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0 Subject: RIBC 2014: Retrospective

Posted by: Guru
- [330592710] Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 13:00

Congrats to mailedfoot, winner of the 2014 RIBC, who survived a relentless charge from Holt down the stretch.

A few post-season duties remain:

1. RIBC managers may post a recap of their season, if they wish. What worked well, what went wrong, what would you do differently the next time, and what did you learn?

2. I'd appreciate it if someone from each of the qualifying leagues would post the final standings of their league. ( A separate thread has been set up for this purpose.) This will make it easier for me to locate when I go about deciding on qualifications for next season. (If your team names do not easily identify the related team manager, please provide those linkages as well.)

3. If there were any managers in any league who failed to live up to standards in behavior or activity level, I'd like to know about it. Bad behavior is never tolerated. Failing to follow through for the season can also be grounds for declining an invite to the RIBC or a AAA league, depending on circumstances. Rather than publicly "ratting out" any other manager in this thread, I suggest that you send me a confidential email.

Thanks to everyone for a great season.
1JeffG
      ID: 2654157
      Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 15:23
Thank you to Guru for keeping this site and this league going, and thanks to all the RIBC managers for a competitive and fun season. Congrats again to Mailedfoot on his victory and also to holt who kept it interesting for those of us watching the pennant race. Great season too by Guru at #3. I was gaining at the end, but did not catch you. Congrats to those earning 2015 berths from all levels. I'm already psyched for 2015.

Overall thoughts
My team had a solid 4th place finish after a hot start early where the first two months I was hanging in the top-3, with some heathy periods at #1. I then dropped to around 8th in early August before steadily climbing to my final position of fourth place.


Draft
There was not really a major dud in my early draft picks, in terms of and production.

What went right - hitting. I tend to draft for the ratios, and finished with 16s in both OBP and SLG and that production helped me finish with 13s in both R and RBI. SB I was hovering between 4-6 points all year, though I'd do better. My #1 pick Mike Trout certainly lived up to his top billing solidifying every category, but maybe not getting as many steals as I anticipated. Reyes at round 3 certainly had lower than expected ratios in 2014, but made up for it with 30 steals and more than 90 runs scored. Werth at round 5 killed it with 80+ in R and RBI, and great slugging. Also a big help was my picks during round 12 and 13 (Morneau and Rendon). Morneau has to be my best value of the draft. He stayed healthy and had a killer year in the ratios and RBI department. Since he was my first 1B, I was fortunate as he certainly kept up with the big boys at this position from the early rounds. To think, I wanted Adam Lind bad at 12 accodring to my rationale, and settled for Morneau when Lind was gone. Lucky me. Rendon at the MI position gave me wonderful numbers scoring 110 runs, driving in 83, and stealing 16, well outperforming his draft position. Other later round picks who stayed on the roster all season YGomes (16) Ackley (rd 17) and Arcia (rd 19) all held their own. Fowler (rd 11) was a decent on base guy and added 11 steals to the ledger for me maybe underperformed.

What went wrong hitting. Ryan Zimmerman (rd 4) and Lawrie (rd 8) did struggle with DL time, and I perhaps foolishly kept them on my bench during this time. To keep the counting numbers in hitting up while they were hurt, I sacrificed middle relievers (good ones too). This cost me perhaps 6 wins, higher K rates, higher ratios, and a handful of saves. I called Lawrie a 'sleeper'. Wrong! Quentin (rd 15) was a waste, and anyone after was a low pick so not a big risk.

What went right - pitching. I was one of only two managers who grabbed three starting pitchers in first ten rounds (Waino, Shields, Smardzija) who all turned in solid efforts in the ratios and WHIP all while pitching over 200 innings. Smardzija got snake bit with run support hurting his win rate but made up for it with 200Ks. With most folks holding off on pitchers that early in the draft however, I wish I would have done much better versus the value some managers did find later. I got real lucky with my closers. Perkins (rd 7) and Cishek (rd 9) kept the closers job all year and between the two of those guys alone got me 73 saves and over 1 in the K/IP department although neither helped with the ratios (but they did not hurt it either). As much as Perkis was still a positive, in my rationale I passed up on DRob to pick up Perkins.

What went wrong pitching. My SP4 and SP5 were a big issue all season until I traded up. Haren (rd 14) got me 1 win and 4.72/1.43 in 120 innings, and Peavy (rd 18) got 8 wins but with 4.49/1.30. Neither were great with the Ks. Both killed any chances of finishing in the top quartile of any the pitching categories.


In season moves, free agents and trades

What went right - hitting. Pick ups Seth Smith, as my fifth outfielder and playing when the match up was favorable worked well. I had Josh Reddick for a spell when he was playing well and he provided some decent production, I dropped him when he started slumping. LoMorrison, who I had drafted and dropped helped me in the final stretch. To a lesser degree, a few of my September call ups (Rusney Castillo, Chris Young) contributed.

What went right - pitching. Picked up and kept Storen about half a season and when he became the Nats closer, in addition the the ratios, earned 11 saves.

What went wrong - pitching. Played SP4 and SP5 roulette for a time in June and July and no one was worth retaining. I had picked up MR free agents Betances and Casilla who could have catipulted me into the top pitching tiers, but I decided I could not hold them because I had a few hitters on the DL, and lost out on their great years. D'oh.

The Trade:
The BIG MOVE was me trading Trout for two 'stud' pitchers - MadBum and Iwakuma. I was solid on the hitting side, thought I was maxed out on a few categories, and hurting on pitching across the board. Like I said when I made the deal, I thought I could gain enough on the pitching to more than offset the losses I may suffer on the hitting side. I did gain 11 points on pitching points from that point forward and it turns out I gained 3 points on hitting side too (not to say that I wouldn't have gained more with the continued production of Trout). Bumgarner lived up to the stud billing giving me 5 W, 66K in 63 innings with an ERA of 2.42 and WHIP of 0.88. It turns out Iwukuma was a 'bought high' as his numbers regressed from the trade forward. I got 5 W out of him, but at the cost of a 5.13 ERA and 1.27 WHIP. I truely believe that trades need to benefit both teams to be accepted, and I did think I was giving away more than I was getting if you just looked at the trade face value instead of rest of roster and stat needs, but it seems like Trout was not enough to help my trading partner, Seattle Zen. I think he somehow dropped offensively from where he was at our trade date, albeit not because of Trout.


In summary
I can give the Yankee company line that anything short of a win is a failure, I mean I DO want to win, but certainly I am very satisfied with a fourth place finish and earning my third consecutive season at the RIBC majors level (and my fifth overall season in the bigs). So far, every season I've played in AA or AAA I have earned a promotion, and now every season I've played RIBC my finish has improved from my prior RIBC year, so I am hopeful that trend will continue. Thanks to everyone who participates, this is an extremely competitive bunch. Enjoy the post season, where we can again be pure baseball fans, and not root for certain players. See you all in 2015.
2kdl212
      ID: 231211918
      Mon, Sep 29, 2014, 18:21
Another great year in a super competitive league. Some day it would be nice to meet, in person, some of the managers I’ve come to know as nemeses.

For the first time in 4 years in RIBC, I got first-round hitter production. In fact, I got it twice. I had the #2 hitter (Altuve) and the #4 hitter (Stanton) according to the ESPN player rater. And thank the good lord that I did, because outside of those two, Melky Cabrera, Adam Eaton, and ½ a season from Brandon Moss, there wasn’t much else I had on the hitting side. Hanley Ramirez disappointed as a first-round pick, though he wasn’t terrible. Alex Rios mocked my 3rd round choice of him all year. But the true pain was regularly trotting out Chris Johnson and Chase Headley and Omar Infante and Jason Castro for thousands of awful, awful at-bats. Watching Chris Carter wake up after I finally cut bait on him (production with me = .243/.388; production with Zobristocrats = .330/.519) also hurt. And losing my entire productive outfield (Stanton, Cabrera, Eaton, Rios and Willingham) to injury in Aug/Sept made the suffering even worse, as I steadily sank in runs, RBIs and SLUG during the season’s final 8 weeks.

On the pitching side, it was ugly for a long time. My top 4 starter picks were Verlander, Bailey, Cingrani and Lincecum. On June 23rd, I had a team ERA of 4.389 and a team WHiP of 1.43, each awesome enough to have me sitting in dead last, by a long shot, in each category (2nd to last was 3.91 and 1.33). Around that time, Seattle Zen offered me serious starting pitching for Jose Altuve, and the only reason I refused was because I was so far behind in the pitching ratio categories that I honestly thought there was no chance of gaining any points in the standing.

Thank goodness I was so pessimistic, because Altuve went berserker and remained berserker, and my pitching righted the ship. It was Lincecum’s no-hitter that turned the tide. Indeed, from June 23rd on, I had a 2.89/1.16 pitching staff, enough to net me 7 points in ERA/WHiP at season’s end. Still a dismal showing, but better than the snake eyes I was rolling for the first months of the season. Greg Holland was awesome all year, and I found 41 saves on the waiver wire.

Draft wise, Altuve (6th), Tyson Ross (19th) and Melky Cabrera (20th) were the season-savers. Late-season pitching waiver-wire heroes included Peavy, Hammel, Petit, Shelby Miller and Vogelsong (collectively giving me a 2.20/0.90 line in 150+ innings).

Once again, thanks to Guru for making this possible. I love this league.
3mailedfoot
      ID: 531322718
      Tue, Sep 30, 2014, 09:54
Wow! It is still hard to believe...

Thank you Guru and all the other RIBC managers for making this a great league. I consider it an honor just to play in this league; bringing home the title is gravy.

Never in my wildest dreams at the start of the season did I imagine I would be in this position. In a 16 team league, I always find it hard to feel comfortable about my team coming out of the draft and this year was no exception. Pujols was big question mark and I was concerned about my pitching depth and saves situation. And we all know that over the course of the season, most all teams will suffer through some kind of adversity, so my thoughts were that I would be competing to stay in the league for next year. This was my primary goal as the year started.

With this as my mindset, the early part of the season is kind of a blur for me. I had no expectations, so I wasn’t particularly focused on where I stood in the standings. I was more concerned with finding starters, closers, and replacing injured players whom I didn’t want to drop. Somewhere around mid-season, I began to actually believe that my team could win the title and this became the goal. The second half of the season was trying to maintain my position and hold off Holt, who came at me with everything he had. In the end, I was fortunate enough to prevail.

What Worked Well
Just about everything. The draft gave me a core foundation to score in almost all categories. McCutchen and Brantley contributed in all 5 categories and ended up ranked in the top six on the ESPN player rater. These two guys were my Twin Towers! Hernandez was the third ranked pitcher and 11th overall player. Street had a career year when many thought he wouldn’t make it through the season as a closer. Dozier, Pujols, Gordon, and Hunter were everyday players who had good (and in Dozier’s case great) years.

In season pickups performed magnificently for me. JD Martinez, Danny Santana, Russ Martin, Sean Doolittle, Santiago Casilla, Carlos Carrasco, Brock Holt, and Steve Pearce all stepped in and helped carry the team when called on.

What Went Wrong
Misjudgments on roster moves. I had Mesoraco, Liriano, and Volquez and let them go. I think I tend to get too impatient with starting pitchers and it hurts me sometimes. I also seemed to have crappy luck with streaming starters.

I couldn’t get any wins coming down the home stretch as none of my starters got any run support the last three weeks of the season. I actually thought it was going to cost me the title at one point with about a week left in the season.

What I Learned
That with a little perseverance and luck or good fortune or whatever you want to call it, it’s possible to win, even at this level.

In conclusion, I would again like to thank everyone associated with the league and especially to Guru for making this an enjoyable and fulfilling experience for me personally. Although I am trying to savor the moment, in the back of my mind there is a part of me already looking forward to next season!
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