Murloc—Lance Berkman, 0-for-his-previous-7, tripled off Ian Snell in the top of the 21st (!) inning to score bench player Asdrubal Cabrera, then scored on a passed ball to help the visiting Firebirds win the longest game by innings played in BARB history!
What a strange game! Prior to the ninth, both teams had done all their scoring in the fourth inning. In the top of that frame, Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Jones and Yunel Escobar all collected base hits with runners on off hurler Zach Duke (3-9, 6.19 in 16 starts between Madtown and Texas). Duke appeared to be on his way to his tenth loss, but his Murloc teammates made things interesting by scoring three in the bottom frame off Matt Cain (7-6, 4.03), and sure enough in the ninth the home town team scratched out a run off relievers Rafael Soriano and Matt Thornton to force extra innings.
And then . . . . eight innings of scoreless relief, in which the two bullpens combined for eight singles and a leadoff double (Scott Rolen was stranded). Former Vegas bullpenner Chad Qualls (4-3, 2.58) would get the win with two strong innings, that on the heels of a heroic (4 IP, 2 H, 4 K) outing by Francisco Cordero from the 16th to the 19th. It was a bittersweet win, though, as both clubs emptied their pitching staffs in the contest, using 15 pitchers, including spot starters on both clubs. Especially miserable: Yuma 2B Brian Roberts and Madtown SS Jimmy Rollins, who each went 0-for-9, but they had plenty of company, with a total of 35 batters striking out in the contest:
The win brought the Firebirds (48-36) within two games of West-leading Darwin, with the Finches having lost 9 of their last 15 and struggling to support their pitching staff without contributions from their outfield corps.
BROOKLYN 7, CASSELTON 6
WP: Matt Lindstrom (4-0, 4.75)
LP: Sergio Romo (2-3, 2.14)
SV: Rodriguez (22)
Mark Teahen walked to the start the eighth, and two singles later came home with the go-ahead run to get Matt Lindstrom (blown save) off the hook and lift the host Moabs to a 7-6 victory over visiting Casselton, the club’s eighth straight victory. Brooklyn has posted a 18-7 mark since last month, the best mark in the league over that stretch, and they have picked up five games in the standings to Worcester (13-12 over that same span). ‘K-Rod’ picked up his 22nd save and fourth in the current road trip to pull into a tie for the league lead with Black Mesa’s Jonathan Papelbon.
WORCESTER 16, ST. FRANCIS 7
WP: Jair Jurrjens (3-3, 5.28)
LP:Gavin Floyd (4-10, 5.32)
Brad Hawpe hit a first-inning grand slam off Gavin Floyd, and Grady Sizemore added a pair of homers as the Elims hit five boundary belts in all to crush the visiting Friars, who have lost five straight and nine-of-ten to take sole possession of the BARB cellar. Hawpe and C Joe Mauer also had four hits apiece as part of the carnage.
FROSTBITE FALLS 7, LOS ANGELES 2
WP: Matt Garza (9-7. 2.97)
LP: Dana Eveland (4-7, 4.90)
Matt Garza won for the fifth time since being acquired from the Texas Tornadoez, and seems to be settling into the role of ace for the Squirrels after going just 4-6 (albeit with a 2.86 ERA) for the hapless Texans. Jayson Werth was the big star, blasting his eighth shot of the year as a part-timer off starter Dana Eveland, and later adding an RBI single off Kiki Calero as the Squirrels (48-42) won their fourth straight.
FREEBIRDS PREVAIL IN EPIC CONTEST
15 comments:
that would be amazing if we could get box scores that shows players batting averages with every game update.
after heading what Brian said about the simulation, I think Scott should do that...!
But the question I keep raising every year is: why not revamp the league? It's been 6 or 7 years since the leauge began.. I think it is time to take everything we learned, perfect it and start over. A brand new draft and teams. It gives old owners to renew the challenge they once had years ago and gives others the chance to take what they learned and apply it to see if they can master the one's who been here long.
For years, 90% of the clubs who advance are the ones who have been here since day one, many years ago...
I think it is time to restart next season and put this to serious vote and consideration.
What do you thihk? I already know myself, Yuma, and others feel this way (I think I can even go as far to say Worecester would agree).
Who thinks we should?
Oh, shut up about it, Ron! You bring it up every year, and every year it gets shot down. I think every year you say Chris is for it and every year he says it's not what he would prefer. The league is fine as-is. I'm sorry you have a terrible team. Look at the parity now, though. A lot of teams have a shot at the playoffs. In fact, it's possible none of last season's playoff teams make it in this year.
Well ....it could be done (putting box scores up), but every time I do it it takes about two minutes. First I grab the screen shot, then I crop it with a photo program, then I save the cropped image to a folder, then I upload the photo to a draft of a blog post, then I have to position it within the blog post. If everything goes perfectly, I can do that in two minutes.
That's not a big deal to do once in a while for this or that game. Doing it all the time would add 10-12 minutes to every league update. Time is currency, and so the likely outcome is that I would post less frequently, and only on those days where I had a significant block of time to work on a single post. So, I haven't considered doing it for the same reason that I haven't considered having action shots for every game in every post. I think the investment of additional time per post is likely prohibitive.
As for Brian's observation that complete screenshots would save confusion or grumbling, I'm skeptical. There are simply some owners who enjoy complaining, and would complain regardless. 'Why is player so-and-so hitting below his weight', and so forth?
On the other hand, if I could work out a way to automatically display more statistical information, then I would do it in a heartbeat. But figuring it how to do that is an investment of time. Right now, I'm working three jobs and buying a house. I can't justify even thinking about investing more time in this hobby during September.
Ah well, next year in Jerusalem. I appreciate the input....SH
i again agree with Brian..
Mr. Hatfield,
What you have done for this league is amazing considering all the real-life events you must juggle through daily.
But as the years have gone by, we get less info, the league is getting slower to keep up with real life, etc...
In general, acitivity in barb has slowed much because you are getting even more busy.. I understand you cannot keep up with everything thrown your way in barb because of outside stuff, but I think, in all respect, it is time you allow other owners to help split the job.
I think you should take care of the games and simulations and getting us information about daily games or something like that (game boxs, etc..). Also, trades, etc.. the important stuff
I would be up to controling rosters and keeping track of player movement; making sure I submit up-to-date rosters frequently, with a new organized spreedsheet I came up with (trust me all will love it). I think this would help improve lessening your workload a lot. All I would need from you is a master roster, and I will fill in the blanks, with you keeping check. The current rosters are married with errors; players are missing from the draft, unknown for-sure salaries are present with these names absent...
simply put, I'm willing to do this for the sake of the league. I'm extremly organized and I think you should allow us to take some of the work off your hands to help make the league run smoother.. I think a lot of owners will be happy to have frequent updated rosters, which are fully correct, etc. I also found many errors in salary for players on other teams; I would be willing to go through all them and fix this...
Any other suggestions out there?
"owners that like to complain". All you have to do SH is to answer my question of why Wainwirght has an era of 5.20, when he had a 3.20 ERA last year and a 2.51 ERA this year? Still waiting...
matt
shit happens
vladimir guerrero is a career .320+ hitter. only one time did he hit over .300 in barb during a season
ryan braun has hit over .300 in 2/12 yrs of playing time. right now he is hitting .252
his seed is probably an outlier
things happen. its like in madden. do a fantasy draft. simulate the season. you will be surprised at the results.
sure, this league can be frustating. i wish every ten game days or so we can get a stat package or something to see how are players are doing.
and yeah, sometimes im shocked to see certain things happening, like darwin leading my division for example, but then again, in the mlb, the giants are somehow contenders and they shouldn't be. the dbacks had a negative run differntial and made the playoffs (or i think came close).
for once in your life, can you stop complaining about conspiracies and why certain players arent performing well and just let it be? its nauseating.
and by the way
carl crawford still hasnt come close to the ball hit over jeters head in the dbacks yanks world series.
funny you should bring up madden chris. do you know what else you can do on a madden franchise? you can simulate games and if your team loses or doesnt preform well you can reload the franchise and try again. this is what SH does (aside from playing his own games) and it makes me mad. all he has to do is explain why Wainwright is getting torn apart. Why wont he?
Also chris, try and stop me from posting comments. ive tried emailing him and he doesnt respond, so deal with my comments and stop crying that your head hurts from reading.
im crying. my head hurts. help me matt
nice to hear from you again brain.
are you Scott Hatfield?
man i love u brian
someone actually gets it
i also think the player tendencies play a role. for example, and aggressive hitter like guerrero may post even k-bb ratios, but in barb, thats gonna be exacerbated by the better pitching, so his seed will have a wider variance, while a guy like denard span is obviously performing around or better than his seed thanks to a patient approach
for example, dont expect a guy like kirk reuter (who i had in the first two yrs of the league) to ever post dominant k rates because he doesnt have great stuff (shockingly, he was a stud in year one in barb, although he barely k'd anyone)
thats interesting, Chris expressed his man love for Brian. hmmm
Brian, SH takes a shot at me by saying "owners that like to complain..." and i responded. He dodged responding to the last series of my Wainwright issues (why you took up the defensive is beyond me) and so i brought it up again. Why do you keep taking up offenses with me? You know what, dont even answer. I just want to hear from SH. He wont respond to emails, so this is the only forum. deal with it guys. jesus!!
hey matt
are u mad?
To ALL GM's, and Mr. Hatfield...
Listen, the way BARB is heading isn't into good waters. As every year passes, the league tends to get worse; we lose owners, don't replace them with committed owners, the league slows down in running games, gets too behind, lags further in getting out critical information that GM's need to keep up on things...
In reality, we are getting to a point where we are playing in a league blindly; we have no sense of direction. We don't know what players are doing, why they are doing what they are doing, etc... the list goes on.
Changes must happen in the league; structural one's. I think discussion should start NOW about this so we can begin fixing things needing fixing and tearing down what doesn't work and making what works, work even better.
Brian and everyone else, Matt is frustrated because of the fact he is one of many that is sailing in waters, wondering where N, or S, or E and W is. With the lack of communication by the commissioner, we cannot do a thing. This league seems like its falling apart fast... the only thing we did which helped is find perhaps the best batch of owners in a single season (Brian, Anthony, and Jeff).
What's wrong in BARB:
- Lack of communication by Mr. Hatfield on critical information (line-ups, etc... trades, etc..)
- Poor management of league rosters and upkeep
- Poor upkeep of circulating critical information to GM's (Stats, rosters, etc...)
- Habitual tendencies of losing ground with MLB games (getting too far behind)
- BARB webpage not living up to full potential
- Owners not keeping up with there blogs
GMS and Mr. Hatfield, I have some solutions:
I believe first and foremost, the BARB webpage isn't living up to its full potential. I think we should move all critical and all BARB related stuff on the Web. Aside from sending in Trades via E-mail to Mr. Hatfield, as well as line-ups, etc.. I think we should move Rosters to the Web. I already have a plan laid out on how this can be done; look at what I did on my Blog for my roster; its clean, updatable, and accessible. Updating it only takes minutes, with no hassle, with the exception of a few simple math problem to do (add/subtract). You don't have to worry about sending it out or anything of that matter. It's there for all GM's to see when they see fit to see it. It's printable and viewable to all as well (no formation issues or compatibility issues to deal with anymore).
This would also help lessen your [Hatfield] workload, allowing you to focus on other aspects of the league (again I already said I would take care of this for you, but you need to give me a go and a chance)...
Furthermore, I think the teams blogs should be junked. It's truly a failed experiment, as only a hand full of owners use it and truthfully, its a waste of time when a majority don't bother participating.
Also, you can move up-to-date standing to the blog. Considering you can take snapshots or copy/paste this stuff on here, we should have a section of the BARB page showing this and updated frequently.
Again I have plans laid out to reconstruct the BARB page and expand it...
I will go into further detail about the other stuff we can fix tomorrow, but lets start hearing ideas..
ALSO: I think Matt you should (if Hatifled can ever get it out [stats]) look at Wainwrights WHIP. If his WHIP is around 1.30, that means he is living around his 2008 numbers. WHIP is perhaps the most important stat in baseball; shows really how the pitcher is really doing. His norm is around 1.20... so I guess when we know the WHIP we will know how exactly he is doing; ERA is a very deceptive stat.. doesn't paint the whole picture!
i think brian can provide wainwright's WHIP in BARB. Can he not? He seems to chirp in on every conversation, so lets have him lay out the stats for us.
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