’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

Assuming a wabe is a ball field, and brillig is “all lit up” like it sounds, this is clearly about a baseball game. Players are always gyring and gimbling, and often slithing, too, while cleverly avoiding the tag. And “toves” isn’t the worst thing they’ve been called.

I am not going to waste your time rehearsing what you already know about how unpleasant it is to sit near loud borogoves, steadily getting mimsier with every beer. And the less we dwell on clueless raths grabbing out into the field of play for souvenirs, the better.

Instead, let’s get straight to the crucial piece of fatherly coaching even Lewis Carroll understood 150 years ago, probably without having watched a baseball game: “Beware the jabber. Walk, my son.”

Standings after March 28

Team	Wins	Losses	WPct	GB
Haviland Dragons	0.86	0.14	.860	0.0
Peshastin Pears	0.83	0.17	.830	0.0
Salem Seraphim	0.62	0.38	.620	0.2
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	0.49	0.51	.490	0.4
Portland Rosebuds	0.42	0.58	.420	0.4
Flint Hill Tornadoes	0.30	0.70	.300	0.6
Old Detroit Wolverines	0.29	0.71	.290	0.6
Canberra Kangaroos	0.17	0.83	.170	0.7
Cascadia Glaciers	0.12	0.88	.120	0.7
Kaline Drive	0.10	0.90	.100	0.8
D.C. Balk	0.02	0.98	.020	0.8

As veteran EFLers know, the first day of the week is not a time for drawing conclusions. Our rotations haven’t rotated, for one thing, And odd mathematical situations are common.

For example, look at the image above of a Dragon hovering over a brave EFL competitor — a Seraph, judging by his long hair. On Opening Day the Dragons got shutout pitching from their only left-hander (Skubal) and a reliever (Ortiz). So they had enough pitching to avoid any replacements, and by starting Skubal they avoided the penalty for not having any lefthanded pitching. Thus they allowed 0 runs, which by the pythagorean runs created/runs allowed formula should have earned them an entirely clean win, with 0 losses, no matter how bad their hitting was (as long as they got one baserunner) or good the opposition was (unless it also had thrown a shutout). But the D’s were only credited with 0.85 wins.

Why? Because Dave’s uffish database hasn’t learned to divide by zero. So Dave had to let it temporarily pretend the Dragons had surrendered a run. (Dave: Maybe let it pretend such teams have allowed 0.00001 runs, instead? Wouldn’t that be more vorpal?)

I know we all dread the idea of the Dragons, with eyes of flame, coming whiffling at us, burbling about how they’re dominating the league, which they would have been sorely tempted to do — at least, they would have been had they been like, say, Wolverines. But why not give them their day of galumphing and chortling? It’s been years since they’ve won the championship. Despite having the best team in the league on paper, they might not get another chance. Did we have to go all Jubjub bird on them in their one day of triumph?

As if to prove my point about the fleetingness of victory, on day two the Dragons apparently encountered a Bandersnatch! As you can see by looking at the standings…

…

Aggh! Dave!! Why are you being so efficient on Easter morning! Shouldn’t you have gone to a sunrise service or something? It’s only 8:00 AM and you’ve already updated the stats. Day 2 standings are gone!! They’ve been snatched! I didn’t copy them in time. So we not only miss the Dragons’ fall to 3rd place, we can’t see who was in first instead. It was either the Alleghenys or the Pears… I can’t remember.

I can still deliver a crucial lesson in baseball tactics: after game two, these two players had almost identical lines:

Julio Rodriguez: 2 for 7, one double, 1 walk 1 strikeout: .286, .375, .429, .804 OPS, worth a little over 7 rc/g.

Jose Caballero: 2 for 7, one double, 1 hbp, 1 strikeout: .286, .375, .429, .804 OPS, worth about 3.5 rc/g.

What’s going on here? What ugly bias rears its tulgey head? Have the statistics bent to the near-universal scorn heaped unjustly upon Sr. Caballero by members of this league?

There was one teensy difference in their stats: Rodriguez stole a base. Caballero got caught stealing a base.

Julio’s SB almost elevates his single into a double, almost making his line into .286, .375, .571. Jose’s CS pretty much erases his single, turning his line into something closer to .143, .250, .286 — apparently not quite that bad, but still: pretty bad.

Lewis Carroll wrote a poem just to warn batters not to jab at bad pitches. Take the walk instead! But Julio and Jose, otherwise so completely identical, illustrate an even more important counsel: don’t get caught stealing!! That’s all that separates a universally hailed early first round pick from an excoriated early second-round pick.

Don’t mourn too much for our poor Caballero. His line as of this morning ,after a 2 for 3 day with a sacrifice fly, is .400, .417, .500 , worth 6.38 rc/g. His closest rival — Julio — went 1 for 5, so he’s currently running a .250, .308, .333 line, worth 4.26 rc/g. On the other hand, Julio did get the walk off game-winning RBI last night, apparently the first of his career! So there’s still some hope for him.

OK, now on to the current standings:

Standings after March 30, 2024

Team	Wins	Losses	WPct	GB
Peshastin Pears	2.58	0.42	.860	0.0
Haviland Dragons	2.19	0.81	.730	0.4
Pittsburgh Alleghenys	2.13	0.87	.710	0.5
Kaline Drive	2.09	0.91	.697	0.5
Salem Seraphim	1.63	1.37	.543	1.0
Portland Rosebuds	1.55	1.45	.517	1.0
Old Detroit Wolverines	1.14	1.86	.380	1.4
D.C. Balk	1.06	1.94	.353	1.5
Flint Hill Tornadoes	0.98	2.02	.327	1.6
Canberra Kangaroos	0.79	2.21	.263	1.8
Cascadia Glaciers	0.37	2.63	.123	2.2

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The beamish Pears are (still?) in first place! This is an event we should all celebrate.

Also, the proportion of EFL teams over .500 has suddenly, in one day, doubled from 3/11ths to 6/11ths. Rotations rotating will do that for you. All 5 sub-.500 teams have replacement innings. The Glaciers have 15 of them. Of the 6 teams over .500, only the Seraphim have replacement innings, and they only have 5.3 of them.

An especially sad case: one second-division team (OD) has a raw ERA of 10.67, thanks mostly to Andrew Nardi’s chulky 1.7 ip, 6 er. That’s actually a triple chulk (2/3 ip, 2 er) followed two days later by a quadruple chulk (1 ip, 4 e). OD’s ERA is brought DOWN to 9.53 by the 7.5 replacement innings we are enjoying. Totally manxome.