Just a note on trying to take a team's totals and compare to competitors in other leagues.

The #1 goal in an RCL is to maximize league standings points vs. total stats. So taking a team's totals out of that context could lead to artificiality - e.g., a manager ignores their league's standings and just tries to compile a stat line to beat someone in another league.

If anyone wants to see more complete stats, here is a link to a sheet which includes hits, AB, walks, ER, and hits allowed. The 2nd tab has just the league totals through Friday's games.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0An3I_TiueBsydGxEbHk4ak1NNXpNRmUtRFlHUEY2R0E&hl=en_US

As someone who has struggled mightily this year in RCL 5, the second most "competitive" league according to the indexing, I decided I'd give my short input to this conversation as well.

Back in May, before my team went through a plague worse than anything seen since Biblical days, I was shifting back and forth between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place in RCL 5. As Buster Posey, David Wright, Jonathan Broxton, Jorge De La Rosa, Roy Oswalt, Jonathan Sanchez, Chone Figgins, and several other non-factor late-round players hit the DL, I tumbled HARD into last place and sat there for quite a long time. I never once have given up on my team, but it seemed like no matter what I did, I wasn't able to pull out of last place.

Every time I went to add a player, someone else had grabbed him 10 minutes earlier. Every time someone went on waivers that I really wanted, someone with a higher claim grabbed him. The league index system is obviously not perfect - there's no such thing - but it does seem to do a good job at reflecting how good a league's competition is. Now that a few teams in RCL 5 have given up, it's been easier to grab players up and improve one's team, though I do shake my fist at Random Italicized Voice for snagging Rafael Betancourt off of waivers this past week.

Thankfully, with the perhaps lessened state of competition, the return of David Wright, and me having traded for Jay Bruce, I've been able to move out of last place and I hope that climb continues at least a little bit, but I can attest that at least some of the cellar dwellers are still competing and checking multiple times per week, and that the competition that each league brings to the table does make a difference in how someone's team fares throughout the course of a season.

I'm shaking my fist at myself for dropping Betancourt.

Actually talked to Rudy the other day about this exact thing. How just because someone is in last it doesn't mean they've checked out. There's middle teams in some leagues that have checked out.

Yeah the timing of that situation was pretty unfortunate... Drop him and a few hours later he's named the closer. I grimaced when I saw that, smiled as I made a waiver claim for him, and sighed when it didn't work out too well.




Yeah, if you go injury-free and have a decent draft, it's easy to stay middle of the pack without doing anything... I've even seen some teams win leagues with single digit transactions at the end of the year before, but that was in generic public leagues.

Deep thought: If a team is lousy, then from a purely numbers standpoint, it doesn't matter if they checked out or if they were unlucky or both. Auto-pilots and teams with bad luck are mathematically indistinguishable. They take up an equal amount of the leagues talent and impact the overall quality of the league equally.

Not really. Teams with bad luck that continue checking can grab hot free agents before you. Teams that have checked out can't.

Yeah I really agonized about who to drop for him. It stinks it ended up being Freese, but I had to do it since my worst cat is SVs and I still need to shore up Ks a bit since there's a team projected to finish ahead of me there, and Freese became a bench bat once CarGo came back.

As to the discussion about RCL 5s competitiveness...there was a post to the league message board back in late May or so where a few managers were discussing just how competitive the league is. I don't exaggerate when I say it's been the toughest 12-teamer I've ever played in. Which makes my team's performance one of the most satisfying I've ever had. A good draft, some key early season adds, and a lot of luck. I can only hope it continues through the stretch run.

I think it was a good move, although a better move would have been dropping CarGo and letting me add him...
And yeah, from the draft to today, RCL 5 has been the toughest 12-team league I've ever been a part of as well, though I've had JUST a little bit less success obviously.
Your team is definitely having a really rare type of dominant season.