Yes, I’m a little down about losing out in the final period of the season.  I was very proud of my season, having missed on several drafts picks and having received terrible early season luck with both closers and wins (forcing me to punt wins entirely) but making up for it with a lot of great FAAB adds and a flurry of trades in the weeks leading up to the trade deadline (all told, I made 10 trades in July and the first two weeks of August), changing gears, transforming my roster, and setting in motion a plan that I thought would make me a winner.  At the conclusion of the trade deadline, I thought I was the favorite to the win the league.

I knew it would be close between Clark and I, and I knew that luck could play an integral part in the final standings.  Because I believe it did, I’m going to take this opportunity to step up on the soap box and whine my heart out—hopefully with the understanding that I have all the respect in the world for Clark, who I believe played a tremendous season.  I just happen to think he was aided by a little luck.  Take this merely as the sour grapes ruminations of a guy thinking of what could have been.

Coming out of the trade deadline, Clark had 4.5 points in Wins and was 7 wins back of first place.  Not a big gap, but not one that’s going to be covered without some luck, even with his addition of Ricky Romero.  In the six periods following the CR trade deadline, Clark accumulated 24 wins and ended up tied for first—a seven point gain.  When we break it down, though, we see that Clark received a win in 42% of his pitchers’ games started.  The average pitcher wins just 35% of his games—a difference of 4 wins for Clark and 6.5 points in the standings!  You may initially argue that Clark’s pitchers were better than average, but they certainly weren't (and may have been worse) over that period, when they posted a league average QS/GS rate (51%), an ERA of 4.45, and a WHIP of 1.31.  And in those quality starts, he won 83% of the time; league average is 71%.  Then come the relievers, who won 5 games down the stretch with a W/IP of 9.3%.  League average is nearly half that at 4.8%.  Tack off another win or two and Clark loses yet another point.

There was an additional 2-point swing in home runs, since Clark ended up finishing ahead of me.  Coming out of the trade deadline, I had a 4 HR lead on Clark and had recently added Jose Bautista, Edwin Encarnacion, Victor Martinez, and Chris Davis.  PECOTA projected my team to hit 20 more home runs than Clark over the rest of the season.  He ended up finishing 4 HRs ahead of me.  Obviously, projections aren’t perfect, but when you get a combined 15 home runs from Brent Morel and Shelley Duncan (who combined for 6 over the first five and a half months of the season), someone’s looking after you.  Oh, and you could add another 3 HRs from Kelly Johnson—who Andrew and Brian forgot to put a bid on with the highest FAAB budget in the league, ceding him to Clark.

Add that up, and you get 9.5 points; I lost by 8.  And that’s ignoring the point I lost in batting average by a hundredth of a point and that, going into the final week, I had a 2 save lead on Shawn.  Despite having 4 closers to his 2, we ended up tying.  Shucks.  Half a point.  And that Kelly Johnson stole 3 bases.  Half a point.

Obviously this is all coulda’-shoulda’-woulda’, but it’s a tough pill to swallow nonetheless.  Again, I have nothing but the utmost respect for Clark.  We knew it was going to be close; the luck just happened to tip to his side instead of mine.  If you made it this far, thanks for listening to my whining.  It feels good to get it out.

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