark McGwire in 1998 and 1999. Should they ever re-open bars, you could probably win a good bet with that piece of trivia.)

While individual numbers will certainly catch our attention in this 60-game season, the standings could offer another place worth watching. Will any team win 40 games? Probably so. That’s a 108-win pace, and in the past two seasons three teams have won between 106 to 108 games. 

Don’t be stunned if a team wins as many as 45, though. In 2013, the Dodgers put together a 42-8 midseason stretch. The 1984 Tigers opened the season 35-5. We don’t have to look far for examples of what’s possible in a chunk of a season, which is what this really is.

A team could be equally bad, too. The 1988 Orioles started the season with a record 21-game losing streak. At the 60-game mark, they were just 15-45. The worst team in 2019, the Tigers, went 47-114, and in June and July they were a combined 10-40. They started a semi-respectable 22-33 and then went 25-81 the rest of the way, which would be a 14-win pace in a 60-game season.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 17-20: Turning the Tide?

Rationally, sure, I know a sim doesn’t understand momentum. The game engine doesn’t care what happened in the previous game, or even the previous at-bat. So players or teams getting hot or going cold only exist as the product of a series of imagined connections. 

Eventually as the sample sizes increase and the law of averages comes into effect, any initial outcomes due to luck should start to fade away. If you did a decent job assembling your team relative to the rest of the league and manage it effectively, you will hopefully see results that mirror the appropriate expectations.

We opened our four-game series against A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit with an extra-inning walkoff 6-5 victory, but quite a few unusual occurrences led up to that. We trailed 5-1 with one out in the bottom of the 9th but put together five straight hits (three for extra bases) to tie it and even had a chance to win with a runner on 3rd and still one out. 

By the bottom of the 12th, we had run out of position players so Burt Hooton came on to pinch hit for a reliever and delivered the unlikeliest of leadoff doubles. After two outs and two walks, Bobby Murcer singled to give us our first one-run win of the season.

Ace starter Mike Cuellar again delivered a poor performance, giving up 5 runs in 7 innings to run his ERA to 7.18. The bullpen continued to make up for our starters, however, with one hit allowed over 5 scoreless innings.

Game 17

Teddy Higuera, our 1st-round draft pick, justified his selection in Game 18, giving up 1 run in 7 innings to improve to 3-2. Third-round pick Ryne Sandberg had 3 hits and scored twice as we won 3-1.

Game 18

Hooton continued the trend and showed he wasn’t just drafted for his pinch hitting (hah!) by throwing 8 innings and giving up just 1 run in a 2-1 victory for our third straight win. Sandberg’s two-run homer was all the offense we needed, and Bob Woodward pitched the 9th for his 6th save in 6 tries. Our second one-run win moved us to 2-6 in that category, and it’s starting to feel like we’re turning the tide.

Game 19

We had a chance to sweep the series and were only trailing 2-1 through 7 innings. But Bert Blyleven gave up three more runs in the 8th to put it out of reach. The bright spot is the bullpen ran its scoreless streak to 16 innings over the past six games.

Game 20

Next up: Our first interleague matchup, a two-game series (one home, one away) against P Niek! at the Disco.

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Baseball Covid Sim Baseball

My 2020 WISC Debacle

I joined the Sim League Baseball game on What If Sports (aka WIS) in August 2016 and decided to enter the 96-owner WIS Championship tournament (aka the WISC) in 2017 to test out how well I’d picked up the subtleties of the game. The tournament consists of two rounds, with 24 owners advancing to the second round. Each round consists of six unique themes played at a range of salary caps with different challenges, so in theory the better owners should have a good opportunity to rise to the top without too much random bad luck interfering.

I finished 46th in my first year and learned a lot. Another year of experience got me into Round 2 (aka The Cage) my second time and I finished 15th out of the advancing 24 in the final standings. My confidence only increased when I advanced again in 2019 and finished 7th in the final standings. I was even leading the standings one-sixth of the way through Round 2. Clearly I belonged here, right?

Cut to 2020, which has of course not been like all other years in so many ways. Should I have expected it to be any different in the game world? 

I received a ranking of 26 for the 2020 tournament, based on a formula that weighs owner strength in a variety of variables. The overall field was definitely stronger, possibly a reflection of more people having time in covid quarantine to devote to hobbies, and the site seems to have had a noticeable uptick in business. 

I was pretty busy in the weeks leading up to the tournament, even working from home, but I thought I put in the necessary effort to create competitive rosters. My expectations were certainly another spot in The Cage and my eyes on getting back to the top 10. Ideally, you get better each year, right? 

Well … success has eluded me this year in a big way. We are 137 games into the 162-game season, and I’m probably mathematically eliminated from advancing. I’m in 47th place and 30 total wins below The Cage cutoff. That means I’d have to average more than a win per cycle (that’s the six games played at each of the three times daily) more than the teams ahead of me. So if everyone above me went an average 3-3 the rest of the way, I’d have to average better than 4-2. Realistically, my teams would have to play .700 ball cumulatively to have a shot. And that’s really no shot at all.

It’s not like I’m just missing the cutoff either. I’m way back, basically middle of the pack. While that’s nothing shameful, it’s hardly my expectation. There’s a little bad luck involved, as three of my teams are underperforming expected win percentage significantly (one is actually overperforming, and two are nearly spot on). Yet even if I add on 17 wins from the underperforming teams, I’d still only be in 36th place. Better, with a prayer still, but still low.

Like most people, I’m pretty eager to put 2020 in the rear-view mirror. Fitting I suppose that my WISC experience should be no better than the rest of life this year.

A little perspective never hurts either, and a covid death toll topping 130,000 in the United States reminds me that it’s a privilege to be talking about a computer game at all right now. We should all be lucky to make it through the year, period.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 13-16: One-Run Losses Add Up

The story of the Jack Bauer Squared season has quickly become about one-run losses. We managed to suffer two more of them in our four-game series with Steroids Make You Fast and have now lost all six games decided by one run in just the first 16 games of the season.

This makes us profoundly unlucky, as our 6-10 record should be 9-7 based on our expected winning percentage (we have outscored opponents 82-75). There’s reason to believe the law of averages will turn around the bad luck, but it’s also possible there’s a deficiency in the team that is leading to this trend.

Game 13 was a 3-2 loss that extended our slide to five games. In the bottom of the 9th we put runners on 1st and 3rd with no one out but couldn’t get a run home. For some reason (I’d say go ask him, but we don’t have postgame interview abilities here), Joel Youngblood didn’t score on a double play grounder. Runners on 3rd almost always would break for the plate as soon as the first throw didn’t go home but to 2nd instead. The next batter flew out to deep center, and the rally fizzled.

Game 13

The second game of the series found a new way to create disappointment. We led 3-0 after 6 innings and then it all fell apart. Steroids Make You Fast put together a 6-run 7th and we dropped our 6th straight game, this time 6-4.

Game 14

We finally snapped the streak in Game 15, flipping the score for a 6-4 win. Our bullpen continued to be a strong element of the team, pitching three scoreless innings to preserve the lead. No outstanding individual performances, but at this point it’s just a relief.

Game 15

Alas, it didn’t take long to return to our one-run losing ways, however. Instead of salvaging a split of the series, Bert Blyleven gave up four runs in the top of the 1st and we never led. We rallied for three in the 2nd but didn’t score again until the 8th and would up losing 5-4. 

Game 16

Despite being just 6-10, we don’t face a big deficit in the division yet. The leader sits at just 8-8, and the rest of us are all 6-10. We have another four-game series coming up with A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit, another of the 6-10 teams in the division. Clever name, but let’s just say that we aren’t curious to see what their team mascot would be. 

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Baseball Hobbies Sim Baseball Sim Dynasty

Sim Dynasty: What’s Real Anyway?

Though I initially framed this blog around the start and now flow of a season in a particular game, I am also tracing my history that brought me to today. And a significant chunk of that includes a game I also still play currently.

I first signed up for Sim Dynasty in October 2002 while holding my infant son in one arm and navigating the web with the other. That baby just graduated high school.

Sim Dynasty offers a different experience of building and managing baseball (and football) teams, because owners draft their players, develop them in the minor leagues, then play out their entire major-league careers. Of course, these are not actual MLB historical players we are using, but rather their approximations.

Though there are certainly sim owners who greatly prefer either historical players or fictional ones, I have to observe that at the level of the game engine it simply doesn’t matter. I may refer to the incomparable Sim D pitcher Andy Bomback (more on him to come) or to the performances of Greg Maddux in WIS, but to a simulation all of them are just code bits that contribute information to the decision algorithm that results in an output.

Put them all together and you get games and seasons, and we put names on the statistical achievements and call them Andy Bomback or Greg Maddux. It’s all in fitting with the storylines we create in our imagination. The method of building the teams differs significantly, but what makes these and other great sim games work is that they produce game and season outcomes that mimic reality well enough to keep us coming back.

On one level we certainly must accept that nothing about this hobby is “real,” but the realism exists on a high enough plane that it satisfies the piece of my brain that craves baseball and all its numbers, streaks, championships, and (yes) players. 

Bats or bits, it doesn’t matter. 

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 10-12: Oh No, a Losing Streak!

Our three-game series against Royal Gamers didn’t go well at all. The hosts swept us, sending us to a four-game losing streak overall and dropping our record to 5-7. We are fortunately only 1 game behind in our division still, and 12 games is still very early, but 6 losses in 7 games definitely starts to mess with your confidence.

In the series opener we were facing Sid Fernandez, a longtime Met who was famously hard to hit. In fact, he started off our 24×24 season by throwing a no-hitter! We put an end to his hopes of doing it again in the 2nd inning and held a 4-3 lead until Royal Gamers rallied for 4 runs in the 6th and went on to win, 7-4.

Game 10

In the second game, once again we held a one-run lead in the 6th inning and gave up 4 runs in the bottom of the inning. Bob Bailey hit a solo homer in the 9th inning to get us within a run but we fell short, 6-5.

Game 11

The final game of the series was another close loss, this time 3-2. We scratched out a couple of runs off Catfish Hunter, and he was just a little bit better than my Bert Blyleven. That made us 0-4 in one-run games, which is a very frustrating stat. If those break 2-2, we’d be 7-5 instead. And based on our 66 runs scored vs. 57 allowed, we should be 7-5. That’s a sign we should even things out soon.

Game 12

We start an eight-game stretch of division games at home next, with Steroids Make You Fast; Just ask Jose coming in first. They are off to a 3-9 start so maybe it’s a chance to get this team back to winning ways. 

Categories
Baseball MLB Sim Baseball

Bad Neighbor League

As I described in my previous post, I won my 23rd title in Sim League Baseball today. The theme for this league was one of my favorites and worthy of some extra footnotes.

The Bad Neighbor League included only MLB teams from 1922, 1932, 1942, 1952, 1962, 1972, and 1982. Owners have to build their 25-man rosters using players from four teams, using at least six players from each team. The catch is you only get to choose two of your teams, and two of your division mates (bad neighbors) get to stick you with bad ones.

As if that weren’t enough, your third division opponent gets to “dagger” any player on your four teams that you cannot use as well as one of the four ballparks you have available to you. Oh, and the roster restrictions and salary cap are very challenging, too. 

So when you’re building the team, you have to work around using a lot of players you don’t want to and fit them in with the ones you do want. It’s a real puzzle, and everyone ends up only partially happy with their team. 

After one of my division mates “gifted” me the 1972 Texas Rangers, who were managed to a 54-100 season by Hall of Famer Ted Williams, I commented that based on the woeful hitting of that team Williams probably spent the season in the dugout daydreaming about his famous hobby, fishing. So of course I had to name the team, Ted Williams Would Rather Be Fishing.

One of my team’s heroes turned out to be a somewhat unlikely contender, considering he cost only about $1 million out of the $80 million allotted. One of the joys of games like this is expanding my knowledge of baseball history and its players, because no matter how long I keep at this I’ll be encountering players I didn’t know.

Frank Biscan pitched for the St. Louis Browns in 1942, 1946, and 1948, totalling only 148 career innings. He was a relief pitcher in an era when that role went to failed starters, a far cry from the specialized role it plays in today’s MLB. In 1942, the season I used, Biscan appeared 11 times for 27 innings and posted a 2.33 ERA. Since the cutoff for having your season used in the sim is 25 innings, the left-hander barely made it.

I installed Biscan as my closer, and he delivered a near-perfect season. He made 36 appearances for me and earned 35 saves in his first 35 tries. Only in his final game did he blow a save, but the team rallied so he earned the victory. Then in the playoffs, Biscan went 7 for 7 in saves, including 3 games in the World Series. He might well have been my MVP.

Another interesting note about Ted Williams Would Rather Be Fishing while I’m at it. The League Championship Series went a full 7 games, and in the deciding game my leadoff batter Wally Judnich of the 1942 Browns hit a home run to start the bottom of the 1st inning. Our ace pitcher, Johnny Vander Meer (most famous for throwing back-to-back no-hitters in 1938, a feat never duplicated), pitched 8 shutout innings, and Biscan finished it off for a 1-0 series-clinching victory.

Cut to the first game of the World Series. Once again, Judnich led off the bottom of the 1st inning with a home run. And once again that was the only run of a 1-0 victory. The odds against winning back-to-back games in that nearly identical fashion, let alone critical playoff games, must be astronomical. As I posted in the league forum, Holy deja vu, Batman!

One of the discoveries you make after thousands of simulated seasons is that you are actually observing many more games than have ever actually been played in the real MLB, so when something really rare pops up it has a great deal to do with quantity. Play enough games, and some remarkable achievements and unusual performances will surely arrive at some point. 

Categories
Baseball Sim Baseball

Title No. 23

Winning a league championship in Sim League Baseball doesn’t get old. The competition is tremendously good, and since most leagues are 24 teams the odds are just never in your favor no matter how well you build your team. Most players will tell you that playoffs are little more than a crapshoot, where the best teams frequently falter and upsets happen all the time.

So today is a celebration day because I won my 23rd title. I have completed 253 seasons in my just under four years on this site, so I’ve emerged on top in exactly 1 out of every 11 seasons. This ratio is definitely not the best on the site, as a search of several top owners showed they’ve averaged close to 1 title every 9 seasons. 

For comparison’s sake, my division mates in this league have these totals: 9 titles in 95 seasons, 14 titles in 283 seasons, and 2 titles in 422 seasons. My opponent in the World Series has 113 titles in 1,413 seasons (one every 12.5 seasons) and is 14th in site history in championships.

People play for a lot of different reasons and try out different kinds of leagues where the degree of difficulty can vary significantly. Some just love baseball history and exploring the possibilities. A bad record is no indictment, nor is a great record proof that you’re a master either.

I have made the playoffs in 126 of my 253 seasons, reached the finals (World Series) in 46, and converted exactly half of those into titles. There are experienced owners who have so much confidence in making the playoffs they can build teams designed to win once they get there. I’m not there yet; I aim to get there and then hope for the best.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 7-9: First Series Loss

Now that the season is under way, we’ll switch to recapping by series or day rather than game by game.

Jack Bauer Squared took a 4-2 record into Wrigley Field for a three-game series and promptly lost a 5-4 decision in the opener. 24 Hours at Wrigley never trailed, but we had opportunities to tie or take the lead in the 7th and 9th innings. Both times Bobby Murcer could not deliver the clutch hit. Kal Daniels continued his hot start with a 4-for-4 day and raised his average to .500.

Game 7

The second game of the series featured another surge of offense. We used a 4-run 9th inning to blow open a close game and then held on for a 10-7 victory. The wind picked up in the bottom of the 9th as 24 Hours at Wrigley hit three solo homers off Rod Beck before Bob Woodward came in for his 2nd save. Daniels hit his 3rd homer, and Rafael Ramirez homered and drove in four runs to raise his average to .387. 

Game 8

Our chance to win a third straight series to open the season went awry as we fell behind 7-0 before coming up short, 7-5. We had the tying runs on base with one out in the 9th inning, but a pair of ground outs ended the rally. 

Game 9

Our first series loss put us at 5-4 and tied for 1st place in the division. Our next series takes us to Royals Stadium for three games against Royal Gamers, who are also 5-4 thus far. 

Royal Gamers are second in the league in runs scored so far with 56, and we are right behind at 55. Both pitching staffs have been vulnerable to home runs as well, giving up 13 each, tied for second most in the league. It’s pretty early, though, so I won’t be surprised if pitching comes up big.