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March 18th: The new 2009 prediction forms were added to the site in February 22nd and a day later we had our first set of predictions from Brian Smith of Seaford, NY. A week later it became necessary to update the forms as we moved to a new ISP and the old dial-up service is no long working. As of this writing we have eight sets of predictions including three from Long Island, two new players and a past winner that has been away for about 40 years.
Since this is the our 50th year of baseball predictions, we are making a special effort to reach as many of the players that have not participated in the past few years and invite them back into the game, even if only for this year. I will not do this again in subsequent years. Today, March 18th, the first of over twenty special player invitations went out to some of those players. The regular annual invitation will be e-mailed out on Monday, Mar 23rd. Six or seven forms will also go into the USPS at the same time. I will keep you posted regarding our progress.
March 25th: On Monday, March 23rd, e-mail and USPS invitations went out to about 220 current and former players, not including the twelve sets of predictions that had already been submitted. As of this posting I have received 39 sets of predictions, including 29 players from last year, seven new players, most from New Jersey and New York, and three returning players from prior years. Included in the returning players are Pete Schnaufer who won way back in 1957 (year 3) and Denny Noh who won in 1977. I hope to attract a few more past winners this time.
Sadly, we have also learned of the passing of another long time supporter of the game. Steven Silverman passed away on February 9th. Steve had participated in 23 games, including the last 22 games, and had brought many friends and family members into the game. I was informed of Steve's passing by his father, Dr. Ben Silverman. Steve was a good friend and he will be missed.
March 30th: As of this morning we have received 64 sets of predictions, compared to 53 sets at this time last year, an increase of over 20%. Included in the count are eleven new predictors and six returning predictors. Most are coming through clean and without any listing errors. All but four predictors have used the recommended e-mail form from the website. Thank you!!
There will be another status update at the end of the week and an e-mail reminder will go out over the weekend as outstanding predictions are due on Monday, April 6th.
April 4th: As of this morning we have 119 sets of predictions and we are about 30 ahead of last year at this time. The current count includes eleven players that have not participated in a while and 26 brand new players, none of whom have ever been on page 4, and one guy that actually knows where Trinidad is. He's even been here a few times.
It has been suggested that we might make 300 players this year but I'm not ready for that. Based on what we have so far I'm going to predict that we will have at least 220 players this year and perhaps as many as 240, up from 198 players last time around.
The server that hosts the UnitedLeagues sites was down for a while Friday evening but has been repaired now and everything is functioning smoothly again.
I will send out a reminder on Sunday to those that are not in yet and will give you another status check at that time. If anyone thinks that they might need an extension, now would be a good time to make the request.
April 5th: As of this evening we have 176 sets of picks and are now about 35 ahead of last year and another 50 or 60 tomorrow will put us around 230 for this year's game. Included in the count are 18 returning players and 34 brand new ones.
In the middle of the day I sent out a series of reminders reaching 123 active and inactive players and then the picks started pouring in. Maybe I should wait until the last minute to get the word out. There is much more news but I'm Etowah gas. More later.
April 7th: As of this morning we have 228 sets of predictions and about ten more on the way with a realistic change to reach 240, a 20%+ growth over last year. This year's count include 44 new players and 29 players that have not been in the game for a while. And that last number includes four players from the very early, Ohio State years that have not participated since the '60s, and three past winners. I tried and failed to interest two additional former winners.
One of the predictions that came in this morning came from SABR in Cleveland, OH. It is the SABR Survey and is a summary of about 370 SABR member predictions. I will put up a Consensus like page to display this data as time permits, perhaps this week.
Sad to report that we have lost another long time participant. Tedd Thomey of Long Beach, CA has recently passed away. Tedd had participated since 1991 and had been in 14 games. He enjoyed competing against his son-in-law, Danny Ford, and usually won. I was informed of Tedd's passing by his daughter, Jill Thomey Ford.
My wife and I will be leaving for Arizona at the end of the week and will be on the road and out of touch for about ten days. Therefore I will be closing the Form links on Friday. So here's the plan until we are up and running in about mid-May:
I will keep you posted as to the progress on these activities once I get into them, but not until about April 20th.
April 8th: Added the 2009 SABR Survey, a consensus of 374 SABR members pre-season predictions, and perhaps an indicator of what our consensus might look like. Note how tight the teams are at the top of the AL Central and NL East and how undecided they are about the Chi Sox.
April 27th: For those of you that are following the game status, here is an update. The final player count for our 50th season is at 242, up 22% from last year and the highest player count that I have ever had, exceeded only during a seven year period in the '60s when Nelson Slagle was running the game, first from Columbus, Ohio and then from North American Aviation at North Long Beach and Seal Beach, California. The count includes 47 new players and 31 players that have returned after an absence of a year or more including four players that have been absent for at least 40 years. I want to thank Nelson for seeking out those guys as well as adding the last half dozen players while I was unable to attend to business myself. I struck out with the Arizona Republic. The paper did have six predictors but they only listed their division and wild card winners and post season projections. The trip wasn't a total loss though as my wife, Melody, picked up five new "life birds" including two that she has been looking for, for twenty years.
Yesterday I finished entering all of the player picks data into the spreadsheet and then turned to the player consensus. At the moment I am about 40% through the consensus and hope to finish it later today. It will be up-loaded to the web site as soon as it is ready, no later than tomorrow. It is too early to tell with most of the divisions but I can tell you, without reservation that the western divisions are an easy call. The AL West will be the Angels, A's, Rangers and Mariners. About 100 different predictors have made that prediction which, the last time that I checked, was exactly upside-down. The consensus for the NL West will undoubtedly be the Dodgers, D'backs, Giants, Rockies and Padres. I expect that we'll be pretty close to what has already been posted for the SABR Survey.
Once the consensus is ready, then we will move on to introducing the math data into the spreadsheet. It will take a couple of days to organize but after that it should move quite fast, so May 13th still looks good for our first official player standings.
April 28th: The Consensus has been completed and posted. As anticipated, it is very much like the SABR Survey with disagreement only at the top of the AL Central where our consensus picked Minnesota over Cleveland and, surprisingly, at the top of the NL East where we choose the Mets over the defending champion Phillies. This year's consensus has the RedSox and the Cubs in the World Series with support for the Angels and Yankees in the AL and the Mets and Dodgers in the NL. The Cubs and Angels are projected as the clearest division winners.
Last year only two players took the Rays to win the AL East and four players picked them 1st or 2nd. This year 24 players picked them to win the East and 90 players have the Rays 1st or 2nd, clearly a team on the rise.
There are several keys shaping up in the game including the Bosox and Yanks in the AL East and Mets and Phillies in the NL East but the most important key appears to be the AL Central where there is no clear leader and we are pretty much divided on the entire division.
Despite all of that, none of our consensus appears to be close to the current standings. Anybody want a "Mulligan"? It's a long season, folks and we're just getting started.
May 4th: As of noon today (PDT) I have completed all six divisions in the spreadsheet with only the tiebreaker to go. I plan to start the TB later today and hope to finish by tomorrow. First a word of caution. The TB is the most complex part of the scoring and takes the most time to develop, so this may be a bit ambitious.
I used the April 29th MLB standings for the division level scoring and will update to today's (May 4th) standings when I move to the TB. Although the data is incomplete and unaudited, you might be interested to know that our early leader, with 38 points is Charles Kovac of Fullerton, CA and he holds a five point lead over first time player, Jeff Clutter of near by Orange, CA. Scores range from a low of 38 points to a high of 82 points and an average score of 58 points. There are 100 players within two points of the average score. Only two players managed to get a division correct (as of Apr 29) and they are Jimmy Vandegrift of Oakwood, GA and first time player, Liam Hall of Ellicott City MD. Both got the NL West correct but that has all changed as the Giants have since over taken the Padres.
Early keys include Toronto 1st in the AL East (2 players), Cleveland last in the AL Central (10 players), Seattle 1st in the AL West (3 players) and St Louis 1st in the NL Central. (15 players). Charles has two of these keys, Cleveland and Seattle. Early fatal keys (to avoid) include Washington not last in the NL East and Los Angeles not 1st in the NL West. Speaking of Los Angeles, through yesterday they are perfect at home and .500 on the road. That translates into 122 wins- should be enough to win the West.
There will be another update on Friday, May 8th and I now plan to publish the first complete player standings on Monday, May 11th.
May 8th: As of this morning all of the tests have been run and the game spreadsheet is ready to go. Based on this morning's MLB standings our leader is Steven Richard of Long Beach, CA. Steven holds a four point lead over our early leader, Charles Kovac of Fullerton, CA and a five point lead over veteran player, Easy Freeman of Niceville, FL. To the best of my knowledge, Easy is one of just three players that does not have access to the internet (and I don't even have his phone number). I have posted the first three sets of player standings- top three only- on the Leader Board page. The balance of the pages will be statused and posted on Monday, May 11th, based in Mondays MLB standings.
I will spend the rest of the weekend updating some of the pages on the web site and hope to have everything ready by Monday morning. One of the problems that I will face is: what to do with 242 players? Should we stay with four pages and list 60 players per page or go to five pages at 50 players per page. If any one has any thoughts along those lines, don't hesitate to pass them along.
Sad to report the passing of another veteran player. Bill Thibodeau of Bozeman, MT died in an automobile accident near Idaho Falls, ID on April 22nd. Bill first joined the game in 1982 and had been a regular since then, participating in 24 games through 2007. Bill retired from Rockwell International in 1989 and relocated to Bozeman at that time.
May 11th: This morning the first player standings and all supporting pages have been upload to the web site and we are finally up and running. With growth to 242 players, up 22% from last year, I have opted to go to five pages of player standings at 50 players each rather than four pages at 60 players. I remain open to suggestions regarding this change in format.
The next update to this page will be for the addition of the detailed player predictions, eleven pages this time, sometime in the next two weeks. The CumStats will be updated to include all currently active players sometime before the All-Star Break. I'll keep you posted.
May 19th: Eleven pages of detailed team-by-team player picks including a player index page has been posted to the web site. The data is arranged in sets of twelve players with two sets per page, and a total of eleven pages. To find your picks or some other set of picks that you may be interested in, go to the PlayerIndex and look for your name. There you will find links to each page of data and the end of each row. The players are generally arranged by family and friends groupings with sports writers and publications on the last two pages.
July 12th: In mid-June a request was submitted by Dave Lipman of ESPN Mobile. Dave was tired of searching through a multi-page document to find his place in the player standings and wondered why we couldn't put it all on a single page. A day later we had Dave's approval on our first one page player standings. The following week the new page was put on line and a request went out to survey how the rest of the field viewed the new page. Less than 10% of the field responded but most of those were enthusiastic about the new page. As a result we have moved to the one page report and the multi-page report will be discontinued as of the All-Star Break.
The CumStats pages have been updated. The current list includes 178 active three year players including eighteen new three year players, and 134 inactive players. Nearly 75% of our current participants have now been with us for at least three years despite adding 45 new first time players this year.
July 13th: A most frustrating weekend. First the dog ran off and I spent over an hour looking for her, but she hides well and I never did find her. Later she followed the car home.
More importantly, the primary spreadsheet that supports the game and computes the weekly player standings failed yesterday. Early in the day I began getting a lot of errors and it looked for I time like I had never tested and validated the data as I thought that I had done back in April/May. Then I was denied access to the detail part of the .ss so I that I couldn't repair it. Finally it simply quit and I became quite concerned. Was the game finally over? Did I have to start over? Where we a month away from the next status report? What to do, what to due, what to doo? Then another, simpler report failed and I realized that my old AppleWorks5 application had finally quit running. Nine years!! I guess that's pretty good. Fortunately I had a newer app (AW6) which I had been reluctant to go to because I'm too dang old to learn new things. It works fine and I was able to call up all of my old AW5 .ss and soon things were moving again. Now it looks like everything is done, just one page to go, and the site will be statused early tomorrow morning, right on schedule.
October 11th: Added an updated set of CumStats though 2009. Josh Sinnett of Bellingham, WA continues to be our leader and enjoyed his best year by finishing 3rd and opening up an 8.6 point lead over John Salizzoni of Manchester, NH. There are now 178 currently active players and 134 inactive players listed. A four year old picture of Josh and his family has also been included.
We have also been graced with a brand new photo of this year's winner, Pat Morris and his dad, Warren, who won back in 1985, compliments of Nelson Slagle.
October 16th: A new page has been added that commemorates 50 years of predictions and summarizes the top overall Cum Stat performance. The page was conceived and prepared by Nelson Slagle.
October 18th: This year's final standings and supporting data pages, including a season wrap, were added to the Archive page.
December 15th: The Player Standings spreadsheet has been completely rewritten from scratch. The new spreadsheet should function much better than the nine old file that we started last season with and saw fail just after the All-Star Break. The new spreadsheet is currently set up for 216 players but can be easily expanded should the te player count remain high.
December 22nd: A new page of player pictures called The Gallery has been added. By December 25th a few new additions were made and we had 35 pictures covering 45 current players, nine inactive players and ten current and past winners. With some show of interest and a little luck, we may add a few more during the next season.
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