The Chip Kelly and Sam Hinkie eras in Philadelphia inspire obvious comparisons. Both took over moribund franchises in 2013, came in with new ideas and ultimately didn’t make it through their 3rd year on the job. Chip Kelly completed 94% of the season, Sam Hinkie 95%. In both cases I believed they had earned more time and while I think they both made mistakes, I appreciate that they both shot for the stars.

And that is perhaps the most clear comparison for me. Neither were content with being a mediocre or ‘good’ team. They were both trying to be great. Kelly took a 20-12 team one year removed from winning the NFC East and wreaked havoc on it. Hinkie took over a team that had made the 2nd round of the playoffs one year removed and turned it upside down. In both instances, the string of trades, drafts and general roster decisions made the Eagles and Sixers the most exciting offseason and trade deadline teams to follow. On the other hand, the approach engendered a lot of backlash and scrutiny from the media, most of it unpleasant.

Attacking ‘the media’ is something I’m loathe to do. Its low-hanging fruit and out of the Donald Trump playbook of pandering strategies. Everyone in the US hates ‘the media’ and attacking them is the easiest way to engender favourable support. But in this rare instance, I’ll lower myself and argue that ‘the media’ had something of a vendetta against Kelly and Hinkie. In the case of Hinkie, the stream of negative articles was understandable at least; the team was tanking and there was clearly no desire to win. With Kelly, I never quite understood why so many people were rooting for him to fail. Even after his first two seasons where he won 20 games, there were people still castigating his ‘gimmick offense’ and claiming that a College coach couldn’t possibly succeed in the Pros. Even as his offense was ranked 4th in scoring 2013 and 3rd in 2014. He still has a winning record after his nearly 3 years and he’s treated as a bust. The media narrative does not match the actual story and their inability to see what Hinkie was trying to do just shows their incompetence.

Both were forced out without seeing their plans through. Kelly was quiet but Hinkie’s 13-page resignation letter has become the stuff of legend to those who appreciated what he did. Aside from ‘the media’ discussion, I’m going to analyse their tenures in the context of the manifesto Hinkie wrote, using his own sub-headings and giving them a point.

Thinking about thinking

Process over results, process over results, process over results. The guiding tenet of making decisions. Was the logic (process) sound even though the results haven’t worked out? “To do this requires you to divorce process from outcome.” Philadelphia has been cursed with bad things happening despite the logical thought behind it, and Hinkie and Kelly claimed to adhere to this doctrine. Without going through every one of their decisions, you can point to examples like drafting Joel Embiid and trading for Sam Bradford to illustrate the argument in favour of this. I’ll never fault either of these decisions because they were both done with the idea of taking a risk to transform a good team, to make it great. While neither are a success at the moment, it will take at least another year to determine whether they are abject failures.

The two examples that stray from this, in my view, were paying DeMarco Murray and drafting Jahlil Okafor. With Murray, ALL conventional wisdom, studies and research tells you not to overpay free agent running backs coming off career years. Shockingly, the deal was terrible and Murray has already been shipped off. The move was shortsighted, didn’t appreciate Kelly’s own strengths as a coach and never made sense to me at any point during the season. I couldn’t stand watching him play, running for 3 yards a carry.

Similarly, I haven’t been able to enjoy Okafor for one second this year. He doesn’t fit with the team, he doesn’t fit in the modern NBA and and there were plenty of other players he could have taken at number 3 in the draft. Best Player Available is great but this is one of the few examples where it just didn’t make sense. Commentators and pundits will point to these moves as the downfall of their tenures but what will they say if Bradford and Embiid start playing up to their potential? For me, they deserved one more year each and the owners’ trigger happy decisions weren’t made with thoughts about the process.

Hinkie – 1

Kelly – 1

The importance of intellectual humility

I think this is the big category where Kelly falls down, at least from everything fans with no inside knowledge have about the situation. He was constantly criticised towards the end of his tenure for failing to adapt, sticking to his ‘system’ over everything else and adopting a ‘my way or the high way’ approach to coaching. Those who didn’t buy in were out of the door with little recourse and a refusal to adjust for specific teams he was going up against. Going into a theoretical Year 4, I was hopeful he would learn from these mistakes and build them into his own system but his firing suggests that this may not have been the impression he gave ownership.

A lot harder to evaluate Hinkie in this respect, he certainly didn’t kick up a huge fuss when the likes of Colangelo and Mike D’Antoni were brought in as ‘help’. Reluctance to cut players like Isiah Canaan and signing Kendall Marshall over Ish Smith seemed to suggest he stuck with his own agenda in face of mounting evidence to the contrary.

Hinkie – 0.5

Kelly – 0

The necessity of innovation

Perhaps this area best defines the tenures of both Kelly and Hinkie. “You have to be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time“. Reading about Kelly’s success at Oregon prior to his first year at the Eagles, I remember being struck by his emphasis on Sports Science and embrace of innovative training methods. In one such example that became apparent in Year 2, he was criticised by CB Cary Williams for making the team practice on Saturdays, the day before the game, contrary to what the rest of the league does. Apparently this decision was based on years of research on marathon runners, track and field athletes, etc who performed better with a day before run-through rather than complete rest. Personalised smoothies have become something of a joke to beat him over the head with, but this is exactly where the sports world will be in a few years time. Wearables like Fitbit, customised eating plans for different positions and tailored training will takeover the NBA landscape by 2020 and it is Kelly who was one of the earliest pioneers of such innovation. Rather than be viewed favourably, this different methodological approach was used to highlight his disconnect between college and the professional leagues. I fully believe he’ll be vindicated in short order in this respect.

Hinkie spent his whole tenure being misunderstood and will never get to reap the treasure trove of draft picks and young talent he assembled. He was certainly wiling to fail, brining in D-League players to unearth any potential gems and similarly placed emphasis on Sports Science, pre-resting players who were tired but not injured in order to prevent injuries from occurring. An extremely forward-looking approach.

Hinkie – 1

Kelly – 1

The longest view in the room

The NFL seems like a sport where it’s much harder to have a long view than the NBA. Perhaps the 16 game season, relative parity and unpredicatability make it harder for fans to sit back and think about their team 3-4 years down the line. And yet, it’s obvious to those who understand the long view that the teams who frequently deploy such strategies are the ones who have the most success. The New England Patriots who love trading down in the draft to get more picks the following year(s) are the first example that springs to mind. The Green Bay Packers, who prefer to nurture their own talent rather than jump into the free agency pool and the Baltimore Ravens who let their players seek new pastures rather than overpay, using the compensatory picks to replenish (ignoring the Joe Flacco contract here). 3 teams who have all won Super Bowls in the last 6 years. Offseason winners like the ‘Dream Team’ Eagles and the every year Miami Dolphins haven’t won a playoff game in years. It’s hard to evaluate Kelly on this one, he gave up a 4th round pick to the Lions in his one draft as GM in order to pick up a 3rd the following year. Loved it. But despite what he says, he definitely tried to give up every asset the franchise had for Marcus Mariota, which smacks of short-termism and is something I will address in a coming post re: Carson Wentz.

Hinkie lived 3 years from now.

Hinkie – 1

Kelly – 0.5

A contrarian mindset

Being a contrarian is only good if you’re also correct. Otherwise you look like an idiot. Looking around the NBA and NFL, both leagues are full of risk-averse, herd mentalities, which personally infuriate me. Being a Rams fan, for example, must be incredibly frustrating, consistently going 7-9 with Jeff Fisher, or the Tennessee Titans who hired Mike Munchak as their Head Coach for no apparent reason. Every  year, the recycle coaches get drawn out and re-appointed to some other franchise hoping that it’ll work this time! Don’t get my wrong, I still hate the Doug Pederson HC pick but at least it wasn’t Romeo Crenell, Ken Whisenhunt or another guy who is little more than a warm corpse. If my team is rubbish, which they inevitably tend to be, I’d rather they do anything than be mediocre and consensus. I have extremely low expectations for the Eagles in 2016 but if they told me they were playing 2 QBs at the same time, I’d be all in. Try new things for goodness sake.

Kelly and Hinkie were staunch contrarians and I loved every second of it and the arguments it spawned. I wished Kelly had been a bit more reckless with his 4th down decisions but I was interested in his acquire injured players strategy at low costs and make them health strategy.

Hinkie also embodied many of these qualities and strategies. That being said, he leaves me in a difficult position because perhaps his most contrarian strategy, knowingly or unknowingly, was drafting 3 Centers in 3 straight drafts, when all around us we’re learning that big men are losing value. How do I judge someone who is being contrarian but with which I don’t believe is correct? Perhaps we’ll only know when the GS Warriors run is over but for now, I’ll never be on board with drafting big men like Okafor or paying running backs.

Hinkie – 0.5

Kelly – 1

A tolerance of uncertainty

I’m happy to pass through this category quickly, drafting Joel Embiid and trading for Sam Bradford both demonstrate their appetite for uncertainty.

Hinkie – 1

Kelly – 1

Be long science

Again, I’ve covered the science element of their strategic directions. To me, it’s all about looking for the next big thing that will change the sport. Somehow we’re still having an analytics debate across the sports spectrum but good teams should accept this and move on to the next thing. Sports science to be that thing for me, injury prevention is the next way teams can get an advantage. I’m sure most teams are doing this already but I’d be investing heavily on all types of biometric testing, wearable devices, fitness technology, connected clothing, whatever it takes to keep my players healthier than others. Psychological testing too is probably an area of interest, though I’m slightly more sceptical on this one. But even as teams invest in this, what is the next advantage that we can look at that no one is even talking about right now? I’m fairly certain Kelly and Hinkie ran their organisations in this way.

Hinkie – 1

Kelly – 1

A healthy respect for tradition

Hinkie freely admits that this runs contrary to what he has previously said about innovation, disruption and being a contrarian but I think what he is saying is to make sure to hold on to parts of tradition that have proved themselves to be correct over time. Perhaps that is behind his drafting Okafor decision, which would argue that his post scoring will open up the floor for everyone else. Sure 3 pointers are worth more and becoming more efficient but really, a post-up play/lay-ups are the highest percentage chance to score points in the NBA? I imagine that would be the argument of the opposing council in the defence for drafting Okafor.

I frankly don’t care too much about this category and will ignore it and move on.

A reverence for disruption

Final Scores

Hinkie – 7/8

Kelly – 6/8

2000 words later and what exactly was the point of this exercise? It is interesting to me as someone who values and believed in the work that both guys did while in Philadelphia as a future measuring stick for other coaches and GMs who come through the city. In the future, I imagine we’ll have some who languish in the 2-3 out of 8 range, guys like Doug Collins who’s tenure I will continue to look back on with growing anger over and over. Using Hinkie’s Guide to measure Hinkie’s performance is obviously something of a flawed concept but given he represents the ideals of the type of people I want running my sports teams, and that he himself couldn’t get 8/8 shows there is value in it to me at least.

I’ll never approve of the Murray or Okafor decisions but they were perhaps the most consensus and un-Kelly and un-Hinkie decisions of their 3 years. Thinking differently than the mainstream got them run out of town. If Hinkie had drafted MCW (and kept him), Aaron Gordon and Okafor (minus the legal problems), I firmly believe he would still have a job here, despite the team being worse off. Similarly, if Kelly had kept Foles, paid a lot for Maclin, overpaid Murray and gone 7-9, I also think this risk-averse approach would have got him another year. This is what frustrates me most about the situation the Eagles and the Sixers are in now, with the paragons of consensus mediocrity in Bryan Colangelo and Doug Pederson.

Started the year off by picking some over/unders.

AFC:

(1)    Denver Broncos

(2)    New England Patriots

(3)    Cincinnati Bengals

(4)    Houston Texans

(5)    Kansas City Chiefs

(6)    Pittsburgh Steelers

NFC:

(1)    Carolina Panthers

(2)    Arizona Cardinals

(3)    Minnesota Vikings

(4)    Washington Redskins

(5)    Green Bay Packers

(6)    Seattle Seahawks

Wild Card Weekend

(6) Pittsburgh Steelers @ (3) Cincinnati Bengals

I’ve absolutely hated picking this game. The reason its taken me so long to write this update and make my picks is because I’ve been waiting until the last possible moment to make a decision. I love the Brown-Roethlisberger connection but ultimately, that’s all the Steelers have got. No Andy Dalton this week but AJ McCarron has been in big games and knows his limits and what needs to be done to win a game. Bengals D has been good, with a decent run game, Tyler Eifert and AJ Green. Plus they’re at home. Going to commit to my Bengals pick and stick with it. No editing after this goes up.

(5) Kansas City Chiefs @ (4) Houston Texans

Andy Reid gonna Andy Reid? Not yet! I have little to no faith in Andy but Big Red is going to turf those Texans to the curb. Texans have weaselled their way in but KCs defence should be good enough to handle the one Texans player who can make plays. Texans D has also rounded into shape recently but Maclin and Smith have found a nice groove of late, and there’s still Kelce and West to pick up the slack as decent pieces. I’ll still put all my money on Reid to take the first time out of the game though and even if he makes one bonehead time management mistake, I think they’ll have a comfortable enough lead to not let it impact them too much. I still root for Reid and his walrus moustache so I do hope he pulls this one out.

(6) Seattle Seahawks @ (3) Minnesota Vikings

Seahawks smashed the Purple People Eaters in this matchup just two weeks ago and I think the same formula will work. As much as I love Teddy BridgeH20, the Vikes had a total of 31 rushing yards against Seattle along with 94 passing yards. That sucks! All Seattle has to do is stack the box and contain Peterson, and dare Teddy to throw to his kind of rubbishy receivers being manned up by Sherman and Thomas. They’ll turn him into a Teddy Bear…the adorable, cute, harmless kind rather than an actual destructive bear. On the flipside, Jimmy Graham getting hurt was like the best thing to happen to this offense, as Wilson is slinging it around. Love that Tyler Lockett kid they have to go along with Baldwin. Would really help if they had Rawls but Lynch is expected back so that should help balance things out. My BOLD prediction is that they run Lynch and that should help set up the play action…GB.

(5) Green Bay Packers @ (4) Washington Redskins

This one pains me, because I hate all NFC East teams but I think I may actually end up picking Washington in this matchup. They just seem like the ‘hot team’ but also Kirk Cousins combining with Jordan Reed and DeSean Jackson just works. Cousins’ home record has been impressive this year and Aaron Rodgers has been much worse on the road. Not a massive fan of the GB defence but I think Washington’s is a bit underrated. Given that I expected they’d have less than 6.5 wins this year and end up with the 1st overall pick, this has been quite a turnaround.

Divisional Round

AFC

(5) Kansas City Chiefs @ (1) Denver Broncos

This is where Andy Reid gets his Andy Reid on. This is a pretty winnable game for the Chiefs and that’s where Andy Reid just falls on his face. Have very little confidence in Peyton either, but years and years of Andy Reid failures has led me to this point.

(3) Cincinnati Bengals @ (2) New England Patriots

I think Andy Dalton is back for this game, just in time for him to lose against the Patriots. Then cue all the conversation about how Andy Dalton can’t win in the playoffs even though its a ridiculous, overblown narrative because people are obsessed with WINZ without taking anything else into consideration. Looking forward to that argument going on all summer and into next year.

NFC

(4) Washington Redskins @ (2) Arizona Cardinals

Cardinals, easy. They have a really strong home advantage, better coach, better QB, better Defence, better weapons. Move on.

(6) Seattle Seahawks @ (1) Carolina Panthers

Marquee matchup. And it’d be great to watch. Think Carolina has a slight edge over them, their offence and defence is just a bit more ‘together’ than Seattle.

Championship Round

AFC

(2) New England Patriots @ (1) Denver Broncos

Patriots make their return to the Super Bowl. Can’t back a too old Manning in the cold, when he’s looked terrible all year.

NFC

(2) Arizona Cardinals @ (1) Carolina Panthers

Two no.2 seeds make it through to the big game.

Super Bowl

(2) New England Patriots vs. (2) Arizona Cardinals

Arizona with the win. Just got the better balance to their team and their coaching staff, QB and weapons are all enough to hang with the Patriots and take home the Lombardi.

Since I managed to lose the top spot in both our leagues and end up 2^nd, I’m pretty annoyed about the whole thing and endeavoured to further investigate the cause behind it. One thing you can find on ESPN is the Active Stats count, which shows historically every player you’ve put into your line-up and contributed to your team even if its only 4 at bats or pitched 1 inning. Using this info you can determine just how many at bats your team has had over the course of the season and how many total pitched innings.

Comparing each team in both leagues, one trend becomes pretty clear. Looking at SOP first, FOW (I Hate Drew Storen) clearly outperforms in both number of At Bats and number of Innings Pitched during the course of the season. Around 500 at bats more than our 3 teams. Of course, in a league where you add up Runs, HRs, RBIs, Ks, Ws, SVs, BBs and QS, the more AB and IP, means more opportunities for additional counting stats. The only potential issue is that the more AB and IP could be bad for the 3 ratio stats: AVG, ERA and WHIP.

The same is also basically true for Mayberry. PARK had the most AB and pretty much the most IP also (only narrowly 2^nd to GG). Both PARK and FOW ended up with essentially 10s across the board in Runs, HR, RBIs and Ws giving them a great advantage.

So how exactly do they achieve this? Well the also both had the most Activations over the course of the year. ESPN doesn’t give a great definition of what it actually means by Activations but I assume it refers to assuring you always move bench players into your active lineup. I assume we all do this anyway but I guess there are times when we might forget or not start players who are slumping. Its not necessarily the case that more Moves (Adding/Dropping players from Free Agency) is a factor because the data show different results for both the leagues – although it might be something to do with the different structure and bench sizes. Looking at Mayberry first, PARK had the most Activations and also made the most Moves. So I guess as often as he could, he plugged in any free spaces with guys off the wire (although I didn’t specifically notice this happening). However, this isn’t the case with SOP, as FOW is behind a number of other teams in terms of Moves, although Activations certainly are the highest. Must be something to do with the larger bench size makes it easier to plug in empty slots without dipping into the free agent pool.

I’m not totally convinced by the explanation, particularly as I’m still unclear on what Activations are, but it seems like the most logical conclusion.

If you need some further evidence on the correlation between number of AB and IP to total points gained over the course of the season, I’ve put this chart together. Here, I combined the total AB and IP to create an ABInnings stat and plotted it against the final points standing in the table. As you can see, there’s a fairly strong link between the two. CQB is a bit of an outlier but that’s mostly because the total points available in SOP was higher and more ABInnings were recorded on average over Mayberry. Otherwise it makes for a fairly nice correlation.

So why did I go through all this effort? Basically to prove that while I may not have come 1^st in the league, I had the most efficient team in both leagues and the better talent overall. I had less runs in fewer at bats, but as a percentage, this was higher than the likes of FOW and PARK. My team was gaining more runs/HRs/RBIs/SB per at bat, and more Ks, Ws and SVs per inning pitched. The only reason I lost was because they just abused the lack of limits on innings and at bats to sneak in more.

Instead I calculated the number of at bats and innings it took to earn each counting stat and from there, assigned rankings 1-10 based on who was more efficient. So for example, it took me 25.7 at bats to earn 1 HR. It took FOW 26.7 at bats to earn 1 HR, so my lower number means I was the more efficient and thus had better talent on my roster. From these line charts, you can see that not a huge amount has changed but in both leagues it would have shifted some position finishes. Most importantly though, I would have won both leagues if I’d supplemented my daily lineups with some scraps in the free agency pool.

I’m MEGA in Mayberry:

And CQB in SOP:

Hopefully we’ve learned some things for next season but I think there must be a broader tactic underlying both PARK and FOW strategy. I’m yet to totally figure it out but I imagine it has something to do with the way they stagger their pitching and batting throughout the year. Contrary to my tactic this year, it might make sense to rush through your 200 pitching starts as quickly as possible and replace as many as possible with relievers, while using your bench and any additional slots to stack batters every day for the second half of the season. Might explain how PARK came out of nowhere over the last few months to overtake me for 1^st. Strange thing is though that neither FOW or PARK reached their game start limits with a lot of time to spare. So I’ve essentially hit a wall when it comes to figuring out the best way to take advantage of this tactic.

This year I embarked on a passion project that I’d been contemplating for some time but never had the patience to pull off. As you know, each day the point rankings get updated to reflect the latest daily point totals and who has moved up or down the table. What I’ve always wanted to do was to track those point totals throughout the season and play around with the data at the end. ESPN doesn’t allow you to go back and look at the table for June 28^th 2015 (as an example), so unfortunately there’s no easy way of accessing this historical data. The only solution is to set up your own spreadsheet and manually enter the figures in every day of the season for 162 days.

Well, you’ll be pleased to know that I actually carried out this painstaking task for some unknown reason – just so I could write this blog post at the end of the season! I should point out quickly that I missed a few days by accident (approx 7 days) along the way, but these are interspersed throughout the year and don’t impact the overall trend. In this situation, I merely calculated the average for the two days either side to fill in the blanks. Forgive me my occasional holidays away from the internet, hangovers or excessive real work demands as the year went on.

Anyway, there’s little in terms of actual analysis you can really perform on the data, it’s more to create some nice charts that show how the year played out. So enjoy!

Points Tracking

As you can see from this chart, the first team to occupy 1^st place in our standings was Last Man Stanton. Those early days see lots of volatility as a big day can propel you from 10th to 1^st. As early as mid-May, the top 3 teams had begun to separate themselves, and managed to hold that advantage all the way to the end of the year. Were these teams better managed? Suffer less injuries? Had better players to start with? Perhaps a combination? It’s not entirely clear but it could be the case in our league that the larger benches make it easier to horde players throughout the season and there are fewer ‘gems’ to be found in free agency on a daily basis. Perhaps places greater emphasis on drafting a good team to start with (as well as having superior Keepers). I wouldn’t entirely discount dumb luck though, as that always helps!

SWFlorida Snowbirds fell away from the top two just after the All-Star Break and began a slow and steady decline. Still, a great performance from one of the newcomers this year! The battle at the top between myself and I Hate Drew Storen raged on until the last day though I was unable to really challenge him in August/September.

The really exciting battle looked to be between 4^th, 5^th and 6^th place (Tequila Mockingbirds, Last Man Stanton and Out Of Options). Tequila Mockingbirds secured 4^th in the end even though Out Of Options had generally held it down for the longer amount of time over the course of the year. Out of Options even dropped down to 6^th right at the finish line by Last Man Stanton following a late surge.

There was a slightly similar dogfight among the 7^th-9^th place teams, which really intensified in September. Huge September surge from Joe Buck Yourself…he plays for October. Burnham Beeches managed to drag himself from last place in the first half of the year to finish in a more respectable position. Boston Navigators was one of the steadiest performers throughout the year, perhaps some high risk/high reward strategy is needed next year? Speaking of high risk strategies, it didn’t pay off for Future Proofers this year, however, with a nucleus of Kris Bryant (Rookie of the Year), Joc Pederson, Starling Marte and Lorenzo Cain, he’s found a couple of high upside picks that could form a formidable team in the future.

As we can see from the graph though, I Hate Drew Storen was certainly a worthy Champion, with prolonged stints at the top and didn’t drop below 2^nd place after May!

Variance

Variance is a calculation of the points spread between the highest scoring team and the lowest scoring team on any given day. Interesting to note the trend here, that the gap between 1st place and 10th place kept widening as the season went on. Obviously the gap is smaller at the beginning when we all start on the same number of points but from August to October the gap grew rapidly. I thought there might be a chance that the variance would tighten up at the end of the year as players were rested and playoff positions secured but this didn’t play out.

Volatility

The trend towards greater variance between 1^st and 10^th as the season progresses is also evident in the volatility of point movement up and down the table. Here, I calculated the difference between the largest daily movement and the smallest daily movement to denote the level of volatility. As you can see, it really slows down as the season goes along. This makes sense, teams manage to stretch out their leads in various categories, widening the gap and making it difficult to overtake other teams. I Hate Drew Storen had a lead of over 100 Runs over me, and so was easily going to hang on to the 10 points in that category. The relationship between Volatility and Variance over the year is quite apparent therefore.

Point Averages

I also looked into various averages for the year, beyond the most widely used. My Mode score of 105.5 was the highest in the league, so I’ll count that as a minor victory in order to console myself from coming in 2^nd. Mostly though, you can see some of the points trends I mentioned in my initial write-up on the chart below. For example, on average, Out Of Options was arguably more deserving of 4th place than Tequila Mockingbirds, even though the end of year standings say something different!

Position Data

The data for who occupied which position makes for less attractive charts than pure points, so I’ve compiled it into a table. As you can see from my average position of 2.2, my median position of 2^nd and my mode position of 2^nd – it seems clear I fully deserved my 2^nd place (and not 1^st).

There’s also some fun calculations in there such as how many days each team spent in first and last. Tequila Mockingbirds and Future Proofers unfortunately never had the honour of occupying 1^st place during the season. Outside of the top 3 finishers, Burnham Beeches was the only team to hold 1^st place for more than one day.

The highest points score recorded this season was 112.5 by I Hate Drew Storen, actually recorded on the last day of the season. The lowest was Future Proofer’s 28 points from October 1st. The mode for the year was 65. Phew, that’s a lot of work!

Fantasy baseball season is here and so ends the next 5 months of my life.

Each year following my two drafts – Mayberry (a yearly re-draft league) and Sons of Pitches (a keeper league in its second year) – I use ESPN projections to calculate how each league will theoretically play out in what has become my favourite task of the season. Its highly imperfect because it becomes out of date before the season even starts when players get picked up and dropped. Also, injuries and slumps take their toll and the projections are never super accurate. However, it does give an instant perspective on what categories each team is strong/weak on and an overall pecking order of who is expected to be the better performing teams over the course of the season.

I thought I’d pull up the draft results of 2014 and compare it with how things shook out in the league throughout the rest of that season. The long in the short of it, is that the drafting projection place finishes proved fairly accurate in Sons of Pitches and less accurate in Mayberry. For example, using the draft projections from SoP, three of the top four were forecast to finish: me (1), Burnham Beeches (3), Tequila Mockingbirds (4) – and ended the year with me (1), Burnham Beeches (2), Tequila Mockingbirds (3). Mayberry was a lot more scattered, with the likes of NC Sting Ray projected to finish 8th then coming tied for 1st.

Mayberry 2014 – Fairly close between Projected & Actual

SCORE

PARK 61
MCMILLAN 58
GRANT 67
SAUN 61
LMMP 62
BARNEY 17
KENTUCKY 62
ELEPHANT 54
MILLER 51
CHIEF 55

Initial thoughts – Barney’s Tigers Blue Tiger had one of the worst drafts I’ve ever seen. This became clear as the draft was playing out (Cabrera at #2 overall, Kimbrel in the 2nd round, etc) but only becomes more obvious when you tally up his projected score to…17! Christ.

Another successful draft for me – I swear I don’t play with the numbers or anything. I think this was largely down to my focus on Batting – as I have 3 batters on my bench, more than anyone else, which gave me good scores for Runs, HRs and RBIs.

I’m going to be scrounging the waiver wire for Saves. Don’t know where all the closers went during the draft but have to hope for some serious churn in depth charts to snag saves. I’m also in dire need of Ks and Ws since most of my pitching staff is injured to start the year, which is far from ideal. Not enough research by me, rookie mistake.

Sons of Pitches is more difficult to project as the bench in our keeper league has been expanded to 6 spots and this kind of throws off the projections with prospects maybe not even getting to play this year. So I have decided not to redo the task for this league. Also, I’m about to repeat as Champion so who needs projections anyway?

In one of my first posts on this blog, I made the pre-season projection for the Seattle Seahawks to win the SuperBowl again. Living with that prediction through the season has been difficult as the week-to-week knee-jerk reactions during the season obscure one’s logical process. The sky was falling in Seattle by about week 6, and yet they still ended up with the number 1 seed in the NFC. After 17 weeks of the regular season, I’m glad that I didn’t write a weekly column and therefore have the opportunity to go back on my prediction multiple times.

Wild Card Round

AFC

(6) Baltimore Ravens @ (3) Pittsburgh Steelers – Steelers to beat the Ravens. Losing Le’Veon Bell (the best RB in football right now) is big, but the Steelers receiving corps is good enough to take advantage of the Ravens lack of Defensive Backs. Also, I’m going to go on record and say that Joe Flacco never wins another Superbowl.

(5) Cincinnati Bengals @ (4) Indianapolis Colts – Colts please. Dalton on the road, big game, without AJ Green, no thanks. Saying that, I can see the Bengals just running the ball 90% of the time against a weak Colts run D. Still I’m sure Dalton will find a way to lose it.

NFC

(6) Detroit Lions @ (3) Dallas Cowboys – Lions upset Cowboys on the road. Its easy to pick against a team I hate, but feel the Lions could do a job here. Their D-Line is a match for the O-Line and I’m expecting Murray has already been run into the ground this year, making it more difficult for the Offence to get going. Then it comes down to Megatron over Dez.

(5) Arizona Cardinals @ (4) Carolina Panthers – Hard to pick a completely rubbish QB in a road playoff game but I trust the Arizona coaching staff to find a way to win this one. Carolina has shown little to impress over the course of the season. Bowles and Arians are 50 times the coaching staff that Ron Rivera is.

Divisional Round

AFC

(3) Pittsburgh Steelers @ (2) Denver Broncos – Think Manning might be done. At least this year. In his last 5 games he’s thrown 5 TDs against 6 INTs. Averaging 1 TD per game is just not something Manning does. Roethlisberger and the Steelers won’t be intimidated coming into Denver, nor playing in the cold. Steelers take this one.

(4) Indianapolis Colts @ (1) New England Patriots – Patriots know the formula for beating the Colts, they’ve thrashed them 85-42 over the last two meetings. No chance of an upset here.

NFC

(5) Arizona Cardinals @ (2) Green Bay Packers – Aaron Rodgers at home:

Versus Aaron Rodgers on the road:

Essentially he’s lights out at home and pretty good on the road. If they had the #1 seed, I’d back them all the way to SuperBowl. He’ll beat the Cardinals but fall to the Seahawks. Getting ahead of myself though.

(6) Detroit Lions @ (1) Seattle Seahawks – Should be a good defensive matchup, and you could argue that Detroit have a slight advantage in both Offence and Defence. Can’t go against Seattle at home though with all their guys healthy.

AFC Championship

(3) Pittsburgh Steelers @ (1) New England Patriots – Patriots Defence show their mettle, Revis on Brown, Wilfork beasting on Bell. Brady can take advantage of a fairly old and depleted LB-core and secondary. Otherwise known as, throw it to Gronkowski over and over again.

NFC Championship

(2) Green Bay Packers @ (1) Seattle Seahawks – See earlier Aaron Rodgers Home vs Away stats. Seattle dominated GB in the Week 1 opener and I don’t see much having changed since then.

SUPERBOWL

(1) New England Patriots @ (1) Seattle Seahawks –  I don’t really much like picking two #1 seeds to make it to the Superbowl but I think the two teams have been a cut above the rest this year. NE and Seattle have very few weaknesses and are basically strong across the board. Seattle have proved in the past they can handle NE and I actually think their greater challenges will come from Detroit and Green Bay. There’s a good chance that Gronk gets his knee blown up in the 1st quarter by Kam Chancellor, which will pretty much destroy the NE Offence. Brady won’t be able to move the ball with Edelman, Amendola and Lafell against Sherman and Maxwell and therefore, Brady falls to 3-3 in Superbowl appearances. U mad bro?

And now for a long-held tradition (at least for the last year since before this blog existed), my girlfriend will make her picks for the playoffs. She is American so in theory is imbued with greater knowledge than me although she doesn’t watch any NFL and pretty much hates it. Now watch her pick the aforementioned perfect playoff bracket.

Round 1: Ravens over Steelers. Indy over Cincy. Detroit over Dallas (this pick was made entirely on the basis of not making me angry). Cards over Panthers.

Round 2: Patriots over Ravens. Broncos over Indy. Detroit over Seattle. GB over Cards.

Round 3: Patriots over Broncos. GB over Detriot.

Superbowl: Patriots over the Packers.

A fairly feasible scenario all in all considering it took her less than 1 minute. Brady winning it all…clearly she has a thing for handsome men.