All the chaos that had been building up over the course of the season culminated in Week 14, when…three Backyard teams ended up tied for the final Backyard spot? Two Frontyard teams tied for the final Frontyard spot? Only six teams were definitely in the playoffs, and only two matchups were actually set? That’s right, folks, we get a week of extra games: play-ins to decide who makes it in and who goes home!

RULES

The basic rules were the same throughout the league. Both teams would play a home game against each other at the neutral site of Parks Department Field #2. The higher score would win. If both teams tied, the first tiebreaker would be runs allowed, with the team that allowed fewer runs taking the win. If they tied in runs allowed, the next tiebreaker would be runs scored in the first inning, then runs scored in the second inning, then runs scored in the third, and so on. If both teams scored the exact same amount in every inning, all hell would break loose.

The structure varied by conference. In the Frontyard Conference, the Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Dodgers were tied with records of 10-4, so a single game was all that was needed to determine who would make the playoffs. In the Backyard Conference, the Red Phillies, Green Monsters, and Montana Floss were all tied at 6-8; consequently, this necessitated a different structure. The Green Monsters were considered the strongest of these three teams due to tiebreakers, so they were chosen as the “top seed” in the play-in games. The Red Phillies and Montana Floss would therefore play each other, with the winner moving on to face the Green Monsters. Whichever team won that game, be it the Monsters or the winner of Phillies/Floss, would move on to the playoffs.

FRONTYARD CONFERENCE

Minnesota Twins vs. Los Angeles Dodgers

The Minnesota Twins had been an also-ran for most of the season, quietly having a good season but always a bit ignored in favor of the stifling defense of the Junior Athletics and the bombastic offense of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were also quietly a constant thorn in the side of the Dodgers and Athletics, defeating both of them in their first meeting and actually entering the All-Star Break in a three-way tie for the division lead with a 5-2 record. Although they dropped games to the Athletics and Dodgers in the second half of the season to fall to third place, they were a constant threat to make the playoffs if only one of their opponents would falter. In this instance, it was the Dodgers who faltered; although they defeated the Athletics in Week 9 to claim sole possession of first place, a loss to the Florida Marlins (guest-coached by aesnop) meant that both they and the Junior Athletics had three losses entering the final three weeks of the season. With the Twins winning out, all they needed was a loss from one of those two teams, and the New York Yankees were the ones to pull off the upset, knocking off the Dodgers 14-1 in the final game of the season when Los Angeles couldn’t stop popping up.

It might’ve been a longshot, but Minnesota had a chance to snatch a playoff spot at the very last second, and they certainly weren’t going to waste it, as they took the field at Parks Department Field #2 with intent to win. The Twins had one of their better games offensively, putting up 18 runs on 21 hits and 2 walks, but one of their worst games defensively as they allowed 4 runs on 8 hits (although Julie Dunkel did manage to throw 10 strikeouts). It didn’t end up mattering, though, as the Los Angeles Dodgers had one of their best games by getting 30 runners across the plate on 32 hits and 2 walks while shutting out their opponents. Los Angeles won the game, and will face off against the Purple Sox in the first round of the playoffs.

Los Angeles Dodgers 30, Minnesota Twins 14

Player of the game: Everyone took advantage of the short fence at this field, as these two teams combined to hit 20 home runs (6 from the Twins, 14 from the Dodgers). The leader in home runs? Leah Wayne, who smashed 5 (8 RBIs). She’s not the player of the game, though; instead, that award goes to Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher (at least for this game) Albert Pujols, who had a fantastic game both ways. Offensively, he went 5-for-5 with a single, a double, and 3–count ’em, 3–home runs, finishing with 6 RBIs and scoring every time he came up to bat. Defensively, he pitched one of the greatest performances the Dodgers saw all season (and this is a team that set/tied the record for most strikeouts in a season), throwing twelve strikeouts in a two-hit shutout performance. The Dodgers look good as they enter the playoffs; they’d just better hope that they didn’t expend all their efforts on this game.

BACKYARD CONFERENCE

Montana Floss vs. Red Phillies

Something interesting about these teams is that they both went 3-4 in the first half of the season, 3-4 in the second half, 3-4 at home, and 3-4 on the road. They also got their records through a pair of sweeps and a pair of splits: the Floss swept the Cubs and Monsters while splitting with the Orioles and Brewers, while the Phillies swept the Floss and Orioles while splitting with the Wombats and Brewers. How they did overall was far different, however. The Floss were fairly consistent throughout the season, winning approximately every other game and scoring between 13 and 17 runs in almost every game. The Phillies were much more mercurial, varying in their scores a lot but more importantly being streaky, starting the season 3-1 and winning their last two games but going 1-7 in the middle. That one win was important, though, as it was against the Floss; in fact, given the short fences of Parks Department Field #2 and the Floss’s generally inability to keep up with the Phillies, it was expected that the Phillies would take the game.

That didn’t happen for two reasons. The first reason is that the Phillies had their weakest performance against the Floss yet, only managing 17 hits (although they did turn these hits into 14 runs with the aid of 7 homers). The second reason, though? The Floss took advantage of the Phillies weak infield (as well as some other elements including field conditions), using infield singles and steals to work their way to a 33-0 win on 47 hits and 3 walks. This allowed the Floss to advance and take on the Monsters in a game to decide who would get the final playoff seed from the Backyard Conference.

Montana Floss 33, Red Phillies 14

Player of the game: A big offensive game requires almost everyone to contribute. Instead of trying to sort through everyone who had a hand in the Floss’s victory, let’s look at the defensive side of the equation, where Montana Floss pitcher Brad Radke had arguably his best performance yet (and this in a season where he set the record for most strikeouts from an individual pitcher). What’d he do? Well, he pitched yet another shutout (his 11th so far), and while he did allow three hits, he also pitched an absolutely monumental 15 strikeouts. He wasn’t too shabby on the basepaths, either, going 6-for-7 (all singles) with an RBI, scoring five times, and stealing four bases.

Montana Floss vs. Green Monsters

Both of these teams had reason to be optimistic entering this game. For the Montana Floss, the reason for optimism was simple: they were riding a two-game winning streak, had gone 3-1 over their last four games, and had beaten the Monsters in both of their regular season matchups. For the Green Monsters, the reason was also simple: they were away from their home field. The Monsters had attempted to draft for Tin Can Alley and had ended up missing the mark, posting a 2-5 record at home but a 4-3 record on the road. While this was technically a dual home game, they’d be playing at a field that wasn’t Tin Can Alley, and with the paucity of power hitters on the lineup combined with the short fences of Parks Department Field #2, it was quite plausible that the Green Monsters would punch above their weight.

They didn’t. As in their Tin Can Alley bout, the Monsters found themselves stymied by the Montana Floss’s strong arms and were only able to score 3 runs on the Floss while allowing two. Meanwhile, Montana just rolled, as although they allowed a run (a solo shot from Greg Vaughn in the top of the 5th) they put up 18 off of 29 hits and a walk and cruised into the playoffs. The Montana Floss will take on the Arizona Diamondbacks in the first round; we’ll see if they keep their momentum from the play-in games or if they fall to the mighty bat of Jay Green and the mighty arm of Randy Johnson.

Montana Floss 17, Green Monsters 1

Player of the game: The Floss have spent most of their season relying on the bat of Jeff Bagwell to clear the bases and bring in bunches of runs. Once again, he delivered, going 5-for-5 with 5 extra-base hits (3 doubles, a triple, and a home run). How many times did he score? Two. How many RBIs did he get? Eleven. He’s not likely to have too many more performances like this in the playoffs, but if he does, watch out.

PLAYOFFS
#1 Purple Sox [aesnop] (11-3) vs. #2 Los Angeles Dodgers [hitace] (10-4)
#2 Boston Cubs [KiiiiiiiiiiiiiS] (10-4) vs. #1 Junior Athletics [MelloMathTeacher] (11-3)
#3 Wizard Wombats [Wizard] (9-5) vs. #2 Texas Rangers [Jyknight] (10-4)
#4 Montana Floss [JorgesBankAccount] (6-8) vs. #1 Arizona Diamondbacks [Sisu] (13-1)

ODE TO THE ELIMINATED

Three more teams hit the bricks this week, but they deserve a memorial too. This is the story of their seasons: what they did right, what they did wrong, what they can improve on, and what they should keep doing.

FRONTYARD CONFERENCE

Minnesota Twins
Coach: Toast
Record: 10-4 (3rd place)
Preseason projections: 6-8 6th place (crazyei8hts), 1st place (Eauxps I. Fourgott)

The Twins are who we thought they were. They’re a good, solid team with a good, solid coach playing a good, solid brand of baseball. They finished second in offense in the Frontyard Conference with 12.0 runs per game, fourth in defense with 10.4 runs allowed per game, and overall did a good job throughout the season. Toast drafted well, building a solid defense while not neglecting offense, and performed decently as well (as was borne out by his rankings and overall record). The only problem for the Twins this year? They just weren’t that fantastic. They didn’t boast the killer defense of the Junior Athletics. They didn’t boast the unstoppable offense of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They were just a good team in a conference with two better teams. Minnesota has nothing to be ashamed of: they played well, fought the good fight, and split with that killer defense and unstoppable offense. They just didn’t quite have enough to make it into the playoffs, even if they got really, really close.

BACKYARD CONFERENCE

Red Phillies
Coach: crazyei8hts
Record: 6-8 (t-5th place)
Preseason projections: 8-6 4th place (crazyei8hts), 5th place (Eauxps I. Fourgott)

This team was the brainchild of last season’s champion, crazyei8hts. Coming off a season where he’d built a great defense and good offense centered around doing what he does best–specifically, smacking dingers–crazy decided to double down on the whole home runs thing, mostly ignoring speed and instead relying on arms to get it done defensively. This was already a nebulous concept–strong arms getting outs is contingent upon them just getting to the ball to start with–but it was made worse by the fact that there were two things crazyei8hts didn’t account for in his drafting. The first one is something he didn’t see but probably should’ve: his rocket-armed catcher was one of the highest-rated pitchers on the team, and would frequently come in as the second or third reliever, putting an exhausted arm behind the plate and opening up third base quite often. The second was something he couldn’t account for.

This season, another coach in the league (Vissery, Humongous Hornets [formerly]) dug into the code in ways we’ve never seen before and was able to pull up lots and lots of hidden data: power and contact rather than just a hitting rating, exact speed (and subsequently speed tiers), glove…oh, and things like focus, game IQ, and aggression, which have a huge impact on error ratings, choices about where to go with the ball, and willingness to at least go after the ball. Investigation into these ratings revealed that crazyei8hts had drafted a team that was worst in the league in terms of focus, worst in the league in catching, very unaggressive, and very low in terms of game IQ. This meant that even when his team was not only slow, they were slow to even start going after the ball, had trouble handling it well, and generally were poor at defense on the whole. It showed, too; despite the fact that the Phillies were not one of the two teams the Purple Sox put up 50+ runs on, they had the worst defense in the league, giving up 23 runs a game (322 in total). These twin vulnerabilities overshadowed their third-ranked offense (19.4 runs per game), and eventually led to their loss against the Montana Floss in the play-in game where the Floss hit grounder after grounder after grounder to exploit their weak infield.

There’s hope for next season, though. The Phillies were able to bang in many runs, and if they could have fixed just one of their vulnerabilities they could’ve won a couple games more. Plus, crazyei8hts has won a championship before, and recently, so there’s a decent chance that next season will be a rebound year.

Green Monsters
Coach: Yurya
Record: 6-8 (t-5th place)
Preseason projections: 7-7 5th place (crazyei8hts), 3rd place (Eauxps I. Fourgott)

There are several types of drafting strategies. Some coaches draft for defense. Some draft for offense. Some try to go for a balance. Some go after their favorite players. And some draft for their home fields. Naturally, all of these strategies have the possibility of either working out fantastically or leading a team to fall flat on its face. This team leaned closer to the latter than the former, and it’s a testament to their coach that they got as far as they did.

The Green Monsters were drafted to suit their home field of Tin Can Alley. With its structure of incredibly short, high fences, Tin Can Alley makes it very, very easy to grind out singles just by hitting the ball to the wall, even if home runs are mostly off the table, and consequently TCA is known as a very offense-friendly field. Naturally, Yurya was looking to take advantage of that with his draft, and so went after good hitters that he felt could continually hit the ball to the wall and drive in runs.

This isn’t a bad strategy. It could work; in fact, it probably should work. It didn’t, though. The Monsters routinely struggled at home, posting a 2-5 record and frequently having their worst games at the field (the nadir? A game against the arms-heavy Montana Floss where it took them extra innings to crank out a 2-1 score). At home, the Monsters weren’t able to produce, as they only scored 70 of their 197 runs there. On the road, the Monsters fared much better, going 4-3 and scoring an average of 18.1 runs per game (home average: 12 [prorated] runs per game).

Despite their struggles at home, the Green Monsters came very close to making the playoffs, only missing out because they met a team they’d habitually struggled with in the play-in game. If they had been at another home field, they might well have won more games and made it in. In the end, this seems to be a story of either field/coach/team mismatch like the Milwaukee Braves, or one of just getting nicked with bad luck at the worst time. One of those is fixable, and the other tends to go away eventually, so there’s plenty of hope for next season.

MATCHUP OF THE WEEK

It’s back! After taking a week off for the play-in games (and at the commissioner’s “request”), the Matchup of the Week returns! This week’s battle is Game 2 between the Boston Cubs and Junior Athletics, two defensively-oriented teams who have overshot expectations and are locked in a tight struggle to move on and face the more offense-oriented winner of the duel between the Wizard Wombats and Texas Rangers. To make things even more interesting, we won’t know the results of Game 1 until that evening, so which team is on the chopping block won’t be known until right before the game! Catch it this Saturday, October 9th, at 8:30 PM Mountain Time, only on Sisu’s twitch!

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“I race in RuPaul’s Drag Race.” – KiiiiiiiiiiiiiS, Boston Cubs head coach, on hobbies

“You think I was awake for those Floss MOTWs?” – Vissery, former Humongous Hornets head coach, on foul balls

“I didn’t pick you guys because you were any good. I picked you guys because I thought it would be funny.” – MelloMathTeacher, Junior Athletics head coach, summarizing Vissery’s draft strategies

“‘I picked you guys because I thought it would be funny’ is my Backyard Football fantasy team.” – Vissery, former Humongous Hornets head coach, confirming what we all suspected

“There are home runs that are unexpected?” – crazyei8hts, Red Phillies head coach, on hitting strategy

“How are the playoffs going for you?” – aesnop, Purple Sox head coach, to crazyei8hts, Red Phillies head coach

“Good game hitace! You and MelloMathTeacher will represent the Frontyard well!” – Toast, Minnesota Twins head coach, showcasing good sportsmanship

“See you in the consolation tournament, Toast! Congrats on a quality rookie season!” – Eauxps I. Fourgott, Super-Duper Melonheads head coach, encouraging Toast, Minnesota Twins head coach

“Thanks! I’m proud of how I ended it.” – Toast, Minnesota Twins head coach, being optimistic about next season

“Contact is a two-edged sword, it boosts some hits but also doesn’t foul off the bad ones.” – Yurya, Green Monsters head coach, justifying the drafting strategy of the Montana Floss

“8-8. I made it to .500 after all!” – JorgesBankAccount, Montana Floss head coach, trying to come up with a good retort and just looking pathetic

“Eat a bag of stale pretzels.” – Vissery, former Humongous Hornets head coach, coming up with a good retort

“I’ve thought about this long and hard, but yes jibbo is a hibbo.” – KiiiiiiiiiiiiiS, Boston Cubs head coach, on Junior Brewers head coach jibbodahibbo

“Standards are for losers.” – jibbodahibbo, Junior Brewers head coach, on his wife

“Just give me one good reason, and I won’t ask you anymore. Just give me one extra season, so I can figure out the other four.” – John Prine, Blue Umbrella, in a song that got stuck in my head

“Playoffs Aes is my favorite Aes.” – Marco, New York Yankees head coach, on expecting the Purple Sox to fail