Cleveland Claims Last Bye in Statis-Pro 2022 Regular Season Finale

While some play Statis-Pro baseball historical seasons, since the 1980s we have played the current season on and off. We enjoy seeing the current line-ups. Our alternate reality 2022 AL MLB season already produced the Dodgers as NL champs using the Statis-Pro baseball game using these 2022 Protected Batters, and 2022 Projected Pitchers for Arizona to Miami and then Milwaukee to Washington.  

2022 Season Finale (click here for tracking of all games):

The Cleveland Guardians, the youngest team in MLB baseball, advanced to the AL Division Series in MLB this weekend, and on the off day for real baseball Monday defeated the Orioles in the final 2022 regular season Statis-Pro baseball series to advanced to the same level.

McKenzie threw 6 innings of 1-hit ball to give the Guardians a 6-0 lead after 8 innings, enough for the 5+ lead after 8 innings that give credit for a 3-game sweep in our game rules, as long as they held onto the win. However, that got tight when Rutschman hit a 3-run homer in the bottom of the ninth and Clase needed to come into save the 6-3 win. 

That meant Cleveland just had to not get swept in the second game to catch the Yankees and Twins for the 2nd playoff bye. That seemed easy when the Guardians took a 6-1 lead in the first two innings of the season finale when Reyes, Gonzalez and Ramirez homered. However, Mullins again exploded with a double, singled and two homers to help the Orioles take an 11-8 lead, but the Guardians kept them from getting to the 5-run lead to salvage a 1-2 record for that game as a loss but not a sweep - finishing 33-33.

The Guardians claim 2nd by breaking the 3-way tie by going 8-4 against the Yankees and Twins in these final standings. Here are the final standings, with the last column showing how much better or worse the team was then against the other 10 teams chosen for a Statis-Pro league this year (the four bottom teams were left out).

2022 Statis-Pro Final	W	L	GB	Statis-P	vs. MLB
Toronto	37	17	10	0.685	0.159
Cleveland	33	27	3	0.550	0.045
NY Yankees	33	27	3	0.550	-0.014
Minnesota	33	27	3	0.550	0.092
Houston	32	28	2	0.533	-0.083
Chicago White Sox	30	30	0	0.500	0.022
Boston	29	31	-1	0.483	0.036
LA Angels	23	31	-4	0.426	0.030
Baltimore	20	28	-4	0.417	-0.068
Seattle	25	35	-5	0.417	-0.099
Tampa Bay	23	37	-7	0.383	-0.136

That sets the playoffs

Teams had to make the playoffs based on the projected 2022 cards, however any of their players that were among these 18 most improved pitchers or 10 most improved batters can sub their card based on this season's stats.

Best of 3 White Sox at Yankees - winner Best-of-7 vs. Guardians

Best of 3 Astros at Twins, winner Best-of-7 vs Blue Jays

AL Champion from Above Meets Dodgers in Statis-Pro 2022 World Series

The following are the Cleveland cards that delivered the 33-27 season and bye.

Statis-Pro Playoff Teams Settled - Only Blue Jays Exceeded Actual MLB Team

The Chicago White Sox won a thrilled 4-3 season finale to finish the season 30-30 in Statis-Pro, exactly matching their 81-81 .500 campaign in the real season. However, in our season .500 was good enough to snag the 6th and final playoff spot, while in actual play that left them short. Here are our standings, with only the Yankees, Twins and Guardians still scheduled to face the Orioles to determine which of them gets the other bye spot besides Toronto.

Because it is an 11-team lead, these 11 do not get to play the 4 teams we left out of the league, which combined for a .400 record. Therefore each team in this league should finish .041 percent lower in the Statis-Pro season then their real team.

Each team actually plays only 20 games - 2 against each of the other 10 - so you would expect a wide margin of error between Statis-Pro and actual results.

However, pending those final three series, 6 of the 11 teams had very similar records in Statis-Pro to actual MLB play. 

The two teams that played better in Statis-Pro were the Blue Jays and Twins - in green.

The three teams that played worse were the Mariners, Rays and Orioles.

Final Statis-Pro Rosters and Transactions: Braves, Mets, Cardinals, Nationals and Reds

The following are the rosters of Statis-Pro baseball cards we are using for the divisional games in our "South & East" Division. During the season we keep up with big trades, to keep the rosters pretty close, but we don't move the players cards in and out with all the changes in modern Major League Baseball.

1. If a player is on the roster and we already had a Statis-Pro card (or temporary card) in our deck for the games we'd been playing, then obviously the remain in the game and under "Last Update" it simply says "Roster."

2. If a player we had on the team was injured but is at least rehabbing (including in the minors) to prepare to play again we keep him in the game and note the last transaction update below.

3. If a player was sent to the minors or injured within the last two months then we leave them in the game.

4. We ditch a player if they were released or traded, were not on the roster and are on 60-day DL and not yet rehabbing, or if they were sent to the minors more than 2 months ago and have not returned. Most if these players we ditch, but a key player like deGrom we keep in the stack and just mark them to check the tramsactions wires regularly to see if they start pitching again.

5. "Temporary Card" indicates the player did not actually have a projected 2021 card, but due to playing a good bit we added a temporary "fringe" card for the player. Fringe cards appear after these 5 rosters - and entail using a pitcher's projected ERA or a batter's projected OPS and the corresponding card at the end of this blog.

All-Star Game 2 Scoresheets and Statis-Pro Results

 Trout, LaMahieu and Judge had three hits each, including Judge's 2-run homer that gave the AL a 5-3 win and sweep of our 2-game All-Star series. (the results of Game 1 of our 2-game All-Star series are here, while the free player cards and games are here).

Like the first game, it ended with Chapman striking out all three that he faced in the bottom of the ninth.

The NL utilized their speed on the bases to execute the hit and run to perfection - going 2 of 4 and advancing runners the other two times including Posey's RBI single in the third and RBI groundout in the 5th. Betts drove in the third and final NL run with his second double and third hit of the game.

Overall there were more than twice as many hits as in the AL 1-0 win in game 1. In that game both teams had just five hits, but the AL outhit the NL 13-8 in the second game to sweep.

We joke about the "statis-pro gods" making things happen sometimes, and we had one if those funny moments. The AL Commissioner put Rays close Nick Anderson on his AL roster, even though I had left him out of my interleague play because he tore something in his elbow early in the season and has been out for months. I left him in the pen for the 1st all-star game, but in the second game brought him in after Ohtani's 5 innings. The very first card was a Z-play, and the result was Anderson had to leave the game before facing one batter. The official z-play was an ejection for arguing balls and strikes, but im considering it an injury. The AL's four relievers who stepped in went four scoreless innings, and in real baseball Anderson is throwing off a minor league mound for the first time in months, so hopefully he returns.

The AL does not have as long a winning streak in Statis-pro as in real baseball. The NL did win 1-0 last year, when we used the pb 2-9 cards that were too strong mathmatically. However, the AL did dominate our 2019 game 5-1 and won on back-to-back Astros homers in my first year back in 2018, making the AL 4-1 since i resumed playing.

Cubs' Kimbrel Best Reliever Again?

When Craig Kimbrel entered my Statis-Pro game to Save a 7-5 win over the Mets last night I did a double take. He is a PB2-7, placing him outside the top 15% of all pitchers based on ERA adjusted for ballpark and FIPs, so in the game he the action is on his card 7 of 12 the time of the time (die rolls of 2-7) and batters card on rolls of 8-12.

But his projected ratio of hits is incredible, only allowed hits on 5% of roll (11-13 on the two 8-sided dice, so 14-88 is NOT a hit). My cards are based on a combo of the projected stats going into last year, and to a lesser degree, his less than seller actual innings last year. (Note and earlier version of this story incorrectly indicated he had a pb2-9.

Could the projections on fangraphs have been overly optimistic for his return? After he shut down the Mets in my game I checked his real stats this year. Oh, 6 appearances, 10 strikeouts, 1 hit and no runs allowed. Still early, but maybe he is back.

Now as far as both teams having 12 hits in the first game, that was the real fluke. I'm not sure that has happened all year in my game and not sure the real Cubs have 12 hits total in their first 11 games LOL.

Only 2 series left in Round 4 with the bottom of the rotations. We will have the ace pitchers starting again for that round. The games are tracked on this google sheet.