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Making Sense of Chuck and Bryan

I've spent the past few days mulling over recent events and I've come to the conclusion that while the issues raised by our two misguided former colleagues were intriguing, the conclusions they jumped to were erroneous to the point of utter insanity. I don't mean to beat these issues like a dead horse, and I don't feel as though any further commentary about those two people is necessary. But while I condemn the two people who used these issues as an excuse to accuse others of dishonor, I think the issues they brought up deserve to be discussed.

The three main issues raised by the departed Mr. Sakolsky and Mr. Shaeffer were: a) lopsided trades, b) the disparity between actual won-loss records and those derived by a formula which takes runs scored and runs allowed into account, and c) the disparity between home and road records for all BDBL teams. These are legitimate issues, and I see no problem with debating these issues freely and openly. The difference between my approach and theirs, however, is that I tend to first search for a rational explanation before I go leaping to far-fetched and illogical conclusions of conspiracy.

First, let me comment a little on their first concern, which was lopsided trades. Lately, I've heard a lot of negativity from a lot of different owners about some of the trades - including my own - which have occurred in this league. Naturally, this concerns me. However, trades like this happen all the time, both in real life and in fantasy. As teams begin to fall out of contention, it's only natural (and downright smart) for teams to exchange some of their high-priced stars for future considerations. Any time a team trades an established star for potential talent, however, there are outcries of protest from people who don't share the same opinions of the prospects in question. A prospect's value is a very personal, very subjective thing. One person's "future Mickey Mantle" is another person's "future Mickey Hatcher." The fact is that NO ONE can know the true value of a prospect until years after a trade is made.

For example, in the big leagues, the Yankees traded Eric Milton and Christian Guzman to get Chuck Knoblauch and the Astros traded Carlos Guillen, Freddy Garcia and John Halama for Randy Johnson. We won't know who got the better of these two deals for years to come. Already, Knoblauch has suffered an off-year at the plate and Johnson abandoned the 'Stros after just two and a half months of pitching brilliance. Meanwhile, Guillen was looking like a strong candidate for Rookie of the Year until he messed up his knee, and the other three guys may turn out to be stars as well. You just never know. I'm sure the Red Sox thought they stole Larry Anderson from the Astros when they traded Bagwell for him. And I'm sure people in Atlanta were crying bloody murder when Detroit received an 11-1 record from their former star Doyle Alexander when all the Braves got in return was a low-level minor leaguer named John Smoltz.

Just to demonstrate that these types of deals happen all the time, I call to the witness stand Chuck Shaeffer. Chuck admonished me in his letter of resignation by saying he was "disappointed that the commissioner of a league could make such lopsided trades." So, as I tend to do, I did a little research. I looked up the web site of a league called the EBA, where Chuck happens to be the commissioner, and I looked up the recent trades Chuck has made in that league. Imagine my utter shock and disappointment when I learned that Mr. Shaeffer traded two draft picks and $350,000 in funny money in exchange for Troy Percival, Doug Brocail and Jamie Moyer. Gee...trading draft picks and future considerations for established stars...that seems oddly familiar. As if that weren't similar enough to the Lankford and Stottlemyre trade I made, Chuck also made his very own Rob Nen deal as well. But instead of giving up the top catching prospect in baseball, a high-ceiling former college slugger and a cheap closer who may or may not become a true bargain, here is what Chuck traded to secure one of the premier closers in the game: Jeff Nelson, Antonio Osuna, Paul Spoljaric, Ben McDonald, Tom Pagnozzi and $50k in funny money. That's three broken-down middle relievers, an injury-decimated starter on the verge of retirement and a second-string catcher who may be retired already. Your honor, I rest my case.

The only thing that matters in any trade are the opinions of the people making the trade. If both people agree to a deal, and their intentions behind the deal are pure (in other words, both parties believe they are improving their teams by making the deal), there is nothing sinister about the deal. To suggest anything sinister is not only illogical but idiotic. Of course, it's always fun to criticize trades. That's a baseball tradition, and there's nothing I enjoy more than ripping someone else's trading decisions (although usually I do so in private.) But to take it any further than that is unacceptable.

We have a rule in our rulebook, Rule 9.3, which was put there by myself with the intention of using it in cases where "pure" intentions are not being used in the best interests of the league. For instance, if Chuck or Bryan really wanted to wreak some havoc before they left, they could have traded all their star players to some other team just to foul up the system before they left. This would clearly be a case where I would step in and enforce Rule 9.3. Except for cases such as that, however, I would like to avoid that rule altogether. It's not my responsibility - or desire - to sit in judgement of every trade and rule which ones are fair and which are not

I think grown adults who possess the baseball savvy that we all have should be able to make their own decisions. The "real" commissioner of baseball has that same veto power, and that office has used that power in the past. When Charlie O'Finley tried to sell Vida Blue, Joe Rudi and others to the Red Sox in 1975, the commissioner stepped in and vetoed that deal using the "best interests of the game" clause. But you wouldn't see the commish employing that clause when the Astros decide to trade Bobby Abreu to the Phillies for Kevin Stocker, and you didn't see him step in when the 'Stros traded Kenny Lofton for Eddie Taubensee. That said, however, when my own integrity was called into question earlier last week in regard to being able to enforce this rule upon myself, I took the challenge and agreed to rework one of my deals. I didn't feel it was necessary, but I did so "in the best interests of the game."

On to issue number two, which was the disparity between real and "Pythagorian wins." Oddly enough, if you calculate this formula for the Ft. Lauderdale Marlins, they should be in second-place right now at 30-28 instead of first-place with a record of 33-25. According to Bryan's logic, this means he must have been cheating as much as the rest of us. However, I tend to have more faith in people, so I'll look a little deeper and search for a more logical explanation.

The Marlins are in first-place in the Petralli Division despite the fact that their pitching staff is last in the league with a 5.45 ERA. Their six starters (Brad Radke, Pat Hentgen, Brian Meadows, Shawn Estes, James Baldwin and Hideo Nomo) combined for a 5.10 ERA in over 1,000 big league innings last year. Four of the six starters had ERA's over 5.00, and one of them - Nomo - finished just below that mark at 4.92. Yet they sit atop the Petralli Division with a record of 33-25. How is this possible? Because the Marlins also lead the entire BDBL in runs scored. The Delafield Ogres, who are in second-place in that division, are tied with Ft. Lauderdale in that category and they've allowed TWENTY-ONE fewer runs. Yet they're SIX games behind the Marlins at the end of two chapters of play. Statistical anomaly? I'm afraid so.

Statistical anomalies frequently occur when a sample size is small, and with only 58 games under our belts at this point, the sample size is too small to expect meaningful numbers from any formula. At this point in the season, luck plays more of a factor than it does over the course over the long haul. This is why we play a 160-game season.

The Marlins aren't the only team with a glaring disparity between "Pythagorian" wins and real wins. For instance, the Bowling Green Spoilers have outscored their opponents by 21 runs, and the Oakville Marauders have outscored their opponents by 20. You'd think they'd have the same winning percentage, right? Wrong. Bowling Green is six games below .500 and Oakville has the second-best record in the BDBL at 18 games over .500.

The three examples above demonstrate the quirkiness of playing in a fantasy baseball league. Some of you may be familiar with Bill James' formula called "Pythagorean Wins." If you've never heard of it, it's basically a formula developed by James - the founder of STATS, Inc. - which calculates what a team's record should be given the number of runs they've scored versus the number they've allowed. This formula works very well in that if you compare a team's "Pythagorian" record to its actual record, the numbers are usually very close. However, in the BDBL, these numbers are way off.

In the BDBL, there is an 8.7 percent difference between an average team's Pythagorian Wins and its actual wins. It may not sound like much, but 8.7 percent translates to five wins over 58 games and 14 wins over the course of a 160-game season. That could mean the difference between first-place and second- or third-place in most divisions. The highest differential in the league, by the way, is only seven games - not fifteen as Chuck alleged in his "manifesto". Let's hope Mr. Shaeffer's calculations are a little more accurate when he's helping to launch people into space. Below is a listing of each team's Pythagorian Wins compared to their actual wins:

So why is this happening? Jeff Paulson stole my thunder by stating in an earlier e-mail the brilliantly obvious conclusion that since we have such rigid innings and at-bats restrictions, there is really no motivation to keep your best players out on the field if you're losing or winning by a wide margin toward the end of a game. Once you pull your best players off the field, you're going to score less runs and allow more runs. So basically, if you're losing, you may as well lose BIG because it's counterproductive to keep your best players in the game, wasting their innings and at-bats for a losing cause. And if you're winning, why not bring in your scrub pitcher in the eighth when you're ahead by five and save your better arms? I know I've used that strategy extensively this season.

What happens when you employ that strategy is you get a lot of games being lost by wide margins, and a lot of games being won by slim margins. And if you win five games by one-run margins, and lose two games by ten-run margins, your record is still 5-2. But you've allowed 15 more runs than you've scored. Do real life managers employ these same strategies? To some degree, yes, but I believe it's a much lesser degree since they're not operating under our restrictions. So use the Bill James formula with caution when you're looking at the numbers in this league, because they don't apply to fantasy as well as they do to real life.

The third issue, and undoubtedly the Issue of the Year so far judging by the amount of e-mail I receive about this, is the mind-boggling home/road differentials for nearly every team in the league. As I write, only seven of the twenty-four teams in the BDBL (29%) have winning records at home. In the big leagues last year, eighteen of the thirty teams (60%) had winning records at home. So what gives?

Well, let's assume for the moment that DMB has not built into its AI any artificial advantage for either the home team or the visiting team. I haven't read about any such advantage in any DMB literature, and I think it would damage the game's integrity if such a thing existed. Assuming that's not the case, what other advantages does a home team enjoy? In real life, home team players don't have to travel, they get to spend time with their families and enjoy some home cooking, they get to take extra BP if they want it, they get the benefit of playing defense on a familiar field with familiar weather conditions and hitting against a familiar backdrop, and they may or may not get an adrenaline rush from the home town fans at crucial moments during the game. None of that applies to a computer simulation, though. So what's left?

Basically, the only other advantages for the home team are these: a) they get the last chance to score, and b) the general manager of the home team had the chance to build a team which can take advantage of the home field's quirks. For instance, if your home ballpark is modeled after Yankee Stadium, and you have loaded up on left-handed hitters and pitchers, you'll gain an advantage over your opponents. If you play in Coors Field, and you've filled your team with power hitters, you'll enjoy an advantage as well. But if you play in a neutral park (as most of the ballparks are for the most part), there really is no significant advantage.

If no significant advantage exists, however, then why is everyone's home record so much WORSE than their away record? If anything, the home record should be slightly better just because the home team gets the last opportunity to score. Yet that's clearly not happening. The only other explanation, then, is that in our league the home team is managed by a computer (unless the owner is available to play by NetMeeting.) Is the computer manager that much worse than its human counterpart? In some case, I would have to say the computer manager is superior to some of the managers I've faced (naming no names, of course.) But then, I haven't played the computer all that often, so my sample size is pretty small. The real question is: how much does a manager's decisions truly affect the outcome of a game? Many people much smarter than I am have spent a great deal of time trying to figure that out, and no one has yet arrived at a universally-agreeable answer.

Speaking for myself, I have a balanced team, playing in a neutral ballpark, and I've managed every one of my games this year. I've played probably four series against the computer, and all the others head-to-head. I haven't kept any records as to which games were managed against the computer, but I don't remember doing either extremely well or extremely poorly in any of those series. Despite those factors, my team is 20-8 on the road and 13-17 at home. Maybe I'm not taking advantage of my home ballpark. Or maybe a 58-game sample size isn't enough to draw any conclusions. I really don't know why this is happening. I've thought long and hard about this question, but for the life of me I can't come up with an answer. However, even though no obvious answer exists, I'm not ready to leap to the conclusion that people must be cheating.

To me, it seems silly to even suggest such a thing in a league such as this. We don't play for money in this league, therefore the only motivation to win is pride. And how much pride can you take in winning if you had to cheat to get there? It doesn't make any sense.

I've been playing in fantasy leagues a long time, and I haven't been in a league yet where there haven't been controversies over rule interpretations or alleged lopsided trades. The fact that controversies are arising so often in this league tells me that the people in this league genuinely care about preserving the integrity of the league, and I applaud that sentiment. But I've never been in a league where accusations of cheating fly about so freely, and I've never been in the presence of so many grown men who have so much trouble resolving conflict in a rational manner. Instead of freely debating about ideas or issues, and using facts to back up their cases, guys like Sakolsky, Shaeffer, Manley and Moffat (remember him?) resort to name-calling, then quit at the drop of a hat. I just don't understand the mentality, and I'm not sure I want to. On the other hand, those guys represented only four of the twenty-six owners we've had in this league since the draft began, so I guess that's a pretty good ratio.

I've been told recently that this league isn't as much fun as it should be, and if that's the case for you, I apologize for that. I guess since I'm the so-called "fearless leader" of this group, I should be held responsible for allowing the game to become less fun. As Harry Truman once said, "the buck stops here." (It was Truman, wasn't it? I've never been very good at history.) In any case, I hope that we can all put this episode behind us and move ahead with the business of enjoying this hobby of ours. I see no reason why this game should be any less enjoyable now than it ever was. If anything, I think we'll all be able to enjoy ourselves more now than ever before.

A few days ago, I began compiling a bunch of statistics for this page. I've always enjoyed working with numbers and statistics, and Diamond Mind has a lot of wonderful tools and reports which make it easy to find those little statistical nuggets I like so much. So here now are some random facts and figures which might make you go, "wow - I didn't realize that!" Enjoy:

-- Counting only those games in which a catcher has caught the entire game, and looking at only catchers who have had 20 or more attempted steals against them, here are the top-five and bottom-five catchers in runners caught stealing percentage:

-- The glaring difference between the Ozzie and Eck leagues on which I reported at the end of last chapter is now barely existent:

OL: .268 avg. / .339 OBP / .410 SLG, 3160 R, 676 HR, 4.09 ERA

EL: .268 avg. / .339 OBP / .425 SLG, 3409 R, 792 HR, 4.36 ERA

-- The Akron Ryche not only possess Pedro Martinez AND Kenny Rogers, but take a look at their farm team and you'll see the names "Jeff Weaver" and "Mark Mulder" - two of the top pitching prospects in the game. It just ain't fair.

-- But if you think that's impressive, check out the numbers of these two pitchers, both members of the Chicago Black Sox's farm system:

• Jason Marquis: 2-0, 0.00 ERA, 20 IP, 15 H, 9 BB, 25 K at low-A level.
• Josh Beckett: 8-0, 0.24 ERA, 59 IP, 18 H, 23 BB, 119 K at high school level.

Marquis hasn't allowed a run all year, and Beckett - who will probably be the number one pick overall in this June's amateur draft - is averaging 2.7 hits allowed and EIGHTEEN strikeouts per nine innings. Those are just about the gaudiest numbers I've EVER seen at any level of competition.

-- Darren Dreifort has a four-game hitting streak.

-- The top five single pitching performances of the year according to the Bill James Game Scores formula:

1. Curt Schilling (91) vs. Massillon: 9-5-0-0-0-14
2. Jamie Moyer (90) vs. Virginia: 9-3-0-0-0-9
3. Kerry Wood (89) vs. Chicago: 9-2-2-2-3-17
4. Curt Schilling (88) vs. Bourbannais: 9-4-0-0-1-10
5. Greg Maddux (87) vs. Litchfield: 9-2-0-0-0-4
6. Kerry Wood (87) vs. Delafield: 9-3-1-1-3-13

-- While scanning the fielding leader board in the Ozzie League, I noticed that the Litchfield Lightning and Marlboro Hammerheads were second and third, respectively, in double plays. I thought this was pretty strange, since those two teams have two of the worst middle infields in the league, so I did some checking. It turns out that a lot of their double plays came "by air." Meaning, if you count the double plays which occurred by means other than a ground out (such as a runner being doubled off base on a line drive), the Lightning and Hammerheads lead the entire BDBL in this category by a landslide. The Lightning have 12 "FBDP's", while the Hammerheads have 11. No other team has more than eight, and the league average is six. The worst teams in the league in this category are the Slyme, Sea Cats and Panthers who each have three on the year. What does this all mean? I have no idea, but I feel much better knowing that Mark Grudzielanek, Eric Young, Wilton Guerrero and Pat Meares aren't leading the league in any fielding category.

-- Salem, Oakville and Chicago are the only three teams to have come from more than five runs behind to win this year. Salem and Chicago came back from five run deficits. Oakville came back from an eight-run deficit.

-- Salem, Ft. Lauderdale and Southern Cal have all come from behind a four-run deficit in the eighth inning to win a game this year.

-- What a difference a ballpark makes. Tom Candiotti, Dennis Martinez and Tim Worrell have all thrived this season in Los Altos' home ballpark which is modeled after the spacious Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. The three pitchers, whose combined age is well over a century, have combined for a 16-2 record and a 3.16 ERA for the division-leading Undertakers. Makes you wonder just how badly Joey Hamilton must suck.

-- Jim Thome, Jim Leyritz and Raul Mondesi have all hit for the cycle this year.

-- The Undertakers are second in the OL in runs scored with 282 despite playing half their games in a home ballpark which has a run bias of -25 percent.

-- As long as we're on the subject of ballparks, it's interesting to note that the Morgan Hill Panthers, who use Coors Field as their stadium model, are only fourth in the league in batting average, fifth in slugging, fifth in runs scored and sixth in homers.

-- Ray Durham is the only player in the BDBL who has been ejected from a game more than once this season.

-- Way back in November and December, when this league was in its infancy and the groundwork for the rules we would all follow for years to come were being laid out, I received an overwhelming amount of grief over the inaugural draft. I was told by one obnoxiously outspoken owner who shall remain nameless (we'll call him "Chuck") that the "snake" draft method we were using would be severely unfair to the teams at the bottom of the draft order, and that the teams up front would have such an outrageous advantage over all the other teams that playing out the season would hardly be necessary. Well, since we're now 1/3 of the way into our season, I thought I'd do some research and find out if our draft truly was unfair to the teams at the bottom of the draft order. I took our 24 teams and divided them into four groups. Draft picks 1-6 in group one, picks 7-12 in group two, etc.. Below is a table listing the winning percentages for those groups. You tell me if the draft was unfair to anyone:

-- The Delafield Ogres are on pace to hit 317 homers. We may see a BDBL team record this year which will stand for the life of this league.

-- Another example of a team winning more than it "should" based upon the James formula is the Los Altos Undertakers. The Undertakers own the best record in all of the BDBL despite outscoring their opponents by only 41 runs. Applying the Bill James formula to this team, Los Altos should be 34-24 instead of 39-19. The reason for this particular team's success? One word: BULLPEN. The Los Altos bullpen - which includes Trevor Hoffman, Kelvim Escobar, Scott Elarton and Chad Bradford among others - leads the BDBL by allowing a meager 19.2 percent of all inherited runners to score. They're also second in the BDBL in blown saves percentage (a category surprisingly led by the Zoots.) The four pitchers I mentioned, along with Trevor Miller, John Rocker and Bob Wickman, have a combined ERA of 2.64. With pitching like that in the late innings, they can preserve all those one- or two-run leads which tend to slip away from the rest of us. In fact, they are 13-5 in those one-run situations. The Undertakers are also an astounding 32-0 when leading after seven innings, and they're 6-2 in extra inning affairs - meaning their pen is not only good, but deep. Playing in a pitcher's ballpark, Los Altos has a lot of opportunities to win those one-run games and they've made the most of those opportunities all season long.

-- The BDBL record for most runs in a game by a single team is 21 - a record set by the Salem Cowtippers in a game against North Mankato earlier this year. The Marlboro Hammerheads are the only other team to score 20 or more runs in a game. Salem also contributed to the record for most runs in a game by two teams combined when they beat the New Milford Blazers 19-13.

-- The most runs scored in a single inning by a team this year is ten. Chicago (vs. Litchfield), Marlboro (vs. Antioch) and Virginia (vs. Oakville) have all done it.

-- If the season ended today, here's how I would rank the candidates for MVP and Cy Young in both leagues:

OL MVP:

1. John Olerud, Salem
2. Albert Belle, Los Altos
3. Derek Jeter, Antioch
4. Scott Brosius, Litchfield
5. Mark McGwire, Madison

OL Cy Young:

1. Kevin Brown, Stamford
2. Greg Maddux, Salem
3. Mike Mussina, Marlboro
4. Denny Neagle, Litchfield
5. Tom Candiotti, Los Altos

EL MVP:

1. Eric Davis, Delafield
2. Ray Lankford, Virginia
3. Jim Thome, Ft. Lauderdale
4. Vladimir Guererro, California
5. Todd Helton, Bourbannais

EL Cy Young:

1. Dwight Gooden, Bourbannais
2. Curt Schilling, Bowling Green
3. Kerry Wood, Bourbannais
4. Carl Pavano, California
5. Roger Clemens, Massillon

It's interesting to note that the first two candidates for EL MVP have been traded. This should make Jim Thome very happy. And the top candidate for EL Cy Young? He's now on the reserve roster.

-- One more ballpark note. Ray Lankford put up some monster stats in the Eck League over the first two chapters: .361 average, .462 on-base percentage, .731 slugging percentage, 20 home runs and 41 extra base hits. But the most amazing part of all is that Lankford's numbers in the major leagues were manufactured in a very lefty-friendly ballpark, Busch Stadium, which favors lefty power by 36 percent. Virginia's ballpark, on the other hand, punishes lefty power 11 percent. Wonder how he'll do in the Glanderdome (minus 14 percent)...

-- Randy Johnson has thrown over 130 pitches in a game four times this year. Curt Schilling and Todd Stottlemyre have thrown more than 130 twice this season. The BDBL record for most pitches in a game by a single pitcher? Mike Hampton, who threw just 6 1/3 innings against Delafield, allowing 17 runs (13 earned) in an 18-8 loss. He threw 177 pitches in that losing effort. The BDBL record for earned runs by one pitcher in a game, by the way, is 14, set by Stottlemyre.

-- The Stamford Zoots are riding a 15-game winning streak if you count the games as they appear on the schedule (as opposed to the order in which they were actually played.)

-- Who says pitchers have to bat ninth? The St. Louis Cardinals were 46-36 when batting their pitcher eighth last year. The Salem Cowtippers are 7-0 in that same situation.

-- You want balance? The two leagues are 20-20 in interleague play.

-- The Ozzie League is tailor-made for left-handed power hitters. Overall, ballpark models in the OL favor lefty power-hitters by 55 percent and punish right-handed power hitters 35 percent. The Eck League is just the opposite. Left handers are punished 85 percent and right handers are favored 55 percent. Only three of the ballpark models in the Eck League are hitters parks in terms of power, although the top two power hitter parks (Coors and Tiger Stadium) are both represented in the EL.

-- Randy Johnson holds the BDBL record for most strikeouts in a game at 19. The Eck League record is 17 by Kerry Wood. No other pitcher in either league has whiffed more than 15 in any game.

-- The "All Stone-Hands" Team:

P: Joey Hamilton, Black Sox. 4 errors, .778 fielding pct.
C: Chris Widger, SC Sea Cats. 9 / .973
1B: Will Clark, Gillette. 8 / .985
2B: Eric Young, Litchfield. 7 / .972
3B: Russ Davis, Antioch. 11 / .900
SS: Mike Caruso, N.Mankato. 25 / .905
LF: Tony Gwynn, Plattsburgh. 7 / .936
CF: Ray Lankford, Salem. 6 / .968
RF: Dante Bichette, Massillon. 8 / .857

-- On the other side of the ledger, Edgar Martinez leads all Ozzie League first basemen in fielding. He has yet to commit an error.

-- Manny Ramirez leads all outfielders in assists, with twelve. Shawn Green, Ben Grieve, Manny Ramirez, Doug Glanville, Derek Bell, Rickey Henderson and Albert Belle all have eleven. Of those seven players, one "Ex" arm is represented, two "Vg's", two "Av's" and two "Fr's".

-- The New Milford Blazers have the only pitching staff in the BDBL which throws strikes less than 60 percent of the time.

-- If you took all of the Spoilers' home runs, and added to that total all of the Ryche's homers, you would have less homers than three other teams in the BDBL. And if you added together all of the Slyme's, Spoilers' AND Ryche's homers you'd have just nine homers more than the Delafield Ogres.

-- Alex Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Jay Bell and Vinny Castilla are the only three players to hit three home runs in a game this year.

-- The New Milford Blazers are the only team in the BDBL to be caught stealing more often than they were successful. (Sorry, Billy - don't mean to pick on you!) The top five teams in terms of stolen base percentage: Antioch - 77.6%, Bowling Green - 76.6%, Akron - 76.5%, South Carolina - 74.3% and California - 73%. The bottom five: New Milford - 42.9%, Stamford - 58%, Marlboro - 59%, Plattsburgh - 59.3% and Gillette - 61.1%.

-- Despite playing most of Chapter Two without their unorthodox manager, the Marlboro Hammerheads still lead the league in issuing free passes - by a landslide. Marlboro has given away 37 free bases. The next highest total in the BDBL belongs to Stamford, who've issued 22. The team with the least? The Chicago Black Sox, who've issued just six.

-- The Akron Ryche have more come-from-behind victories (losing after seven innings) than any other team in the BDBL, with eight. Oakville and Chicago have come from behind seven times, and no other team has come from behind more than four times.

-- The Oakville Marauders are an astounding 7-1 in extra-inning games. The Salem Cowtippers are a pathetic 1-6.

-- The Blazers franchise has gone from pathetic to promising overnight (see, I can say good things about the Blazers, too!) In the past week, they've added Ben Davis, Jose Rosado, Eric Valent, Corey Patterson, C.C. Sabathia, Randy Winn, Robert Person, Darryl Ward, Kimera Bartee, Terrell Wade and Dave Veres. Their farm system now contains top pitching prospects Brad Penny, Eddie Yarnall and Sabathia along with two extremely high-ceiling hitting prospects Valent and Patterson. This gives them one of the strongest farm teams in all of the BDBL. In fact, here's how I would rank the top-five farm teams in the BDBL right now:

1. Akron (Weaver, Mulder, R.Hernandez, Lombard and Van Buren)
2. New Milford (Penny, Yarnall, Valent, Patterson and Sabathia)
3. Salem (Soriano, Burroughs, Austin, Restovich and Zimmerman)
4. Madison (Stenson, Burnett, Wells, Werth and Freeman)
5. Los Altos (Hermanson, Cuddyer, Cust, Rexrode and Williamson)

-- Chuck Knoblauch, the notorious home run hero of Chapter One, hit just two homers last chapter, and now stands at twelve for the year. Sanity returns to the BDBL.

-- As long as I'm making lists, here's a top-ten list of best $100,000 bargains in the BDBL:

1. Wil Cordero, Antioch
2. Bernard Gilkey, Morgan Hill
3. Butch Henry, Virginia
4. Roger Cedeno, California
5. Jermaine Dye, California
6. Chili Davis, Bourbannais
7. Todd Greene, Salem
8. Doug Mientkiewicz, Morgan Hill
9. Ricky Bottalico, Akron
10. Robert Person, New Milford

-- You'll notice that two of the players above are from the California Storm. The Storm is a very intriguing team. Aside from their two superstars, Guerrero and Rodriguez, the Storm also have several players at relatively decent salaries with "star" written all over them, including Carlos Beltran ($1m), Richard Hidalgo ($2m), Rick Ankiel ($100k), Chris Carpenter ($3m), Bobby Howry ($2m), Matt Mantei ($2m) and Carl Pavano ($3m). It will be interesting to see how their GM, Jeff Clink, works all those contracts this winter. Speaking of contracts, my next "From the Desk" page will be all about contracts and the issues surrounding them, as I've had a lot of questions in that area recently and there seems to be some confusion. So stay tuned...

-- I'll close this little essay with yet another list. This one was inspired by Joe Winkelsas, a pitcher called up by the Braves a couple weeks ago, but has since been sent down. I could have predicted years before he became a professional that Joe Winkelsas wouldn't last in the big leagues. There are just some guys you KNOW won't cut it simply because of their names. For example, I've compiled the following list of actual minor leaguers (in no particular order) who will never see the big leagues simply because I can't imagine Bob Sheppard announcing their names over the Yankee Stadium PA system. It's a shame, too, because some of these guys are pretty good ballplayers. Here they are, nonetheless: Bieker Graterol, Stubby Clapp, Ethan Faggett, Wonderful Terrific Monds III, Brad Tweedlie, Milton Bradley, Jung Bong, Kevin Duck, Brandon Duckworth, Ntema Ndungidi, John Wayne Lee, Terry Bradshaw, Radhames Dykoff, Casey Cuntz, Wyley Steelmon, Caonabo Cosme, Chone Figgins, Garrick Haltiwanger, Bienvenido Encarnacion (note: by the time Sheppard announced his name, the game would be over), Peanut Williams, Tim Birdsong, Lester Victoria, Robert Pugmire, Pasqual Coco and last, but not least, Justin Fenus.