soapbox

Now, I know that if I mention “fantasy sports” then the entire Soapbox community will, at best, tune out the rest of this post. However, inspired by (a) Tampa Bay pitching and (b) Julian Tavarez, I want to introduce the idea of suckball - it’s basically fantasy baseball except with awful performances rewarded and normally “good” stats like OPS, homers, strikeouts, etc are penalized.

It’s lots of fun. Sample scoring categories include “good” pitching stats: Innings pitched, ERA (higher=better), WHIP (higher=better), K’s (lower=better)

and batting stats: OPS (lower=better), K/BB (higher=better), fielding errors (higher=better)*, runs created (lower=better), etc.

This post was inspired by one Mr. Ryan Feierabend’s outing on July 3rd: 1.1 IP, 8 Hits, 10ER, 2 BB, 0 K. Several things jump out about this line, but most notably: 10 baserunners allowed, 10 scored, and btw, this was against the Royals. double-ouch.

* and yes I know that the “error” is a bad measure of defensive aptitude, but still it’s something.