…perhaps my wish for fewer absurd offensive seasons in these OOTP tournaments was wishful thinking.
All-Star Break
Let’s check in on those statistics and
Yep, that’s the top six batters across the league hitting over .360 and who knows how many more with an OPS over 1.000. Why did I think this wouldn’t happen? And the players at the top of the board aren’t those I thought would be there; especially notable is top batter Jimmy Ryan, who played in the 1800s and is now dominating against players from all eras.
At least the top pitchers are stars as always, and a lot of the expected names there: Johan Santana, Walter Johnson, Bobo Newsom, Lefty Gomez… Cole Irvin? Okay, there are some unexpected names too.
And the standings:
At least winning percentages are more balanced than previous tournaments, although Dezful, with nine wins more than any other team, is currently running away with the top seed, not just in the Omega League but across the board. The Alpha League’s top seed race is much closer as Sikasso and Warwick are separated by two wins (note that Sikasso has played two more games than Warwick).
And the race for the bottom… every division’s got one.
Also, since it’s the All-Star break: Norm Zauchin won the Home Run Derby Challenge, beating David Ortiz 17-11 in the final round, and the Omega League beat the Alpha League in the All-Star Game 2-1 on Chili Davis’s sixth-inning RBI single.
End of Regular Season
Were the Defenders able to hold onto their overall top seed?
Yes they were! Dezful led the league with 103 wins and will be the top seed in the Omega half of the bracket, fending off a late charge from Alpha’s top seed Warwick. I didn’t set tiebreakers, so the game will decide that element between teams with the same record.
The MacGuffins ended at the bottom of the league, probably due to having multiple pitchers who only appeared in one career game. Anything can happen in the playoffs, though!
Statistically, though:
We’ve got some shake-ups at the top of leaderboards: Taffy Wright passed Jimmy Ryan late to claim the batting crown, and Bob Johnson’s late-season surge made him the only player in the league to top 50 home runs. Ryan still dominated the batting stats, leading all hitters in WAR, runs, steals, OBP, slugging, and OPS (by deduction). On the pitching side, Walter Johnson continued to put up dominant performances, finishing with a sub-1.00 WHIP (199 hits, 51 walks, 253.1 innings) while also leading in WAR, strikeouts, innings, FIP, complete games, and K/BB. Surprisingly, Johan Santana dropped in some measures (4.1 WAR at the break, 5.0 WAR at season’s end), but he’s still very present among the leaderboards: fourth in strikeouts and third in a bucket of categories (ERA, innings, WHIP, K/BB, RA9/WAR, AVG against).
This isn’t a stat, but I also wanted to share this. During the season, there were two cycles: Michael A. Taylor (not surprising) and Junior Ortiz (extremely surprising).
And that leads us to the playoff bracket:
The first two rounds are best of five, the last two best of seven. That’s 14 wins needed to win the Word Series and claim the title of best name team of all.
The season, all 162 games of it, was just prelude. Now, the competition truly starts.
