Sunday, July 10, 2022

Ohtani 6 scoreless IP, 2-run HR not enough - ChiSox Crush Angels Pen

 Shohei Ohtani dominated for 6 scoreless innings and blast a 2-run homer, leaving the mound with a 5-0 lead that would have given the Angels credit for a 3 games to none Statis-Pro sweep.

However the ChiSox destroyed the weak Angels bullpen. Tim Anderson capped 4 doubles in the first 7 batters against Angels relieving to tie the game 5-5, and the Angels won 9-5. Anderson went 4 of 9 in the series.

In the 2nd game the ChiSox new pitching depth described in the previous blog was the difference as Kopech pitched the last 3 innings in a 3-1 win. For the series the ChiSox relievers pitched 7.1 scoreless innings while the Angels relievers gave up 9 runs in 5 innings.

Each team has now played five 2-game series in Statis-Pro this season. Keep in mind our Statis-Pro teams do not get to rack up wins against the worst five teams in the league so the records should be a little worse in Statis-Pro then in real games. The two teams that are much better in real life then in our early Statis-Pro games are the NY Yankees (2nd in our Statis-Pro League but nowhere near the amazing clip the team is playing at this year) and the Houston Astros (only .433 in the early Statis-Pro by .659 in real life. The only team that is much better in Statis-Pro then in real life is the Toronto Blue Jays, who are barely above .500 in real life but are first place in Statis-Pro at 19-11. The other 7 teams in our league are close to what you would expect.

Click for the record of all games and the standings.



White Sox replace 3/4rds of Rotation in Major Upgrade for Angels Series

 In prep for our Statis-Pro White Sox vs. Angels series, we  checked the rosters for both teams as we had for the other 8 teams in our league this season.

The White Sox pitching rotation was the biggest news. Former Astro Keuchel was no longer on the roster after eight starts and a 7.88 ERA the year after a full season 5.28 ERA which the chart below shows would have made him a PB: 2-5 (next to worst).

The White Sox improved dramatically adding the PB: 2-8 (top 15% of all pitchers) Lou Giolito to give them their immediate ace and move a strong PB:2-7 (top 35%) Dylan Cease to their No. 2 spot for the series. They also added the cards for their No. 3 and 4 starters  in PB: 4-7 (average) Johnny Cueto and Lance Lynn for the next series. This may be the biggest improvement in cards we've seen in this run through to update rosters.


The White Sox also fared better with the update of batters, adding switch hitting power hitting Yoan Moncada with a home run range of 26-31 and .791 OPS for a solid switch hitting 3rd basemen. He moves into the No. 7 spot of a very deep line-up even though they have been slightly below average in scoring runs in the reason season. The only bad news for the White Sox is they lost their cleanup hitter Eloy Jimenez to 60-day DL, but they do get the great fielding and base stealer Adam Eaton to put at the 9-spot to have speed on the bases before Luis Robert comes to the plate.

 The Angels added a decent but below average 3rd baseman David MacKinnon (.716 OPS)but he is a terrible fielder (CD1, E5) and needs to step into the line-up because slugging 3rd baseman Anthony Rendon is on 60-day DL. We keep player cards in the game unless they are no longer on the 40-man roster or are on 60 day DL. If a player is out for a shorter period or even in the minors then we leave his card in the game.

However, the Angels did help their defense with 2nd baseman Luis Rengifo, who is a light hitting 2nd baseman like Jack Mayfield, but a much stronger fielder (CD4 vs. CD2).




adadd

Friday, July 8, 2022

Statis-Pro Guardians pick up nice bat in Gonzalez to Face Twins

The Guardians stroked 15 hits in consecutive games, including Ramirez and Reyes combining for 12 of 19 with 5 homers. Twins had chance in 9th of last game with Urshela at plate as tying run, but a "47" as pictured on closer Clase's last number in his strikeout range ended the game 7-4 Cleveland. They won the first game 10-3 for sweep credit and moved ahead of the Twins in standings.



Setting up for the battle of AL Central Teams (though in Statis-Pro it is just one 10-team league) the Indians did lose Bobby Bradley, who had been starting, but the addition of Oscar Gonzalez to the roster seemed to fill his spot fine with a home run range of 31-34 even before the deep range of 35-37 that is a homer one in three times in the average park.

Probably won't use their other addition, Luke Mailed, much as he is a rare card with no home runs and his ops is one of the lowest at 0.583.


The Twins however were decimated by a half dozen pitchers either on 60-day DL or not on the 40-man roster any more. The one pitcher they added was Devin Smeltzer, who is just a PB 2-6, but can give up to 5 innings pitched. 


Here are the Twins lost to the team in this roster check.



Next the results between the two teams - and always uphill when you face PB: 2-9 Shane Bieber. 

3 Key Posts - Hoops and Baseball Game and Player Ratings

The key three links for this blog site the links to two free games with player cards - Statis-Pro Baseball Game and the Value Add Basketball Game - and the database rating all the college basketball players of this century at www.valueaddbasketball.com.

The games provide free team card printouts of 300 all-time great men's and women's college basketball teams, 60 all-time great Major League baseball teams, and generally the current 30 baseball teams. We have gone to a format of having each team in both games for in one piece of paper for ease of play.

Unfortunately the stats needed to compile the Value Add Basketball ratings of current players are no longer available.

We reprint this blog periodically to orient new readers, and it is permanently listed at the bottom of the web version of the page.

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Biggio 2 GS Crush Updated Mariners Cards

 The next two Statis-Pro rosters to update for a series were the Mariners and Blue Jays. 

Cavan Biggio did something I don't remember happening in all my decades of playing Statis-Pro bsaeball - he hit Grand Slam Homers in both games of a 2-game series. The scoresheet is at the bottom, and while the NY Yankees are having one of the greatest seasons ever in real baseball, in Statis-Pro they are second at 2 games behind the Blue Jays, who are now 19-11 with the wins. More further down, along with the scoresheet, but first the roster update:

From our opening week team, we took out the Blue Jays cards for catcher Tyler Heineman, who was no longer on the 40-man roster, and for there pitchers on 60-day DL, Julian Merryweather, Tayler Saucedo and most importantly Hyun Jin Ryu (a PB 2-8 starter). The Blue Jays had no players to add - and remember we only add players who are starting or pitching a lot of innings and did not yet have a Statis-Pro card with the team.

The Mariners lost four pitchers (none better then an average PB4-7) who were simply not on the 40-man roster, and then Casey Sadler ((PB 4-7) due to him being on 60-day DL.  They also lost a couple of bats on 60-day DL in catcher Tom Murphy (back-up, .681 OPS) and starting outfielder and good batch Mitch Haniger.

We did add cards for three Mariners batters who did not have cards from the opening week roster check but showed up as starters on the depth charts.

 The three starters from 40-day rosters without cards were looked up on the all batters sheet., and we pulled them to the top three spots here. A few interesting notes on Carlos Santana. We were not sure at first if that was the same one on the Kansas City Royals last year, and if it had not been then we would have used his projected .677 OPSto use the ".675 not on list" bolded line below.

However, it was him, and note that his deep range goes to 30, and anytime it ends in a 0 it is really two less, so the written out card goes to 28. Also note it appears from the all batters sheet that everything was calculated because he has a 87/11 (hits lefties better than righties even though he is a switch hitter) already filled in on the card. Kyle Lewis and Taylor Trammell did not have any numbers in the spot and were not identified as hitting left handed or right handed, but because Lewis was right-handed on the 40-day roster we give him the standard 88/11 for righties, and because Trammell was left-handed on the 40-day roster we gave him the standard lefty 12/28.

 

Here are our free hand cards for all.




Because George Kirby was not in the opening week roster we went to the this link for all pitchers, and he was there. So we used that card, but if he was not there his projected 4.33 ERA on Fangraphs would have meant we made him a standard PB 4-7.



And now for the 2-game series of Seattle at Toronto, which from the Game Tracker we know allows home runs on deep drives of 11-68 in Toronto, with 71-88 being caught with all runners advancing.

Cavan Biggio's homers in consecutive games led a Blue Jays barrage on Seattle pitching for 8-7 and 10-1 wins. The second game counted as a sweep, so the Blues Jays were credited with winning the series 5 games to 1 to move ahead of the Yankees for first place at 19-11.

It appeared the Blue Jays would sweep the first game when they jumped to a 7-0 lead on Biggio's Grandslam to cap a 7-run 3rd inning. 

However, Seattle's amazing 21-year old Julio Rodriguez hit the second of back-to-back homers to cut the lead back to 7-2, and a 5-run 6thtied the score and made the Blue Jays use all three of their PB 2-8 relievers (meaning they could not pitch in the second game) before Chapman hit a game-winning homer in the 8th for the 8-7 final.

The second game sweep was not in doubt, with Gausman going 7 strong innings allowing only one earned run, which was key since the top relievers were gone.

Our last two series of this 7th round are Cleveland vs. Minnesota and the Chicago White Sox vs. the LA Angels.

So far in our season 23% of the games have counted as 3 games to 0 sweep, meaning the winning team led by at least 5 runs at the end of the 8th inning without having used their top reliever who was available. The MLB average in actual 3 game sweeps has been slightly higher at 28%, but because we only play the top 10 teams in each league, teams do not get to beat up on the worst 5 teams where sweeps would be more likely.



Monday, July 4, 2022

Red Sox, Astros Pick Up Outfielders before July 4 Battle

 Setting up for the Astros and Red Sox Statis-Pro series, we compared the Statis-Pro cards in our stacks for each team to the 40-day rosters, and both teams lost and added just a few players based on the blog. With Tampa Bay in the previous blog we had to add a few pitchers, but for this series we only needed to add three batters, which we found on this all batters sheet. 

The all batters sheet does not usually have positions or whether they bat (or pitchers throw) left or right - so I added those items from the 40-man roster. Also note these three players were on the sheet, but if you ever need to add a player you don't see on the list you can make a quick card based on an estimated OPS he will have as indicated by those columns below.


Once I have that, I just free hand cards for the players I'm adding, so the photo below matches the top three lines above.

 I actually did decided to add both centerfielders - Jarren Duran for the Red Sox adn Jake Meyers for the Astros, to the line-up against left-handed pitchers only. Both will hit in the No. 8 spot in the line-up for me in those games.



Actual Statis-Pro Games - Houston Astros at Boston Red Sox

Results to follow when doubleheader done.

The Red Sox salvaged a split when Bogaerts hit a 3-run homer off Astros closer Pressly for an 8-6 win. The Astros won the first game 5-1 behind Verlander allowing only three baserunners in 7 innings.

Brantley went an incredible 8 of 10 in the series with a double and homer, and Alvarez reached all 5 times in the second game.



Sunday, July 3, 2022

AL Statis-Pro Resumes with Yankees win vs. Rays Roster

 After detouring to finish a Value Add Basketball tournament during NBA Finals, and then to get in a Statis-Pro NL tournament we resumed to our AL season. 

We pulled out the Statis-Pro Cards for Series 7 - the New York Yankees vs. the Tampa Bay Rays - and compared them to the 40-man rosters in this blog.

A few players dropped from each team due to not being on the roster listing or now being on the 60-day DL. The Yankees had no new players on the roster that needed to be added, but the Rays did have four additions. As noted in the blog, we only go to the trouble of finding or creating a player card if the player is starting, in the rotation, or a closer. Here are the four such Rays we did not see and thus went to the sheets for the card.

We were missing three Rays pitchers cards, so we went to the all pitchers sheet and found these three. 


I believe I had just missed Corey Kluber's card, but this is easier than finding it. Not that the extra pitchers sheet did not note whether the other two pitchers threw left or right. However, the 40-man roster blog does, so we knew Poche throws left and Shane Baz throws right.

Onto the only batter who was missing from our cards, Vidal Brujan. A pretty exciting find because he is the rare OBR A, SP AA, meaning an incredible base stealer that is so rare in the modern game. While the projected  OPS 0.638 makes him a very light hitter.


One of the player cards not used because he was no longer on the Rays 40-man roster, and he was 2nd base and hit 3rd or 5th in the line-up, so with him gone we did insert Brujan's filled in card in the line-up but in the No. 9 spot.

With those updates, the two teams squared off to resume our season.

Tampa Bay at NY Yankees






The Yankees rallied to win the series 4 games to 2 against the Rays after losing the biggest hard luck season of the year for Cole.

Cole went 8 innings allowing 2 baserunners (a bit and a walk) but stayed in for the 9th as a PB 2-7 and gave up a leadoff double that ended up being the only run in a 1-0 loss - which counts as losing a series 2 games to 1 in our league.

In the 2nd game the Yankees left no doubt with a 13-4 win for a 3 games to 0 sweep to win the series 4-2.

Torres had hits his last 3 trips to the plate and Rizzo his last 4 trips.