WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE

Very interesting developments on Tuesday night.

In the Mathews Division, Joe is going to go 0-4.  Brett and Avery are battling for the 4-0 position with Brett currently holding a slight edge.  If Brett holds his lead, and Avery goes 3-1, as he most likely would, Avery will lead the division by 1 game over Joe and by 2 games over Brett heading into the final weekend.  If Avery manages to get to 4-0, which could happen with a strong game from Ryan Franklin, he will hold a 2 game lead over Joe and 4 game lead over Brett.  Avery is back in the playoffs drivers seat, but all three teams will still have a shot.

In the Spahn Division, Joel has a chance to pick up 4 games on Tief and keep a mathematical chance of winning the division going into Friday.  His SP is Liriano tonight.  He hold about a 10 point lead on the week over Jake who has Tim Hudson pitching tonight in Atlanta.

Joel should also gain ground in the wild card race as Hicks is looking at a 2-2 at best.  Hicks currently leads the wild card race by 4 games.

PLAYOFF RACE - GAME 28

DEAD

Connor, Max, Gerry - All have been mathematically eliminated from the playoff contention.

MAY BE SAFELY LEFT FOR DEAD

Tom - Trails Bill by 10 games in the standings.  Would need to finish 10-0, have Bill finish 0-10, have a whole bunch of other things happen as well, and them win a 1-game playoff with Bill for the wild card.  Ain't gonna happen.

Both Jakes - Eliminated from their division races and trail Bill by 8 games in the wild card race.  Very similar scenario to Tom.

STILL WITH A WEAK PULSE

Brett - Nine games behind Bill in the wild card race but only 5 back in the division - but trailing two teams.  Magic number to beat Joe for he division title is 16, so a 10-0 finish would mean that Joe could go 6-4 to win outright or 5-5 to tie.  Needs to go 4-0 Tuesday to have even a slim chance.

Joel - Only two wins away from elimination in the division, but only 4 back in the wild card race.  Magic number to beat Bill is 15.  If that happens, the rest would probably fall into place.

ALIVE BUT NOT QUITE KICKIN'

Avery - Trails Joe by 2 games in the division and beating him is best chance for playoffs.  Tuesday is head to head - it's critical that he beats Joe straight up.  If so would enter final game no worse than 1 game back.

SLOW DANCING

Joe - Magic number to beat Avery is 9.  Beating Avery straight up on Tuesday would almost make it a lock.  Still would have a remote chance at the wild card if division falls through, but really doesn't want to go there.

Bill - Wild card is his to lose.  Holds a 4-game lead over the field.  Still has a remote chance at division title.  Finishing 7-3 would ice it.

AT THE DISCO

Tief - Magic number to win division is 2.  Is in barring a complete collapse.  Even with an 0-10 finish, would still likely be in.

John - Magic number to win division is 3.  Has clinched a playoff spot as he can finish no worse than the wild card.

HEAT

Just warming up the blog for the pennant race, playoffs and World Series.  Stay tuned...

PLAYER STATS

A good way to calculate and publish FNFT player points on a timely basis continues to elude me, however here is a rundown of the top 35 - those who would be in the auction if the season ended today.

FNFT	POS	PLAYER	MLB	POINTS
Bill	SP1	Roy Halladay	Phi	214
Jake	SP1	Tim Lincecum	SF	164
Brett	SP1	C.C. Sabathia	NYY	152
Gerry	DH	Vladimir Guerrero	Tex	149
Bill	1B	Ryan Howard	Phi	144
Max	SP1	Chris Carpenter	StL	139
John	SP1	Adam Wainwright	StL	138
Tom	SP1	Roy Oswalt	Hou	134
Avery	SP1	Ubaldo Jimenez	Col	132
Jacob	SP1	Cliff Lee	Sea	125
Connor	SP1	Ryan Dempster	ChC	123
Tief	1B	Adam Dunn	Was	122
Max	1B	Justin Morneau	Min	118
Gerry	SP1	Zack Greinke	KC	118
Joel	3B	David Wright	NYM	117
John	OF	Josh Hamilton	Tex	117
John	1B	Adrian Gonzalez	SD	116
John	3B	Alex Rodriguez	NYY	116
Jake	OF	Matt Holliday	StL	113
Tief	SP1	Justin Verlander	Det	113
Brett	RP1	Rafael Soriano	TB	112
Joe	RP1	Heath Bell	SD	111
Joel	SP3	Johan Santana	NYM	108
Bill	OF	Vernon Wells	Tor	106
Gerry	RP1	Mariano Rivera	NYY	106
Gerry	1B	Derrek Lee	ChC	104
Jacob	2B	Brandon Phillips	Cin	103
John	DH	Hideki Matsui	LAA	103
Jacob	OF	Andre Ethier	LAD	103
Brett	OF	Matt Kemp	LAD	103
Jacob	3B	Evan Longoria	TB	102
Brett	1B	Miguel Cabrera	Det	101
Jacob	SP2	Jered Weaver	LAA	101
Joel	1B	Albert Pujols	StL	100
Jacob	1B	Kevin Youkilis	Bos	100

As you can see, the list is heavily dominated by starting pitchers.  If this were the auction list, there would be 13 SPs in the auction.  I don't think we've ever had that many.

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: I'M WORKING!!!

At long last, I've gotten the FNFT message system back up and working.  This is one of the pieces that worked last year that was broken by the new software upgrade.  Well, it's back and better than before.  Sorry it took so long.

GIve it a try.  Login and click "Messages" from the top menu.

DANICA WITH A "C"

I know that almost none of you follow IndyCar racing, but the Queen B has finally pissed me off to the point that I must dethrone her as official mascot of FNFT.  Yesterday she qualified 23rd for the Indy 500 and after the run completely threw her team under the bus in an interview.  "This is the worst car I've ever had.  The GoDaddy car deserves to be higher up than this. It's better than this. It's just not set up right."  The interview was broascast over the PA and on the big screens at Indy and she was hardily booed by the crowd.  We don't need that.

Besides, there will be at least two other other women in the race and one of them, Simona de Silvestro, isn't a bad piece of tail anyway.  I digress.

As most of you know, I make an annual journey to the land of speed and this year is no different.  Technology will one day allow me to whip out my laptop in the morning in Lot 4 where we camp and make FNFT updates like I'm not even gone, but I'm not sure we're quite to that point yet.  I will do my best to do what I can, but the worst case scenario is that website updates will be non-existent Thursday through Sunday.

PLAY ME A SONG, DEREK LOWE, DEREK LOWE

Today's lead story on CBSSports.com by Eric Mack suggests that fantasy players take a look at Derek Lowe.

Try to overlook Derek Lowe's bad start. He has been better of late. And with matchups this week against the struggling Mets and woeful Pirates, Eric Mack sees potential for the Atlanta sinkerballer

If Mr. Mack was a member of FNFT and had access to the zippy FNFT roster and stat system, he would see that what he's saying is BS.

In fact, Derek Lowe did not have that horrible of a start and he really hasn't been doing better of late.  One 11 point game should not constitute "better" in anyone's book.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR

I was playing with the FNFT history database again. I figured out who the top scoring rookie was each year back to 2001. I considered each player's "rookie" season to be the year in which they first appeared on an FNFT roster.

Here are the top rookies each year with the number of points they scored and where the leader ranked in overall scoring.

2001
Ichiro Suzuki - 174 points - ranked 18th
Todd Walker - 157 points
Aramis Ramirez - 131

2002
Eric Gagne - 171 - 13th
Jacque Jones - 155
A.J. Pierzinski - 146

2003
Vernon Wells - 140 - 31st
Hideki Matsui - 121
Marcus Giles - 108

2004
Travis Hafner - 99 - 69th
Victor Martinez - 97
Pedro Feliz - 81

2005
Jorge Cantu - 139 - 37th
Felipe Lopez - 128
David Wright - 124

2006
Jonathan Papelbon - 159 - 18th
Nick Swisher - 120
Gary Mathews Jr. - 96

2007
Daisuke Matsuzaka - 167 - 10th
Nick Markakis - 162
Ryan Braun - 162

2008
Ryan Ludwick - 144 - 30th
Chris Young - 139
Edinson Volquez - 133

2009
Adam Lind - 123 - 51st
Kurt Suzuki - 96
Kevin Slowey - 94

L28

OK, I've been doing a lot of maintenance. If you read yesterday's post, you know about the new columns in the FNFT stats. Well, I've changed them a bit. Instead of "L30" for the last 30 days, I've changed to "L28" for the last 28 days. The way the MLB schedule is, it make more sense to use some number of full weeks in this summary.

So, the columns are:

FP = FNFT points in all games this year
FP/G = FNFT points per game in all games this year
L28 = FNFT points in the last 28 calendar days
L28G = FNFT points per game in the last 28 calendar days

Note that L28G is not just "L28/28". It's based on the actual number of games that the player has played in the last 28 days.

Here's another tweak: Ever since I created this thing, the FP column has been calculated by applying a formula to the player's year-to-date stats. Because I can't exactly account for some of the bonuses we use, this number has always been a rough approximation of the player's total points but not an exact count. I've changed that. The FP statistic is now the exact number that you would get if you added each players FNFT points in each individual game they have played. This makes the FP/G and L28G columns directly comparable. If the L28G number is greater than the FP/G number, then the player has been hotter recently than his average for the year - and vice-versa.

Give me some feedback on this if you have any. Does the 28-day window seem reasonable? I could change it to 21 or even 14. The caveat is that I have to use the same window for both hitters and pitchers (well, I wouldn't have to but it would be a trillion times harder to make them different). Since starting pitchers only play every five days, I think you need a big enough window to capture at least 3-4 starts.

WHEN YOU'RE HOT, YOU'RE HOT

There are some new columns on the FNFT stats pages - "L30" and "L30G". These are each players' FNFT points and average points per game in the last 30 calendar days (not games - days). These stats will be updated daily just like everything else and you can sort them just like all of the other stats.

The value of these numbers will become more evident as the year wears on. Wait until you need to pickup up an outfielder in July. I can pretty much guarantee you'll be using this. I'll be adding it to all of the places it's logical, including your main roster page.

RULE CHANGES

This is very minor.  There are a couple of rule changes that I think I've talked about in the past but never implemented.  I'm going to pull a Bill France and implement them mid-season without asking anyone.

The first is that I've eliminated the rule saying that if you cut a player you can't pick him up for a month.  I thought I had gotten rid of this last year, but it was still in there.  There's absolutely no point in having that rule anymore.  It's a holdover from the days when Craig Haralson would effectively have a 35-40 man roster by making 8-10 transactions a week and re-picking up players before anyone else knew they were cut.  We've gone to a single pickup per game and a all of the transactions are clearly posted.  It's something I don't want to have to police.  So the rule is gone.  It was Rule K.4. if you were keeping track.

In it's place, I have a new rule stating:

K.4. Pickups for the next FNFT game can begin being made at midnight of the previous game day.  This rule, in conjunction with Rule K.2. essentially says that you may not make any pickups between 12:00 noon and 12:00 midnight of an FNFT game day.

You know when you log in and underneath the login box is says:  "NEXT GAME: Game 9, Friday May 14"?  That's the game number that gets posted in the transactions table for your pickups and helps me keep track of the one pick up per game rule.  I used to set that manually, so sometimes you would log in  Saturday morning, it would still say the next game was Friday (yesterday).  I changed that to update automatically at midnight of each game day. So basically, you can't make any pick ups on Friday night for the next game unless you stay up real late.

That is all. You may get on with your day.

THORNTON STRIKES AGAIN

Unbelievable.  Matt Thornton pitched 2 innings, struck out 5 and didn't allow a base runner, scoring 18 points in the process.  He now has the top two highest all-time FNFT relief pitcher scores.

In those two games he has scored over 10% of Gerry's team points for the year.

TRACKING RP'S

If the FNFT season ended today (and thank God it doesn't), there would be 20 batters, 12 starting pitchers and 3 relief pitchers in the auction.  One of the relief pitchers would be Matt Thornton who seems quite likely to fall off the list.  The top scoring RP so far is Brian Wilson who ranks 20th in player points.  This new scoring system is working exactly like I told you it would.

RECORD POINTS PER GAME

I was looking through the the history database to see where Hick's 105-point game ranks all time.  I remember way back in the early days of FNFT, a 100-point game was almost an unreachable height.  Now, it happens about twice a year on average.  Hicks's game ranks 13th.

Urban Shockers hold the single game record at 136 points.  Two other teams scored 118.  That's quite a gap from the top spot down to second place.  Makes me wonder if that mark will ever be broken.  Oh wait - with the new scoring for relievers, it almost certainly will.

In the record setting game for Max, Albert Pujols went 0-for-4.

THE MATT THORNTON RULE

Cynic:  Nice job Tief.  You've managed to completely fuck up FNFT with your ridiculous new scoring rule for relief pitchers.

Tief:  What the "fuck" are you talking about?

Cynic:  Gerry's relief pitcher, Matt Thornton, gets 19 points this week!

Tief:  So what?

Cynic:  That's way too many.  That's an FNFT record and it's all because of your new scoring system.

Tief:  The guy faced 7 batters and struck out 5 of them.  How many points do you think he *should* get for that?

Cynic:  10.

Tief:  10?  That's ridiculous.

Cynic:  Alright, 12.

Tief:  Still too low.  Under the old scoring system, Thornton's game would have been 16 points.  Not much different.  And that, by the way, would *also* be a new FNFT record.

Cynic:  Alright then, how can you justify a relief pitcher getting 19 points when Andruw Jones hit two home runs and only got 18?

Tief:  Matt Thornton had a better game than Andruw Jones.

Cynic:  That's bullshit.

Tief:  I know context doesn't matter in our league but Andruw Jones hit two solo home runs.  Matt Thornton came in the game with bases loaded and his team down by one, struck out Ken Griffey, and then shut Seattle down for the next two innings while the White Sox came back to win.

Cynic:  But it was Andruw Jones' walk-off homer that won that same game!

Tief:  Like I said, context doesn't matter.

Cynic:  You're a hypocrit.

Tief:  The point here is that Thornton's game was a once-in-a-decade performance.  That kind of thing isn't going to happen every week.  The new scoring system is working just fine.  Part of the problem is that you have been programmed to believe that relief pitching is less important than it actually is because of the vanilla scoring system we used to use.  Given the opportunities presented to them, relief pitchers still score relatively few points in our league.  There have been 100's of games in which hitters score 20 points.  A relief pitcher never has.  Just accept this for what it is - a great performance by a player on some other team.

Cynic:  I still think it sucks.

TIef:  Well then *you* should have drafted Matt Thornton.

Cynic:  Good point.

Tief:  See.  I knew you'd come around.

(Editor's note:  Thornton's score will be erased if Mariano Rivera pitches on Saturday.)

COMMISSIONER BUTTON

My son has informed me that when he logs in to the roster system that he has a "Commissioner" button on his top menu.  I suspect that all of you do to.  I am the only one who is supposed to be able to see that but this is one of these little things that changed when I upgraded to the new version of the software (which I'm so far regretting.)

The intent of this area is to allow me to make changes to the master player file from anywhere I have web access.  I can't figure out yet how to make it appear for me and not appear for all of you, so I'm just going to leave it there for now and ask to not to go in there and screw with things.  You can click on it if you'd like to see what's there.

MAY THE BEST TEAM WIN

On average, FNFT World Series winners win 102.7 games in the regular season.  Teams losing the World Series win 99.8 games, and teams losing in the playoffs average 95.3 regular season wins.

LONG TIME COMIN'

The average length of tenure in the league of the 13 FNFT teams this year is 15.4 years - the longest it's ever been.  The previous high was 14.5 years in 2008.

FNFT History Database

I know that number crunching isn't for everyone so I doubt that many of you have the same reaction to the FNFT History Database that I do, nor appreciate the wealth of knowledge contained in it.

I have always thought it would be fascinating to apply Bill James type sabermetric principals to the data generated by FNFT.  I now have 10 years worth of data - certainly enough to start identifying patterns and figuring out - on paper - how to win an FNFT championship.

One of my weaknesses, I suppose, and perhaps a reason why I haven't won more championships than I have is that I put much more effort into running the league than I do running my own team.  I like to share the fruits of my efforts with everyone and give everyone else as much data as I have for myself.  It has been a dream of mine to create a database of all of my historical FNFT data and dive into analyzing it.  This file is the culmination of over 60 hours of work over the past 4 or so weeks, and years of record keeping and planning.  You may download it for yourself in about 15 seconds.

"So what?", you're all saying.  And if you're not saying that, you certainly don't want to waste your valuable time crunching FNFT data.  No matter - I'll do it for you.  Over the next several weeks, I will post statistics and finding that hopefully some of you will find interesting and informative.  Here goes...

FACT #1

The average price paid for an auction player is $29.

FACT #2

The average price for starting pitchers in the auction is $38.  The average price paid for hitters is $26.  The average price for relief pitchers is $15.

FACT #3

On average, almost half (49.1%) of the points that your team scores will be by players selected in the auction or in the first four rounds of the draft.

FACT #4

Players selected in the 3rd round of the draft have scored more points than players selected in the 2nd round of the draft.

FACT #5

On average, players selected in the first round of the draft score more points per than players taken in the auction.

There.  You're smarter now than before you read this.  And this is just a sample.  I'm saving the good stuff for after the draft.

PITCHING, PITCHING, PITCHING

It's actually been a very long time since we made any changes to the FNFT points system.  I consider myself a traditionalist - I think many of you are too.  That's why I think it's time we make some changes.

Traditionally, a traditionalist is one who likes to keep things they way they are.  I am that way.  The basic FNFT scoring system was developed 24 years ago and for the most part hasn't changed (although it has, but mostly back when we were all younger and more whimsical.)  But what's changing is the game of baseball - the fuel of FNFT.  In particular, what's changing is the way pitchers are used.  It is time we change our scoring system to accommodate that.  To keep things they way they were.

RELIEF PITCHERS

Over the past four seasons, there have been 1,114 FNFT games in which a team's relief pitcher got a save.  That's actually only 41% of all relief pitcher games.  We reward a save with 4 points, which I think we should continue to do.  Saving a game is a relief pitcher's primary responsibility and it should be rewarded as such.

The problem is though that for the most part, all saves are alike.  In 85% of those 1,114 save games, the pitcher pitched exactly one inning.  What this means is that in the 41% of the best games for relievers, the only thing that distinguishes them from another are the hits, walks, and strikeouts.  Well you typically don't get many of those in only one inning pitched, so we wind up with all of the best relief games being basically the same number of points.  No variation means no value.  Admit it - the last few seasons you really didn't care who your closer was, as long as you had one.

My proposal would increase the amount of variance in relief pitcher points and therefore make the choice of relief pitchers more important to the overall outcome of games.  I propose:

1. Award relievers two points for a strikeout rather than one.  What is better than a closer coming in and striking guys out?
2. Give relief pitchers two points for a "clean" outing - one in which they give up no hits or walks.
3. Eliminate the 4 points awarded for a relief win.  A win for a reliever is more often a bad thing than good.  It most likely means he blew the save.  A win for a reliever will be worth nothing.

The effect of this change would increase the average relief game (in FNFT games) from  3.8 to 5.3 - only a modest change.  But more importantly, it would create more separation between good and bad games.  Right now the percentage of games in which a reliever scores 10 or more points is only 1.4%.  This scoring change would increase that to 15.9% - over ten times more likely.  By comparison, hitters score 10 or more points in 12.9% of games.  This change would make your relief pitcher about as important as your third or fourth best hitter.

Another thing I like about this change is that it adds a scoring element for relievers that is not counted in traditional stats.  For hitters, we have the bonus for getting at least one run, hit, and RBI in a game.  For starting pitchers we award points for a 10-strikeout game.  Clean outings are not an official stat.  I like having things like that in our scoring system.  FNFT has always been about in-game performance and things you could look up in a box score - not stats compiled over time.  This scoring changes for relievers better fits that spirit.

STARTING PITCHERS

While we're at it, what about starters?  It's not much of a secret to anyone that pitchers don't win as many games as they used to.  In the Major Leagues there were only eight 20-game winners in the last five years.  There were 26 in the five years before that.  Winning games has become as much a result of team hitting than pitchers' performance.  Bradon Looper led the Brewers with 14 wins last year.  This year he doesn't have a job.

I propose that we reduce the number of points for a starting pitcher win from 4 to 2.  This makes a win +2 and a loss -2.  In addition, I propose a 3-point bonus for a "Real Quality Start".  What's that you ask?  You haven't been reading In-Between Hops.  A Real Quality Start is a game in which the pitcher gives up fewer hits plus walks than innings pitched.  If he gives up 3 hits and 3 walks in 6 innings, that's not an RQS.  If he gives up the same thing in 6-1/3, it is.  Essentially, this would replace the two points we're taking away for the win and add one more since this doesn't happen as often.  In the Majors, about 20% of games are real quality starts.  In FNFT I suspect it's much higher, but still not near the percentage of wins.

Again, this change fits the spirit of rewarding in-game performance for things that aren't counted in the regular stats.  It's simple and you can look it up in a box score.  As with all rule changes, we can vote on these changes at the draft.  I just wanted to lay out my case here because I've put a lot of time into this.  I spent several hours testing various combinations of scoring on live data and think that this proposal works out best.

Thanks for reading.