Midseason Thoughts

[Badgers]

Anyone have any thought about their teams and others?

I for one was expecting a .500 team. I still have time, but not much. My pitching has been miserable this year, and as of late my offense has cooled down. I also want to give props to the Calzone as they were written off in the early season predictions thread. Great job proving most of us wrong Matt.

[Matt]

More blind luck than anything else. I certainly expected more offense this year, but did not expect what I have gotten from the pitchers. Two rule V picks combining for 20 wins at this point? The baseball gods are shining upon you when that happens. A waiver wire reject pitching in with another 10 wins? Too good to be true. Some of those pitchers are well overdue to implode in a big way.

[Alan Ehlers]

Im excited where I am at 2 games over .500 and only 6 out of the wild card. The only thing which blows is a stink on the road and that is where 80% of my games will be August so that is why I do not think I will get the wild card. However, getting Garcia and the bullpen help puts me in a position to make a run next year. Overall I am thrilled with Hancock, (Of course), but also with Trujillo who for a waiver wire pickup has been solid. Also Cox has been great even though his record does not show it, he has been a good workhorse and takes a lot of presure off my bullpen. I could go on about each of my players but the one who I will give the final props is Chad Hull. When he came up my catchers were batting a combines .136 with no homeruns and 1 RBI. Hull has been everything I expected and more, hopefully he gets some votes for Rookie of the year.

On the other hand, the one player who has dissapointed me is Whaley who has sucked all year except for the last two weeks. I am hoping he has a strong finish to help me win 85 games which is my goal

[Matt]

The most surprising thing has to be Yuma having won just 28 games, prior to this sim. And being a whopping 9 games OVER their pythagoran. And despite playing so far above their pytho, they are still a virtual lock to set the PEBA record for futility. I think Yuma has some bright spots in their farm system, and some ugly contracts coming off their books soon, so I wouldn't expect the extreme futility to continue forever.

On the flip side, you have Omaha, who is 7 games under their Pythagoran. I thought they were a bit better on paper than they have performed, and the pytho bears that out. I thought Omaha made some interesting moves last year that had a chance to help them, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they were fighting for a wildcard next season.

[Maulers]

Thank God this stinking, corpse of a season is nearly over. It's been a nearly complete disaster for the Maulers, who entered the season envisioning (legitimately, I thought at the time) a strong playoff run that would build on last year's unexpected success. What I realize now, of course, is that last year's playoff season was a rare convergence of related events - a momentary rose blossom in a manure-filled field - and was not the beginning of a window of opportunity. Alas, my inner pessimist realized this quite quickly and so I have been able to do some good work stocking my organization and my finances remain in good shape. So, perhaps, a return to respectability in the near future is not out of the question.

[klewis]

I think Connecticut has done an admirable job considering their conditions. Losing Adrián Reséndez and Rafael Hernandez was tough. Recently Bernardo Marín just went down too. Despite all the injuries and setbacks, the Nutmeggers has been a tough scrappy team.

I agree with Patrick in that San Antonio has been proving us wrong. Heh, I was one of the people who picked San Antonio to finish lower in the division. The good thing about Matt is that you can never predict what's going to happen in San Antonio. The team makeup may very well be different by the trading deadline! So it's definitely exciting to see what happens down in San Antonio.

It's been fun watching London and Tempe have great seasons. I'm more particularly impressed by some of these veterans having career years like Anthony Cox, Remi Young, and José Trujillo. Chris also did a nice job rebuilding the bullpen. Also what about Rick Glendenning?! I waived this guy earlier this year... Aurora's farm system resuscitate his career and now he is smashing homers in Tempe!

Quietly, Bakersfield is making a run towards the end of the season. Pat Lilly is like Barry Bonds version of PEBA.

My sympathies goes out to Jeff and the Maulers. Going from first to last must have been a shell-shocking experience. I thought Manchester was going to fall back to Earth a little bit this year but never thought it would end up like this. Hopefully Manchester will rebound next season!

Hopefully we can get an owner in Kalamazoo soon. The team has some nice pieces to work with.

I've been keeping an eye on Denny and the Codgers (primarily battling with him for second best record in hopes of getting home field advantage if Aurora is knocked out of the playoffs). That Andrés Díaz has been great. Michael Smith and John Gustafson are playing out of this world coincidentally enough in their contract years (both were rewarded with extensions). I'm curious to see what Denny does with Ollie Morris. I noticed no extension for him yet.

[Maulers]

Here's how out of it I am: I had no idea that Kalamazoo was owner-less!

[Alan Ehlers]

I had no idea either, I am too busy paying attention to my playoff push

[John]

Feel free to refer an owner! Bonus CP for the current owner that can hook us up with a highly participatory new Badgers owner.

[Hitmen]

We don't need no stinkin badgers!

[Coqui]

I'm fairly pleased with the year my team has had to this point. We are currently on pace for our most wins ever and attendance has risen to reflect. Jack Miller has been resigned and we are in negotiations to resign Pedro Silva (who came close to leaving at the deadline) as well. The bullpen has been very good so far and we are hitting for a lot of power as well.

On the flipside, I am on my third computer of the season and that has made monitoring the team a bit of a struggle. My starting pitching is starting to show signs of wear and a bit higher OBP wouldn't kill us. In all, we are doing pretty well for what was termed a rebuilding year.

The other team I thought worthy of note was Duluth. At one point they were 3.5 games out of the playoffs and acquiring bats to make a push. Now, they are 30 games below .500. Despite that plummet, they managed to pick up a lot of good prospects and stockpiled a significant amount of picks for the draft. I think the Great Lakes division is within only a couple of years of actually being competitive.