The PEBA Boondoggle - 2039

[Lions]

With just September to go, and given my recent complaints about what a tough schedule I have remaining, I thought I'd take a look at how IL teams have fared against contenders versus non-contenders. I've taken records against Florida out of this since most teams have done equally terrible against them. Notable exception Scottish are 5-2 against them, but only NJ and HAR have 3 victories among the rest of the league.

Contenders include AMA, KEN, LON, NJ, SCO, WV. All other teams except FLA are part of the non-contenders group.

Code: Select all

Tm        vCont         vNon-C      Diff
ARL    9-46 (.164)   30-40 (.429)   .265
AMA   17-24 (.415)   58-28 (.674)   .260
 SA   12-35 (.255)   32-36 (.471)   .215
KEN   16-17 (.485)   60-26 (.698)   .213
 NO   17-38 (.309)   34-33 (.507)   .198
GLO   14-45 (.237)   29-38 (.433)   .196
 NJ   22-23 (.489)   54-25 (.684)   .195
HAV   25-39 (.391)   36-26 (.581)   .190
FLA   31-15 (.674)   76-12 (.864)   .190
MAN   21-33 (.389)   43-32 (.573)   .184
CST   16-32 (.333)   34-33 (.507)   .174
LON   25-24 (.510)   51-27 (.654)   .144
SCO   27-22 (.551)   51-26 (.662)   .111
 WV   21-18 (.538)   56-35 (.615)   .077
HAR   27-33 (.450)   34-32 (.515)   .065
 SJ   26-29 (.473)   35-37 (.486)   .013

The list is sorted by win percentage differential between the two groups of teams, and you can see that Arlington has been just destroyed by contenders while playing merely poor against the non-contenders. Such is the life of the worst IL team this year.

What's more notable is how spread out the contenders are on this list. My team, Amsterdam, are right behind Arlington in terms of differential. We've played great against the non-contenders, but pretty darn lousy against the contenders. The largest portion of that is a 1-6 record against Kentucky. My record versus the contenders is closer to Manchester and Havana than it is to Kentucky and New Jersey.

My divisional rivals London and Scottish have among the lowest differential. I'm sure they, and West Virginia, are probably thinking if they had won a few more games against lousy teams that this race wouldn't be so close right now.

[Hitmen]

Top 5 against the contenders, and top 3 against the pretenders.

Interesting information as always! Goes to show you can’t ever let up and every early season game is important.

[Lions]

Reno first baseman Jonathan Hill isn't exactly a household name, but he was the 2034 SL Wunderkind. Wunderkind award winners have a tendency to get forgotten relatively quickly unless the player goes on to great things, and Hill was not one of those players. In case you're into random PEBA trivia, Hill had the most career PA's of any player to win Wunderkind when he won it. He had a full September of regular playing time in 2033, which gave him 830 PA by the end of 2034. Duluth's Juan Rincón is next at 801 PA.

In his Wunderkind season, Hill posted a 140 OPS+* with 33 home runs. He successfully stole 46 bases in 60 attempts, and there was plenty of reason for optimism in his career. He then proceeded to hit just 29 home runs over the next two seasons combined. It wasn't necessarily that he became a lousy hitter, he was still above league average, but he wasn't getting the same opportunities, and he wasn't doing as much with the opportunities he was getting.

Now, 5 years after that Wunderkind, he's finally putting together another season that has him as one of the best first basemen in the SL. He has set a career high with 65 extra base hits. While he's got just 20 home runs, his 41 doubles is 13 more than his previous best and 3rd in the league. He's (just barely) leading Reno hitters in WAR at 4.3 on the year. Reno isn't a team of superstar players. Yes, they have José Ojeda as their ace fronting the rotation, but the rest of the team is simply a collection of really good players. The team doesn't have a single regular with an OPS+ over 125, but 4 of them have an OPS+ over 120. Hill's leading that group.

Reno is 5th in the SL in runs scored and 6th in runs allowed, but 2nd in the only thing that really matters, wins. Hills resurgence is a big reason the Zephyrs are atop the Desert Hills again.

*I'm using StatsLab's park adjusted OPS+ rather than OOTP's. They're usually quite similar, but StatsLab thinks Reno's ballpark significantly helps hitters.

[Lions]

Hartford RF/DH Félix Rodríguez recently became the 14th PEBA player to tally 400 home runs over the course of his career. He's got 33 of them this year with a week to play and has been a strong presence in the middle of the Harpoon lineup.

20 of those home runs have come since July 1st, and the Harpoon have gone 49-26 (.653) during these last 3 months. What that means is the Harpoon, who are 7 games out of the wild card, were just 32-49 (.395) prior to July. Only Florida has fewer losses in the IL (NJ is one win ahead).

Next on the career home run list, with 405 to his name, is Narahiko Imada. For those newer to PEBA, Imada was the face of the franchise when they were still the Omaha Cyclones. He played from 2007 to 2021 and was a 5-time All-Star, getting just the last 2 of his 1922 franchise games in a Harpoon jersey. Imada's 51 home runs in 2008 make him one of just 6 players to have held the single season home run record*. Pablo Garza became #6 last year when he tied Steve Boyer's 54.

Unlike Imada, Rodríguez isn't a lifer** with the Harpoon. Like Imada, he began his career with a team that has since moved cities and changed names. Rodríguez began as a Canton Longshoremen, who are now the Madison Malts. He established himself as a bright young talent before getting traded to Shin Seiki at 24 years old for a bevy of prospects. 3B Tony Velázquez is the only one of them who has amounted to anything. The Evas held on to Rodríguez for 6 years, and he had his best years there, before trading him to Arlington. They moved him to Toyama after just one year, then signed him back the following season to a 5 year deal. He was with them only until the trade deadline when he was moved to Hartford.

At 34 years old, it's clear that Rodríguez is still able to crush the ball. He's always been way better against righties than lefties, and even as he ages and his average drops, expect to see him still knock the ball over the fence when he does make contact. Will he make 500 HR's for his career? It seems pretty unlikely at this point, although he does have some hope. Bartolo Mora has hit 81 from age 35 to 37, and if Rodríguez does that he'll need about 15 more to get there. He really just needs to age well. He's ahead of where Rob Raines was when he was 34.


* I'm not actually sure how impressive this is, but it sounds impressive!
** Imada spent one forgettable season with Charleston. I had certainly forgotten, probably in part because he only played in 8 games.

[Lions]

I spoke recently about how Reno first baseman Jonathan Hill provided unexpected value to the Zephyrs as they pursued the Desert Hills division title this year.

Hill provided unexpected value in a different way to a different group of PEBA fans this year, too. On August 22nd, in a game against Yuma, Hill was moved from first base to shortstop for the 9th inning. Reno was trailing Yuma 5-4 heading into the 9th inning when Francisco Alejándrez was sent in to pinch hit for shortstop Vincent Taylor. Taylor had already replaced the starting shortstop, so after the Zephyrs took the lead, Hill was moved over there while Alejándrez took his spot at first. Thus, any fantasy baseball players who had 1 game minimum positional requirements could now slot Hill over to shortstop, a position that typically has weaker hitters than first base.

Who are some other players who got playing time at unusual positions?
SS Ricardo Mateo (HAV) - You'd be forgiven for thinking that Mateo, one of PEBA's premier shortstops, has regularly slid over to second base for a game or two when the team needed him there. The fact is, until this year, he hadn't done that since 2028. Mateo has logged over 20,000 defensive innings in his professional career. Less than 70 of them have been at any position other than shortstop.

RF Alonso Aguilar (KAL) - Aguilar has played all over the outfield and the past few years has had a few outings at second base. This year, he got some actual play time at third base, something he hasn't done for a few seasons. We use the word "actual" as he's been officially inserted to the position, but hasn't logged any innings for a few seasons.

1B Ramón Francisco (HAV/NJ) - Having never once played a single professional inning, dating all the way back to his SS-A debut in 2028, at any position other than first base, the Leones gave Francisco not one but two outings at second base this year. He didn't show much range, but he did manage to make a few plays without committing an error. New Jersey was clearly not interested in repeating the experiment.

[Lions]

Palm Springs center fielder Juan Mendoza fell just 3 hits shy of getting to 1,000 for his career. Had he made it there, he would've been the 9th player in PEBA history to record 1,000 hits through age 26.

The top 5 on the list are all players who debuted in 2007:
1249 - P.J. Thomas (2007, 19 years old)
1217 - Steve McDonald (2007, 20)
1111 - George John (2007, 20)
1102 - Pat Holman (2007, 19)
1085 - Tsumemasa Morimoto (2007, 20)

The other 3 with 1,000 hits are:
1026 - Ricardo Mateo (2028, 21)
1003 - António Herrera (2033, 21)
1000 - Félix Zavala (2024, 22)

Mendoza debuted with Havana at 19 years old and was pretty darn good in a September call up in 2032. The following year he was IL Wunderkind and an All-Star. In 2034, he finished as runner-up in the IL Royal Raker, a career on the rise. Sadly, it's all been downhill since then. He left after his arbitration years to sign with Palm Springs, where he's been a solid regular, but not the star he once was.

A few quick comments on the last two players on the list above.

Herrera is a bona fide star who looks like he's going to be this year's SL Royal Raker runner up. He's the cog that makes the Warriors offense go. A classic #3 hitter who excels in the traditional triple crown categories of AVG, HR, and RBI. This year, he was 3rd in AVG, 2nd in RBI, and hit 30 home runs for the 4th time. At 27, he's already got over 200 for his career. His power output is tracking a young António Santos.

Zavala is a name you don't hear about much anymore, but the man could hit. He's the only player with 1,000 hits in his first 5 seasons with all of them that young. He had three 200+ hit seasons in those 5, then had 216 hits the next season. Then he had a wrist injury and was never the same.