Suckball
Posted by Michael.
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.
July 6th, 2007 at 5:14 pm Using
P.S. Check out the Vikings-Bears score, 20-10 in the 8th.
July 7th, 2007 at 11:22 am Using
There’s something similar called Stiffness score over at BP
For Pitchers: Score = ERA – 4.5 * IP/3
For Hitters: Score = 0.800 – OPS * PA
As an example our own Julio Lugo has a stiffness score of 86 (highest in all of baseball!). The leading pitcher is Edwin Jackson who scores a 68. The interesting thing about this number is that you have to both suck and get a lot of playing time (Jason Kendall has a score of 76).
July 7th, 2007 at 12:23 pm Using
Yeah, the Lugo’s stiff score is pretty impressive – and as you say, it’s tough to get playing time if you keep on sucking, and of course if you improve enough to stay in the lineup, you suck less.
For the record, I posted this before I switched on yesterday’s Sox game. Sheesh, why don’t you go punch a water cooler?