Week 3 is 7 days long, giving us an extra day to fill in replacements and get some good results to undo some bad ones.
Standings
| Team | Wins | Losses | WPct | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peshastin Pears | 11.17 | 6.83 | .621 | 0.0 |
| Haviland Dragons | 10.77 | 7.23 | .598 | 0.4 |
| D.C. Balk | 10.53 | 7.47 | .585 | 0.6 |
| Salem Seraphim | 9.20 | 8.80 | .511 | 2.0 |
| Pittsburgh Alleghenys | 8.71 | 9.29 | .484 | 2.5 |
| Portland Rosebuds | 8.59 | 9.41 | .477 | 2.6 |
| Cascadia Glaciers | 7.96 | 10.04 | .442 | 3.2 |
| Canberra Kangaroos | 7.61 | 10.39 | .423 | 3.6 |
| Kaline Drive | 7.22 | 10.78 | .401 | 4.0 |
| Flint Hill Tornadoes | 7.00 | 11.00 | .389 | 4.2 |
| Old Detroit Wolverines | 5.31 | 12.69 | .295 | 5.9 |
Two things stand out to me in these standings:
- The alarm in Peshastin, where two challengers have suddenly appeared very close in their rear view mirror.
- The mounting speed of the Glaciers’ rise. No one has ever had to yell “Run!! That glacier is about to run over us!!” Until now.
I think the 7th day is most promising for teams who badly underperformed for the first 6 days. Their performance on the field should regress toward their norms. And they can only replace replacements. They can’t make new replacement innings or plate appearances. So they should, on average, see an uptick in their raw winning percentages, at least more likely than their opponents who have not underperformed so badly.
The Drive are best positioned to benefit from the bonus day. Their .139 raw winning percentage sank so low mostly because Drive batters have been mostly in Park: only 10.4 runs in 6 games. That’s below replacement level. Get some GOOD hitting and the Drive will move back up the standings quickly.
The W’s (.169 raw win %) are almost as well positioned, even after a great day of pitching: 7.3 ip, 1 er . But they face the Tornados, who are having the third worst week in raw terms (.281) and are due for some correction toward the mean of their own.
The only other team in the EFL running below .500 on raw winning percentage (this is a very good sign for the league, by the way) is … the first place Pears (.404)! This “advantage” comes just in time – the Pears were nearly caught in the standings by the Dragons (.800) and the upstart Balk (.576).
Both Haviland and DC are due for a little regression. The Dragons were pre-season favorites, but that does not mean they can sustain an .800 raw winning percentage. They are already seeing that unsustainable raw percentage being eroded by a Canberra team which is also over .500 in raw terms.
On the other hand, the Balk’s.576 raw percentage has been supercharged into a sizzling .893 adjusted percentage by the radically underperforming Drive. A modest uptick by the Drive will drive the Balk down to more pedestrian results.
The truly scary development this week is still the Glaciers’ rise. They have won 3.9 and lost only 2.1, all on their own merits. Their .650 raw winning percentage is the 4th best in the league. Because they are playing average MLB competition, they keep that .650 percentage. It has been good enough for this formerly last-place expansion team to pass defending champion Old Detroit, former first-place Kaline Drive, and a very competitive Canberra — all in the last 5 days! And they are still bearing down on the Rosebuds — and have covered 1/3 of the ground that formerly separated them from first place.
If it makes you feel any better, I submitted my allocations too early this week and kept the now-recalled Esteury Ruiz on the bench and fully allocated the demoted Matt Wallner. So probably more replacement innings in the outfield this week. Last week, Michael Lorenzen and Nick Lodolo had their season debuts and didn’t give up any runs. Plenty of regression potential there. See, I’m sufficiently cooled down…!