March 2, 2019

2019 Season Preview

Thunder Bay Champions by Year
2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Richmond	Los Angeles	Kentucky	Chemung	Carefree	Lincoln	Carefree	Lincoln	San Antonio	San Antonio	Colorado	San Antonio	Colorado	Mad City	Springfield

      The 2018 Thunder Bay season ended with the Springfield Isotopes standing alone as the TBBL Champion!  The Isotopes defeated the Atlanta Knights in five short games running wire to wire for their first TBBL Championship.  The 'Topes were 11-3 overall in the post season combined with a 108-54 regular season record making them one of the winningest teams in the history of the TBBL.  Congratulations John on a great season!   The American League is now 11-4 in World Series History.

2018 Champions

    To date, we have had 10 franchises win the title with the Saints as the only team to win 3 championships.  The Gladiators, Rats and Coyotes (Siouxland Franchise) have all won two titles. 

     As the 2018 season ended, two National League owners stepped away from their franchises.  The Mad City and California teams were disperesed and the league welcomed owners Mack Bean and Scott Paris into the fold.  For Paris, this is his second stint with the TBBL and he was rewarded by selecting Mike Trout as the top overall pick in the dispersal draft.  Scotts team wound up with Trout, Bumgarner, Gallo, Scherzer and Altuve while Mack's team nabbed Charlie Blackmon, Edwin Encarnacion, Khirs Davis, Blake Snell and Carlos Martinez.  The new franchise names are Protect Your Nuts and Jackson Stonewalls and have been placed in the National League.  Several trades have been consumated this winter including Patrick Corbin being shipped from Rock River to Capital City for Shane Bieber, Joey Lucchesi and Sixto Sanchez.  Colorado has been involved in six of the twenty off season deals to this point as Casey tries to sure up his roster for the 2019 season.   The 20 trades as of today is the lowest number of deals at this time in many years.  Let's get some more players changing teams!

     The West Orange Panthers won the Draft Lottery and selected catcher Joey Bart with the first overall pick.  Craig, although being a huge Met fan, passed on uber prospect Peter Alonso who was scooped up by the Jersey Damage with the very next pick.  Craig may have been alseep when he made his pick as his basketball refereeing career was in full swing.  Max Muncy went third overall to the San Carlos Aces and a total of six off disk players were selected in the first round.  Fantasy Rundown produces a compiled list of prospects from well respected baseball entities including Baseball America, Major League Baseball, Top Prospect Alert, Fangraphs, Prospect 361 and others.  We went ahead and averaged out the rankings for those organizations and are producing the Overall Top 100 Prospect List.  Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of San Carlos tops the list followed by Fernando Tatis Jr. and Eloy Jiminez.  Of the Top 100, only two players are not on a current TBBL roster:  Hans Crouse (#80) and Justin Dunn (#97).  Stone Mountain and Beartooth top the list with 8 of the Top 100 each followed by Cracksville and Rock River who have seven each.  Gotham, San Antonio and Springfield are not represented in the Top 100.

     Each preview we take a look at an All Time great and this year's unidentified player holds the career stat line below:

    This six time All Star is Vladimir Guerrero!  Vladdy was one of the most impactful bats in the TBBL and it's widely sepculated that his son will be joining the TBBL family early next year after he debuts for the Toronot Blue Jays in 2019.  Oh and by the way, Vladdy also contribute 17 Post Season home runs over his career making him one of the leagues best all time batters in post season history. 

     The current open stadiums for the 2019 season are Safeco Field, Citizens Bank Ballpark, Comerica Park, Tropicana Field, Oakland County Col. And AT&T Park.  If any teams are looking to change parks please let me know as the deadline is a few days away.  

     The TBBL transaction frenzy continued in 2018 as we witnessed 90 plus transactions for the 4th season in a row.  Utilizing free agent acquisitions is a great way to avoid over using players and the number of transactions has more than doubled since 2009.  The table to the left shows Trades and Transactions by Year since the inception of the league.  The 2019 season, which is still in off season mode has seen just 20 trades to this point.  It's time to pick up the pace boys! 

     Each year I like to review a trade or two that should make some impact on the current season.  The first deal of the off season is the one to concentrate on as the Rock River Ravens sent a highly desired Patrick Corbin to the Capital City Capitals for three players including Phillies super prospect Sixto Sanchez.  Shane Bieber and Joey Lucchesi were also part of the deal going back to Rock River but the impact Corbin may make for the Caps in 2019 could be enough to put Jason's team ahead of brother John's team in October.  Springfield has knocked out the Capitals each of the last two seasons going a combined 7-1 against them.  Corbin may have been brought in specifically to deal with the LH bats of Springfield including Freddie Freeman and Matt Carpenter.  Time will tell if this move alone was enough for the Caps to unthrone the Isotopes!

     My predictions last year were nearly PERFECT!  I called the American League exactly as they would finish and ony missed two positions in the National League.  Considering my past track record this was very surprising to say the least.  20 out of 24 spots were predicted exactly, which is 83%!        

     The Most Valuable Players from 2018 were Giancarlo Stanton (.262-65-161) of the San Antonio Saints and Joey Votto (.343-40-142) of Atlanta.  Votto won the award in back to back seasons and joins Alex Rodriguez ('06 and '09) and Miguel Cabrera ('08, '11 and '14) as the only repeat winners.  Our Cy Young Winners were Luis Severino (19-5, 2.69 ERA 250 K) of the Bitteroots and Corey Kluber (18-7, 2.50 ERA 274 K) of Capital City. 

     Chris Sale of the Isotopes led the TBBL with 286 strikeouts and posted a 16-6 record.  Carlos Carrasco of the Convicts had the leagues best winning percentage with a record of 19-3.  Craig Kimbrel (Convicts) led the league with 43 saves but also blew a near league high 8 other opportunities.  Tyler Chatwood of the Flippers walked a league high 97 batters in 2018.   

     The TBBL sported three no hitters in 2018, all coming late in the season.  Lance Lynn threw one against West Orange on 9/9 while Clevinger no hit Jersey on 9/17 and Alex Wood threw a gem in the Post Season against Gotham on 10/5.  There were no cycles in 2018.

     After a one season disapearance from the Post Season, the San Antonio/Chemung franchise was back playing October baseball.  This was their 14th trip in 15 seasons of the TBBL.  Currently, the California Convicts/Protect Your Nuts franchise has qualified for the post season 12 straight times (2007-2018) and hold the longest active streak at the time of this preview.  No pressure on new owner Scott to keep this streak alive. 

     For this year's preview, we once again are utilizing rankings from MLB Network’s “Shredder” which takes into account a multitude of statistical factors with no human bias. The episodes are called MLB Networks Top 10 Right Now and have aired since mid January on the Network.  The table below displays each positions Top 10 list and the TBBL team the player is currently on:  

      The Capitals have two players ranked atop this list in Francisco Lindor (SS) and J.D. Martinez (LF).  The graphic to the left displays the top players in baseball by position with their 2018 TBBL statistics included.  The Eaton brothers continue to own the list with 18 combined players in the Top 10's while the only team to not have a player listed in the Top 10's is Rock River, who's youth movement is paying off by having the second most ranked prospects in the TBBL.  Protects Max Scherzer continues to be one of the best pitchers in baseball and owns the TBBL line below:

          Scherzer was drafted by the Mad City franchise in the 3rd round of the 2008 free agent draft and has spent his entire career with the club.  He has been an iron man on the hill starting at least 31 games in 7 straight seasons  while averaging 13 wins per year in that time frame.  Mad Max has compiled 6 straight years of 250 strike outs or more and won a Cy Young in 2017 with an 18-10 record with a 3.06 ERA.

     The WAR stat continues to be one of baseballs trendy stat measures and it has helped me shape my predictions the past few seasons.  Unlike WAR, the salaries of players in MLB are bloated and that translates to the TBBL rosters as well.  More and more web sites are popping up analyzing stats and coming up with new measures and another favorite of mine is the Baseball Think Factory, a sabermetrically-oriented baseball web site that features the day's prominent news stories.  This site has been around for a while and is a great read as is the Fangraphs site.  For the measures below, I utilize an Access database with stats from www.fangraphs.com and match it up to the TBBL rosters.  This database is used throughout the season on our web site and we will start using charts to better tell the story of the TBBL in 2019.  Below is this year's Salary and WAR Ranks courtesy of Fangraphs:

     The Evil Empire with regards to salary for 2019 is the Jackson Stonewalls.  Mack came in to the dispersal draft and his strategy must have been to grab the most expensive guys he could including Troy Tulowiotzki ($20 million), Eric Hosmer ($21.625 million), Ryan Braun ($19.088 million) and Edwin Encarnacion ($18.666 million).  These four players make up nearly thirty-three percent of the teams salary!  This year's salary cap dog actually increased from $216 million last year to the $228 plus million this year.  The next highest teams are the San Carlos Aces at $228,442,000 million and the Protect Your Nuts at $228,390,000 million.  The highest paid player in the TBBL is Mike Trout of the Nuts at $38.043 million.  Trout just bought the entire town of Millville in New Jersey by the way.  On the lower side of the salary spectrum, the Lincoln Tunnel Rats entire team salary is just $63.802 million!  I am sure that the Rats owner made some poor investments along with the Wilpons but there that's no excuse for a large market team in the state with the most owners.  Bernie Madolff was spotted in the offices of Lincoln over the weekend and only one can wonder what was going on inside.  On a side note, Bob Kraft was also spotted in the general area wearing a rain coat and baseball hat.  Onlookers said his hands were sticky as well.    

     Looking towards the 2019 season, the following milestones are in sight for some players and teams.

     My predictions for the 2019 season are highlighted in each teams capsule and in most cases I used owner provided comments to craft the write-up.  19 out of the 24 teams contributed comments and 20 out of 24 teams provided a manager profile for the simulation.  Now, the moment everyone has been waiting for ... my prediction as to who will win the 2019 TBBL Championship is the ... Capital City Capitals.  My streak of never having picked the TBBL Champion continued last year and word on the street has it that Mike Bush and his Bitteroots team are booking flights to Jersey to blow up TBBL HQ.  For this season, it was hard not to go with last year's champ the Isotopes but the simulation pushed me over the edge and we took the Capitals.  Jason has done just about everything to build a team to beat Springfield and after the two teams pushed in the regular season (in the sim), the acquisition of Corbin pushed me over the edge to pick the Caps.  The Capitals would go on to win 61 games at home and a second best 53 on the road.  J.D. Martinez would crush American League pitching all season putting up a stat line of .287-45-133.  Trevor Bauer and Patrick Corbin would combine to go 37-10 in the regular season providing the most impactful 1-2 punch in the league and closer Edwin Diaz was lights out with a 1.12 ERA.  All told the Capitals had five starters with 15 or more wins and all five would strike out at least 222 batters in 2019.  The Capitals cruised to the division title but would be tested in the ALDS as two 100 win teams battled in the Wild Card.  Springfield would win the WC round defeating Los Angeles and then be swept by the Capitals in the division series.  Brotherly payback for the last two post seasons!  The other side of the American League bracket was a blowout as the Smackdown would win the East with a 69 win season and were promplty swept in their round against San Carlos.  The LCS come down to the Aces and the Capitals but the Caps win in six en route to the World Series. 

     The National League had just one team win 100 games as the Emeradl City Bombers would run away with the West.  Mike Bush's Beartooths have a ton of power but their strike out rate was reminisant of the Yankees from last season and would ultimately be their undoing in the post season.  The Newark Hen House won the East and the CityHawks of Gotham would win the Central.  The NLDS featured the Bombers and Bitteroots with the Bombers advancing in 5 games while Gotham defeated Newark in 4 games setting the stage for the NLCS.  Gotham would lean heavily on ace Clayton Kershaw pitching him in 5 of the 7 games and it paid off as Chris would take the series on a walkoff homer from Nolan Arenado.  Arenado would later be seen bathing in 100 dollar bills as his $260 million dollar contract took effect this season.             

      The championship was now set but it wasn't much of a series.  Gotham's ace would see his left arm fall off on the way to the airport leaving Tanaka to start the World Series.  Unfortunately for Masahiro, it didn't go well.  The official report came out after the game but apparantly Tanaka ate some bad clams and was under the weather for the first game.  The Capitals would tee off and run up a game one win 12-1.  The next few games were similar and Capital City would win their first league title in 5 games.  The parade was highlighted by Francisco Lindors rendition of "New York, New York" reminding all Yankee fans of Aaron Judge's stroll through the Red Sox clubhouse area last fall.

     The table to the right shows the final standings of the sim.  There is a link to your team reports in each grid.  Mike Trout of the Nuts led the league with 60 HR while Matt Carpenter of Springfield led the league with 151 RBI.   Christian Yelich of San Carlos led the league with an average of .343 and scored a league best 151 runs as well while Mallex Smith of Jackson stole the most bases with 74.  Joey Gallo of the Nuts struck out 248 times!  Ouch!

     Three pitchers tied for the league high with 19 wins.  Chris Sale of Springfield (19-2), J.A. Happ of Emerald City (19-5) and Trevor Bauer of Capital City (19-6) also struck out more than 200 batters each but the big dog leading the way was Max Scherzer with 318 K's.  Justin Verlander of Atlanta nad Jacob deGrom of Emerald CIty also struck out more than 300 batters in 2019.  Gio Gonzalez of Siouxland walked a league high 104 hitters while Josh Hader of Emerald City led the league with 40 saves.  deGrom also had a league high 4 shutouts. 

          Here is the direct link for the sim results.  The final simulation DB is located here for anyone who wants to download it. 

         Hope everyone enjoys the read!

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