Islington Bracket Preview

Islington Bracket

Adrian:

Let's start our Neighborhood Rumble previews with the Islington manager who most needs a win. Adrian has had a very, very disappointing season thus far, but it's a marathon, not a sprint, and boy is this kid good at marathons. Adrian currently sits in last place, 20.5 games out of a playoff spot. Adrian hasn't won a matchup since (you can look this up if you want, it's totally true) Week 1. This has to be the worst stretch of fantasy baseball in league history. Adrian is riding his hottest streak of the year, a 9-11 stretch with one tie and one loss, into the tournament. Even his two week stretch in which he won his only game was not as good as this current two game stretch. He won 5-4 then lost 7-3, going 8-11 overall. Adrian's current 9-11 stretch is his best two weeks of the year. Just.. like.. how?

Overall: 47-90-3. Vs. Islington: 19-40-1

Alex:

Unfortunate circumstances led Alex to Islington, but he was welcomed with open arms by his neighborhoodmen; enjoying nights under the lights at Morrison, raw cookie dough and Cokes in Colin's basement and the sweet, sweet taste of the Islington Pizza chicken finger dinner. It would be an injustice to how bad Adrian's season has been to say that Alex is only one spot ahead of Adrian in the standings; So, instead we will say that Alex is 14 games ahead of last place Adrian and only 6.5 out of a playoff spot. Alex has played bully this season, with his only three matchup wins coming against each of the other three teams currently out of the playoff picture. He hasn't won since Week 10 against Adrian and has gone 14-25 in the four weeks since. Alex has not fared well against his Islington opponents, but posted a winning record against Westwood, with 2 of his 3 wins and both of his ties coming against Westwood.

Overall: 59-74-7. Vs. Islington: 28-46-6

Colin:

The overwhelming favorite in the Islington bracket is coming off a win. That's one of the most surprising things I've typed today. Colin is coming off only one win. He's won 9 of 14 weeks, but two weeks ago lost 9-1 to TJ in the matchup of neighborhood leaders. Prior to that, he had not lost since week 4. Not much else to say here, Colin has been really good.

Overall: 81-58-8. Vs. Islington: 38-18-4

Kurt:

Kurt has been captain inconsistency, but when you look a little deeper he may just be the best bad team. Looking at this season there are a lot of bad teams. Teams 4-7 are a combined 3 games above .500. Kurt lost three weeks in a row, going 7-21 before feasting on the 8^th and 9^th place teams 13-5 in the two weeks leading up to the tournament.

Overall: 68-63-9. Vs. Islington: 30-26-4

Tim:

The league's newcomer has been very good in his debut season, currently sitting in 5^th place after an 8-2 win over Jarrett. Despite Tim's success, he has yet to not lose 3 weeks in a row. Following wins, Tim has gone 1-3-1, but comes into the tournament having tied and won his last two weeks. Statistics indicate that he will lose this week. Prove statistics wrong, Tim! However, Tim does have the second best record against Islington.

Overall: 68-64-8 Vs. Islington: 37-22-1

Westwood Bracket Preview!

Westwood Bracket:

Ben:

Ben is mired in a relatively disappointing season by Ben's standards. The two-time Chalice holder and all-time winningest manager (I think) currently sits in sixth place at 67-69-some number of ties. None of that matters in this! Ben is coming into the tournament hot, winning his last two matchups with a 13-7 record.

Overall: 67-69-4. Vs. Westwood: 31-36-0

James:

The Mamsandwich is coming into the tournament having lost his last two matchups, going 6-12-2 in that time. Despite a hot start that saw him in first place early in the season, Mams currently finds himself in 8^th place. Mams had won his first four matchups, but has lost 7 of his last 9 matchups, beginning with a 10-0 shutout at the hands of Colin.

Overall: 60-71-9. Vs. Westwood: 24-34-2

Jarrett:

The league's most bearded individual finds himself in third place overall, featuring a lights out pitching staaf and the number one overall player in Yahoo! He comes in to the tournament off of three lopsided battles, most recently an 8-2 loss to Tim. However, the two weeks prior he went 16-4, picking a good week to (hopefully) post his final stinker before the tournament begins.

Overall: 74-61-5. Vs. Westwood: 33-26-1

Richie:

Commissioner 3.0 has done a lackluster job deefending his title and currently finds himself in 7^th, 1 game out of a playoff spot. His last 4 weeks have seen an all time record of consecutive 7-3 weeks. I assume this is a record, as it is too pointless a feat to research. Unfortunately for him, only two of those weeks have been wins, giving him a 20-20 record overall in that four week span, defining the mediocrity that we had once been accustomed to from the commish.

Overbay: 65-69-6. Vs. Westwood: 33-34-3

TJ:

Despite his current residence being nearly a full United States East Coast away from his Westwood Neighborhood, TJ has used his distance to distance himself from the Westwood pack. TJ currently sits in second place, the highest of any of his neighborhoodmen (I'm using this word like Countrymen, I assume it works like that.) TJ is coming off a 7-3 loss, but it was his first loss since Week 3. The overwhelming favorite of the Westwood Bracket had posted a 22-8 record in the three weeks prior to his most recent of two losses.

Overall: 79-56-5. Vs. Westwood: 34-25-1

Home Run Derby Game

$5 buy in, winner take all.  We have a rivalry match up between Richie and James, and championship re-re-rematch between Kurt and Ben, a rookie phenom in Alex's Kris Bryant against the ageless HOFer Pooholes....and that last, storyline-less match up between Colin and Tim.  Good luck to Richie!

BOVADA odds:

Fielder 17/4

Frazier 19/4

Pujols 5/1

Pederson 5/1

Bryant 5/1

Rizzo 7/1

Donaldson 7/1

Machado 9/1

The Commissioner's Corner - Week 14

League News

TJ reclaims first place from Colin with a 9-1 beat down, Jarrett is following up his breakout 2014 campaign with an even better 2015, and the murky middle shuffle positions.

We only got 5 responses on the spreadsheet for the Red Sox game.  Thanks to Adrian, Colin, James, and TJ for chiming in.  As stated in last week's TCC, there are no games when we can all make it.  Here are the 6 games with the best attendance per those 5 responders:

Friday 7/24 vs Detroit (No Richie or Colin, only game TJ can go to)
Friday 7/31 vs Tampa Bay (No Richie or TJ)
Friday 8/14 vs Seattle (No TJ or Colin, James already going)
The entire Labor Day series (Friday-Sunday) vs Philadelphia (No Adrian or TJ)

Alex, Ben, Kurt, Tim, Jarrett, if you're interested let us know.  If not, I will stop trying to make this happen.

Milestones and Historical Perspective

Jarrett beat Richie 7-3 in one of the closest matches of the season.  With the result, both managers sit at 1,299 career wins.

In last week's "Hey, look at this!" segment we saw each team's 2015 weekly record.  Here's a look at our career weekly records (not including data from 2002-2003, includes this year's results):

	Wins	Loss	Ties
Kurt	125	96	34
Ben	124	100	31
TJ	124	99	32
Alex	120	107	28
Colin	117	106	32
Richie	115	122	18
Jarrett	109	114	32
James	105	111	39
Adrian	102	122	31
Drew	69	112	17
Kyle	9	11	2
Jason	8	11	3
Tim	5	5	3
Paul	3	16	3

Congratulations Tim, you've nearly returned Paul to his rightful place at the bottom of every statistical analysis we can run.  You're a couple of weeks away from passing him on the Career Wins list - more on that as we get closer.  Miscellaneous other things:

My team apparently lacks the ability to tie.  Tim got his third tie in his 13th career week; I got my third tie in my 97th career week.

Ben won 17 of his 22 matches in 2010, a league record that TJ (9-1-3) is on track to beat this season.

 Adrian (2010), Richie (2013), and Drew (2013) are the only managers to win less than 4 matches in a year (they all won 3), though Adrian's 3-17-2 record stands as the worst all-time.

Hey, look at this!

This is our brand new segment called "Hey, look at this!" where I find mildly interesting stats and present them to you in a way that may or may not mildly interest you.

Jarrett is on pace to post the second best winning percentage across a two year span in league history.  His current .583 winning percentage over the 2014-15 seasons is just above Alex's .576 across the 2013-2014 seasons.  He will have to finish on a tear to catch Ben's .600 winning percentage from 2005-2006.  

Incentives

WWE Belt

Payouts: $50 at the All-Star Break (week 15), $75 at the end of the regular season

Belt holder:  TJ crushes Colin 9-1 and puts himself just 5 categories away from a $50 payday**.  The last obstacle in his way is none other than defending champion and sexiest manager alive, Richie.  TJ has successfully defended the belt once through the rotation (he's beaten everyone once); it's time to bust up this party.  That $50 That belt is mine!

**TJ will not receive $50 as he is the only member yet to pay his league dues

Shutout Pool

Week 14 pot: $40

TJ put up 9 categories against Colin but lost SB by a wide margin.  And despite an 8-2 loss, Alex walloped Kurt by 34 strikeouts to protect himself from immortality.

Neighborhood Rumble

Hey, this is coming up!!  

Can we get a refresher-blog on this, Kurt?

Payouts:  $25 to the Islington and Westwood champion, $50 to the Tournament champ

Dates: Week 16ish – talk to Kurt for more details.

The Commissioner's Corner - Week 13

League News

The August 22nd Red Sox game is out.  Click here and fill in your availability for other games if you haven't already.  Seems like we all have busy summers and unfortunately it'll prevent us from getting the entire league to one game, but I'm still proposing we go to the game that most of us can go to.

Milestones and Historical Perspective

With nearly half of a season to go we're sure to be looking at a much different playoff picture come September than we are now.  But if the season were to end today, the Diamond Dynasty would have three sub-.500 playoff teams for the first time in league history.  Tim's .492 winning percentage would be the lowest winning percentage for a #4 seed ever, trailing the .509 marks by two championship campaigns: 2011 Kurt and 2005 Alex.

In other news, Richie (1,296) and Jarrett (1,292) are approaching 1,300 wins and face off this week.  Good luck to me.

Hey, look at this!

This is our brand new segment called "Hey, look at this!" where I find mildly interesting stats and present them to you in a way that may or may not mildly interest you.

These are 2015's weekly head to head records to date.  Pretty close to the actual standings with six of us either at or 1 +/- our H2H records.  If your H2H rank is better than your position in the standings right now, you're bad at winning (5-4 wins) or bad at losing (8-2 losses).  Or both.

Pos	Team	H2H
2	TJ	8-1-3
1	Colin	8-2-2
7	James	6-5-1
6	Richie	6-6-0
4	Tim	5-5-2
3	Jarrett	4-4-4
5	Kurt	5-6-1
8	Ben	4-5-3
9	Alex	3-7-2
10	Adrian	1-9-2

Incentives

WWE Belt

Payouts: $50 at the All-Star Break (week 15), $75 at the end of the regular season

Belt holder:  TJ wins again, this time by a 7-3 score over Kurt.  TJ has a .568 winning percentage in belt matches, which is actually slightly under his .579 season winning percentage.

We're quickly approaching the first payout!  There are four teams left that can win:

	How can they win?
Team	Week 13		Week 14
TJ wins by...	Beating or tying Colin	AND	Beating or tying Richie
Colin wins by...	Beating TJ	AND	Beating or tying Alex
Alex wins by...	Colin beating TJ	AND	Beating Colin
Richie wins by...	TJ beating Colin	AND	Beating TJ

"Good luck to TJ in week 13 and Richie in week 14!"   - Everyone

Shutout Pool
Week 13 pot: $35

No shutouts in week 12.  We did have a 9-1 win, Jarrett over Adrian, where Jarrett missed the shutout payday by 3 saves.   An argument could have been made for Colin coming the closest though, as his 7-3 victory over Richie saw him lose 9-8 in homers, 34-33 in RBI, and less than half a run in ERA.

Neighborhood Rumble

Payouts:  $25 to the Islington and Westwood champion, $50 to the Tournament champ

Dates: Week 16ish – talk to Kurt for more details.

The Commissioner's Corner - Week 12

League News

The league sees 7 teams separated by just 8 games while Adrian sinks further into the hopeless abyss.

Milestones and Historical Perspective

TJ's 6-4 victory over Ben marked his 10th straight week without a loss.  To put that in historical perspective, that's the 4th longest such streak in the 11 recorded years of the Diamond Dynasty (weekly stats not available on Yahoo! until 2004).  Here's a look at the longest streaks in league history:

	Manager		Length	Year
Longest win streak
	1)	Jarrett	10 weeks	2014
	2)	Richie	9 weeks	2014
	3)	Drew	8 weeks	2011
	3)	Kurt	8 weeks	2008
Longest lossless streak
	1)	Jarrett	16 weeks	2014
	2)	James	13 weeks	2013
	2)	Kurt	13 weeks	2012
	4)	TJ	10 weeks	2015
Longest winless streak
	T1)	Adrian	13 weeks	2010
	T1)	Drew	13 weeks	2013
	3)	Paul	10 weeks	2004
Lonest losing streak
	1)	Adrian	13 weeks	2010
	2)	Drew	8 weeks	2013
	T3)	Colin	7 weeks	2005
	T3)	James	7 weeks	2011

Hey, look at this!

This is our brand new segment called "Hey, look at this!" where I find mildly interesting stats and present them to you in a way that may or may not mildly interest you.

I was pulling up my Luck Calculator to run another check on the luck we've all been either enjoying or missing, and I realized - I screwed up.  

I was looking specifically at Tim, ready to put him on blast in this week's TCC (He's really skated through the first half of his inaugural year, wouldn't you agree?)  I had him pegged as the luckiest team in the league, playing well over his head.  But when I looked at the league totals again, he was consistently in the top 5.  It didn't make sense.

Then it hit me:  For 8 of our 10 categories, you want to be above the league average.  For ERA and WHIP, you want to be below (or so I'm told).  I didn't catch it the first time around and while the numbers were close, they weren't correct.  So here's an updated, accurate look at our luck through week 11 (sorted luckiest to unluckiest): 

Manager	Proj. W%	Act W%	Variance
Jarrett	0.463	0.532	0.069
James	0.428	0.459	0.031
Tim	0.483	0.509	0.026
Colin	0.618	0.641	0.023
Ben	0.441	0.464	0.023
Richie	0.486	0.500	0.014
Adrian	0.357	0.350	-0.007
Alex	0.517	0.473	-0.044
Kurt	0.567	0.505	-0.062
TJ	0.640	0.568	-0.072

Jarrett is the luckiest team in the DD this season.  He's caught a lot of teams at the right time and his actual winning percentage is way above what you'd expect based on his team stats.  With the adjustment, Tim is still on the lucky side but he doesn't deserve as much shit as I was going to shovel his way.  Still, fuck you Tim.  You should be killing all of us.

Amazingly, Kurt and TJ have been terribly unlucky to this point and have still managed to spend most of this season in the early playoff picture .  Check out TJ's projected winning percentage!  If he played an average team every week, he would be on pace for the second-best winning percentage in the history of the DD!  

Incentives

WWE Belt

Payouts: $50 at the All-Star Break (week 15), $75 at the end of the regular season

Belt holder:  Another week, another narrow victory for TJ.  The 6-4 win over Ben pushed belt holders' retention percentage over .700 in the short history of the incentive.  

If I'm correct, and I rarely am, Ben and Tim are the first teams eliminated from a chance at the All-Star Break payout.

Shutout Pool
Week 11 pot: $30

No one was close.  Pot grows to it's highest mark in 2015.

Neighborhood Rumble

Payouts:  $25 to the Islington and Westwood champion, $50 to the Tournament champ

Dates: Week 16ish – talk to Kurt for more details.

The Commissioner's Corner - Week 11

League News

Colin continues to distance himself from the musical chair crowd below him.

Milestones and Historical Perspective

A lot has been made of James's recent struggles; in the last 5 weeks he's only managed to win 10 categories.  While he's in rare company, this does not set the bar for worst 5 week stretch in DD history.  That honor goes to Adrian, who tallied just 8 wins over a 5 week period in late 2010 en route to the second worst season in league history.

Hey, look at this!

This is our brand new segment called "Hey, look at this!" where I find mildly interesting stats and present them to you in a way that may or may not mildly interest you.

Colin's 62 wins over the first 10 weeks is a franchise best, breaking his previous record of 61 which he achieved in championship 2004 season.  If he can keep this pace up he would have the most regular season wins in the 10-team era.  In contrast, Adrian's 34 wins over the first 10 weeks is tied for his worst start ever (2012) and third worst all time behind 2014 Drew (31 wins) and, of course, 2013 Drew (30).  God he sucked.

Incentives

WWE Belt

Payouts: $50 at the All-Star Break (week 15), $75 at the end of the regular season

Belt holder:  TJ plays Tim to a 5-5 in their first ever match up and keeps the belt for yet another week.  That's 6 in a row for Geers, who hasn't tallied more than 6 categories in any of his title defenses is doing just enough to hold on.  He's halfway to Jarrett's record.  Belt holders are 23-10 in belt defenses.

Shutout Pool
Week 11 pot: $25

Jarrett narrowly misses cashing in against (guess who) James, but settles for the 9-1 victory.  Jarrett lost Wins 2-1.  

Neighborhood Rumble

Payouts:  $25 to the Islington and Westwood champion, $50 to the Tournament champ

Dates: Week 16ish – talk to Kurt for more details.