Baseball is a statisticians game.
And it's easy to understand why. The sheer volume of data to work with is far greater than that available in any other sport. Think about it; 30 teams playing 162 games each with, at least, 10 players on the field at all times for no less than 8.5 innings per game. Put your calculator away, I've already done the math - it translates to about 3.2 kajillion data points per season, give or take.
Seriously, name one aspect of the game that isn't measured and recorded in some fashion. And statisticians love data - the more, the better.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, honestly, I just needed a decent segue into some stats that I stumbled across recently.
If you've played in our fantasy football league long enough, you already know that 150+ points in a week is a solid outing that will earn you the victory more often than not. But being new to fantasy baseball, I genuinely had no idea where that scoring threshold was. What would teams need to score to all but guarantee a win? Was it 200 runs? 250? 400?
It was a difficult number to uncover considering we began the season with 11 inning matchups in the opening week, rather than the usual 7 inning contests. My data was skewed at first. You'll recall we saw two teams score more than 500 runs while most finished somewhere in the 400 range. Have you seen a team score that many runs since then?
It turns out, if you took the team scores from the first week and averaged them down to a standard week of play, the highest score was actually 333.
"Cut to the chase and just give us the damn number, Commish."
Fine, geeez. It looks like it's 300 runs...but it might be less.
I add that caveat because I'm not entirely sure. I compiled a list of the highest scores posted by teams this season and I used 300 runs as my qualifier to make the list. I can confirm that if you score 300 runs, you will win your matchup. Because everyone who's done this so far has won and that's how statistics works, right?
However, what happens if you score 270, 280, or 290 runs is a mystery to me? I didn't pull that data together so I just don't know. When one of you clowns figures it out, be sure to share it with me.
Back to my list...
It's probably no surprise that the team that has scored over 300 runs the most is Akes and Pain. They've done so four times and they have a 9-3 record to prove it.
But can you guess the team that has score 300+ nearly as often? Wrong.
The Tallahassee Tator Tots have reached that mark three times this season and you should probably jot that down because you're going to hear more about them as we go.
Unless you're You're Killing Me Smalls - autocorrect is going nuts right now - or the Damn Yankees, you've reached 300+ runs once or twice. Smalls and the Yankees are the only teams that haven't reached that level of scoring yet.
In total, teams have reached 300+ runs 17 times this season and they've won every time.
A high total score is great, but sometimes you don't need to blow the roof off the house. More often than not, you really just need one or two very good innings and that could be enough to give you the victory.
So, what qualifies as a "very good" inning?
For my research, I used 80 runs. Why? Because that's what number the wheel landed on when I spun it.
Through the first six weeks of the season, teams have scored 80 runs in a single inning 21 times. And when that happens, teams are 13-4 for a 76.5% win rate. So, clearly, if your team can turn in 80 or more in a single inning, you have a pretty good chance of winning.
If you followed the games last week, you probably noticed Los Perros Locos put up 123 in the 2nd inning of their contest with Ringworm. That's a lot of runs, but it's not the most. The team with the highest single-inning total so far this season is...the Poke Bananas, who scored 127 runs in the 2nd inning of their week 3 game. Unfortunately no one saw that happen because their stadium has been empty since they announced they're relocating next season.
"Which teams have scored over 80 runs in an inning the most often?"
The Tallahassee Tator Tots (5) and Dude It Was Ringworm (4) have done it the most. Beyond those two, your team has reached 80+ runs once or twice unless you're Team Whitmer, Damn Yankees, or the Springfield Isotopes. They have yet to reach that point.
Since we're already on the topic of numbers, I want to share a number with you and ask you all to think about it. The number is: 12.
As I was creating this league, one of the settings options was "Games Played Limits" and it offered separate settings for hitters and pitchers. Having never setup a fantasy baseball league, I didn't understand what this setting meant.
The default setting for hitters is "No Limit" and for pitchers it is "12". Not understanding the effects of this setting, I simply skipped it and left the defaults in there...I think you see where I'm going with this.
Now that we're a quarter of the way into the season, I finally understand what it means. If you don't, it's a setting that limits the total starts for your pitching staff. And, it's important to consider it when setting up your league because it changes a lot. If you want to read more about it, you can CLICK HERE.
With our league set at 12 for pitchers, it means a team could have, at least, six two-start pitchers in a week. I say "at least" because, as it's explained, if you have 11 starts between your pitchers at the end of one day with 3 more starts scheduled for the next day, you'll get credit for those 3 in addition to your 11 for a total of 14 starts.
And that's what I want you to consider: Should it remain at 12? Should it be lower? If so, what should it be? And if we should change it, when should that happen?
On that note, I'm going to bring this post to a close. You're tired of reading and I'm tired of writing.
Good luck this week!
-- Commish
POWER RANKINGS
If you've reached this point in the article, you're probably not surprised when I tell you that the Tallahassee Tator Tots are doing well in the rankings. The Tots took advantage of the opportunity presented to them when Akes and Pain tallied their lowest score of the season last week and laid claim to the #1 spot in the Power Rankings.
And the Los Perros Locos league-best 371 points was just enough to push them ahead of the Mermen and into the #3 spot.
But the biggest gainer this week were the Poke Bananas who moved up two positions and swapped places with the Springfield Isotopes who, consequently, suffered the greatest fall.
ALL-STAR LINEUP CHALLENGE
Six weeks in and Akes and Pain are still in the lead with Myrtle Beach Mermen 43 points behind. Beyond those two, we find Los Perros Locos moving up two spots, to #3, passing up Tallahassee Tator Tots and Green Monstahs.
BATTING CHAMPION & CY YOUNG CHALLENGES
I'm taking the week off from updating this contest. But don't worry because your players probably aren't on the list anyway.
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