Take the 15 teams in each league and put them in one mega-division. Then, organize them by record and make 3 new 5-team leagues. 

From 2011 records:

Philadelphia 102-60
Milwaukee 96-66
Arizona 94-68
St. Louis 90-72
Atlanta 89-73
—
San Francisco 86-76
Los Angeles 82-79
Washington 80-81
Cincinnati 79-83
New York 77-85
—
Colorado 73-89
Pittsburgh 72-90
Florida 72-90
San Diego 71-91
Chicago 71-91

Now, you do that for each league and make a schedule that is similar to the one you've got now; the only change is that interleague play ALWAYS focuses on your sister division (lower vs lower).

Playoffs are still 5 teams. This is how I'd envision them working:

The top 2 teams of the top division are the 2 top seeds. The best team in the middle division is the #3 seed. The 1st WC goes to the top team of the bottom table; however, he only gets a WC birth if the team is over .500. If not, the 1st WC goes to the team with the best record (top 2 tables only), as does the 2nd WC. 

They would work this way (now 2012 records):

Atlanta 94-68 (playoffs – top 2 in top table)
St. Louis 88-74 (playoffs – top 2 in top table)
Milwaukee 83-79 (stays in top division)
Philadelphia 81-81 (RELEGATED as bottom 2 in top table)
Arizona 81-81 (RELEGATED as bottom 2 in top table)
—
Washington 98-64 (playoffs – top 1 in middle table; promoted to top table – top 2 in middle table)
Cincinnati 97-65 (1st WC – top record from non-automatic qualifier; promoted to top table – top 2 in middle table)
San Francisco 94-68 (2nd WC – no bottom-table team qualified, best remaining record; stays in middle division)
Los Angeles 86-76 (RELEGATED as bottom 2 in middle table)
New York 74-88 (RELEGATED as bottom 2 in middle table)
—
Pittsburgh 79-83 (failed to meet playoff threshold; promoted to middle table – top 2 in bottom table)
San Diego 76-86 (promoted to middle table – top 2 in bottom table)
Miami 69-93
Colorado 64-98
Chicago 61-101

So the 2013 tables would be:

Atlanta 94-68 
St. Louis 88-74
Milwaukee 83-79 
Washington 98-64
Cincinnati 97-65 
—
Philadelphia 81-81
Arizona 81-81 
San Francisco 94-68 
Pittsburgh 79-83 
San Diego 76-86 
—
Los Angeles 86-76 
New York 74-88
Miami 69-93
Colorado 64-98
Chicago 61-101

The primary advantage to this system is that teams would have more to play for deep in the season. Say you were the 2012 Diamondbacks. Sure, you're 7 or so games back with 16 to go. That might be insurmountable; however, your games still aren't meaningless. You're maybe 2 or 3 games out of relegation range; these games are still important! Even teams like Pittsburgh and San Diego have something to play for late in the season.

The system also rewards continued success. Being in a top table means you play better teams (more ticket sales) and makes the path to the playoffs easier (each table has easier playoff restrictions than the year before it). These are huge bonuses in my opinion. It also masks the weaknesses of teams in the lower tables, because they will play slightly more shit teams. 

The two main disadvantages with these systems is that a) the travel becomes ridiculous and b) you lose historical rivals. I don't care about either of these; teams have jets these days and each team plays each other team every year anyways.

You could also do this by merging all 30 teams together. I like this idea slightly less but am not sure why. In this case, you'd could have 3 tables of 10 teams, with the playoffs being 6-3-1, and maybe 3 up/downs for each table. Haven't thought it about it all that hard.

Let me know what you think.

The post Relegation in Baseball appeared first on Obstructed View.

Last Updated: December 16, 2012

Pitchers

#	Catchers	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
53	Welington Castillo	R-R	5’10″	210	Apr 24, 1987
51	Steve Clevenger	L-R	6’0″	195	Apr 5, 1986
	Dioner Navarro	S-R	5’9″	205	Feb 9, 1984

#	Infielders	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
15	Darwin Barney	R-R	5’10″	185	Nov 8, 1985
13	Starlin Castro	R-R	6’0″	190	Mar 24, 1990
73	Junior Lake	R-R	6’2″	215	Mar 27, 1990
44	Anthony Rizzo	L-L	6’3″	220	Aug 8, 1989
2	Ian Stewart	L-R	6’3″	215	Apr 5, 1985
24	Luis Valbuena	L-R	5’10″	195	Nov 30, 1985
	Christian Villanueva	R-R	5’11″	160	Jun 19, 1991
5	Josh Vitters	R-R	6’2″	200	Aug 27, 1989
	Logan Watkins	L-R	5’11″	170	Aug 29, 1989

#	Outfielders	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
1	Tony Campana	L-L	5’8″	165	May 30, 1986
9	David DeJesus	L-L	5’11″	190	Dec 20, 1979
7	Brett Jackson	L-R	6’2″	210	Aug 2, 1988
17	Dave Sappelt	R-R	5’9″	195	Jan 2, 1987
	Jorge Soler	R-R	6’3″	205	Feb 25, 1992
12	Alfonso Soriano	R-R	6’1″	195	Jan 7, 1976
72	Matt Szczur	R-R	6’1″	195	Jul 20, 1989

The post The Cubs’ 40 Man Roster appeared first on Obstructed View.

Today is the day I have been dreading for quite awhile. When you have an old pet, I think the day when they finally go to their final resting place is always not as far from your thoughts as you'd like. With my cat, Schultz, it has been looming in the forefront of my mind for pretty much the last year.

He was 18 years old (give or take a month or two) and he started having seizures about a year ago. Since that time he's had various issues where he seemed to be staring at the light, but then turning away at the last second to stay with us here on this plane of existence. So when he started having difficulty walking to his litterbox in the middle of the night and lost his appetite again this morning, we weren't exactly surprised. We'd been preparing for it in our minds all along. This time, he practically made our decision for us by crashing as hard as he did so quickly, but the speed in which he left us has stunned us into a bit of shock.

The stupor is similar to my state of mind shortly after Game 6 in 2003. 

As Cubs fans, I think we all expect disaster to strike at any time, no matter how good the team may seem to be at any given time. We pretty much know that there is another shoe somewhere just waiting to drop, probably onto our heads. So when the Cubs lost their lead only eight pitches after Moises Alou lost his shit, and when Mike Fucking Mordecai put it out of reach with one swing, the Cubs' World Series chances died a very unsurprising, yet completely shocking death that night.

I sat in my seat for a good 30 minutes after the game ended just staring at the field. I finally dragged my ass to Yak-zies where a friend was waiting with a Jack and Coke all ready to numb my pain, but I didn't want it. I was too numb to drink. I was too numb to do anything. I just wanted to go home and curl into a ball an pretend the whole shit show never happened.

At that time, I lived alone with Schultz as my only "roommate." Normally, when I would get home from work, he would greet me at the door and proceed to tell me about his day by meowing in a tone that seemed to indicate that his life of eating, sleeping, and licking himself all day was a hardship on a par with a life of slave labor. So our normal routine would be me walking in:

Me: Hey buddy. How was your day?

Schultz: Meow

Me: Really?

Schultz: (more insistently) Meeeooowww

Me: You don't say. That sounds terrible.

Schultz: Meooow meow MEOW (grabs a a doorframe with his front paws and "scratches" it to indicate how much of a big tough man he is despite having lost his front claws 9 years earlier)

Me: You DO have a hard life.

And it would go on like that until I would sit down and he could climb on my lap and paw at me until I scratched his chin.

But that night, I walked in and sure enough, there he was to greet me. I managed a "hey buddy," but that was all I had energy for.  I proceeded immediately to the couch and just collapsed with mental exhaustion. Schultz had yet to say a word to me. He sat at my feet for a bit (I don't know how long because my brain was mush that evening, but it seemed like quite awhile).

Then he climbed up on the couch, but instead of climbing directly on my lap and demanding attention, he laid down next to me and just put his head in my lap and sat quietly purring. It was exactly what I needed. Then he reached out with a paw and put it on my hand and just left it there. I just looked down expecting him to start demanding attention, but he just stayed like that. I don't know how long we sat together, but he stayed with me the whole time. Still purring.

He had other times when he seemed to know when I was sad, lonely, sick, or dealing with more Cubs disappointments, but that was the time that really stuck with me because at that point it was probably the most depressed to the core I had ever been.

The problem now is that I feel very close to the same way as I did back in 2003, but he's not here to comfort me. I'd give anything to have him laying on my lap right now.

I miss my buddy.

The post I Miss Schultz Already appeared first on Obstructed View.

Sometime tomorrow I'll post an article on each of the two prospects the Cubs acquired today and hopefully do a roundup on the trade deadline for the Cubs and what's to come this month. 

The post Post Deadline Open Thread appeared first on Obstructed View.

Carl Crawford and a prospect to the Marlins for Hanley Ramirez and Heath Bell is something that Bob NIghtengale is suggesting is in the works that doesn't make the least bit of sense. Carl Crawford, a truckload of money and all the Red Sox prospects for Hanley Ramirez makes sense, but other than that this is just ridiculous.

I've read several times over the past few days that the Cubs really really want to trade Ryan Dempster so that they can focus on trading Matt Garza. This sounds as absurd as the Crawford/Hanley trade proposal. Can the Cubs not chew gum and spit at the same time? They have to trade one to work on trading another. It's like a check list? One down. Now we can move on and talk about another player. Can't talk trade about more than one player at a time. What the fuck? Obviously this is bullshit, but why do people keep saying this? 

The Kansas City Royals inquired about Matt Garza. Obviously the Royals were told that the Cubs had to first trade Ryan Dempster before they could talk Garza trade. No, seriously, why the hell would the Royals want Matt Garza? 

This ad in the local paper doesn't seem right. 

The post A few things that don’t make sense appeared first on Obstructed View.

I just doubled each player's playing time and WAR (average of fWAR and rWAR). If you got it right so far, one point for you. Otherwise it's none. These can still change. Some of the players have performed right along the lines of what we would have expected. I have not yet included Anthony Rizzo or Brett Jackson since we didn't expect them to get much playing time by this point. I threw out Kerry Wood's since he retired. At the end of the season Jackson and Rizzo will be included whether they play all that much or not, but Wood will be thrown out. 

berselius, mb21 and AndCounting are highlighed because they are ineligible to win. 

The post OV Contest mid-season update appeared first on Obstructed View.

Hopefully this should mean that Soto gets back on track. Before he was put on the disability list, he was hitting .161/.250/.301 in 93 at-bats, which as anyone from your semi-fan watching MLB in between partypoker games to the most hardcore of Cubs followers can tell you, is not what you'd call a great performance record.

However, it's now clear that his swing may have been off due to that meniscus injury, so now he's back and seemingly fixed, he'll hopefully be able to raise his game to the level it was at two years ago, in which he seemed to be the one person you always wanted to have facing off against a pitcher.

During his absence, three replacements were used by the Cubs – Castillo, Clevenger and Hill. Clevenger clearly outperformed the season Soto was having, with a .290/.310/.406 at 69 at-bats, and .191/.208/.255 in 47 at-bats during his stand-in for Soto. Now that the batter's back, however, things will likely change and it'll be interesting to see whether he can top Clevenger's performance.

The problem for Soto, injury recovery and sorting his performance out aside, is his value as a player, having performed badly then been taken out of commission, making him a less attractive proposition for both the Cubs and any teams looking for new talent in the future. If he can come back and play some great games, then he should show people that his 2010 performance wasn't the peak of his career performance. Time will tell, right, Cubs fans?

The post Soto back off the DL appeared first on Obstructed View.

Now we'd have the full capacity of the CPU rather than a portion of it. It would be a long time before we'd have to look into an alternative that had more power. By that time we'd easily be generating revenue that would pay the additional cost itself and wouldn't be an issue.

To make things even easier I spent considerable time optimizing the site. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I found many ways in which we could improve the performance of the site by making a few changes here and there. The site did load faster, but much of that was the result of the changes we made and not actually due to the change to a dedicated server.

I'll admit that customer service at Dreamhost was friendly enough. They didn't stand out as better or worse than any of the ones I've used before. They got back to you relatively quickly, which is always nice, but the performance of the server was a nightmare. I should add that once it became clear to Dreamhost that we were moving to a different host their support was nonexistent even though we still had an account with them. We had to get our new host to figure out what the fucking problem was with Dreamhost so we could get this situation resolved.

I've run a flash chat room on a server with significantly fewer resources, but when we tried to run it on our new dedicated server it was pretty much useless. It slowed down to the point it wasn't even usable. The blog itself started to take forever to load. It made absolutely no sense, but no big deal. It's not like the chat room is integral to what we do here.

Then shit got out of hand. The data center that our server was located in was attacked and all the sites went down. Not just a minute or two, but for a long fucking time. They got it back up finally and it went down again for even longer. They updated security, which should have done long ago and it still went down. It went down again and it was obviously time to move on.

Since 2004 I've used several different hosting companies. I can count on one hand the number of times since then that the site went offline due to the host. That's inevitable. There will always be some downtime. There were times the site saw a spike in traffic and it slowed down and as said earlier, resulted in errors, but that's the price you pay if you don't have a dedicated server. You have limited resources to use. That kind of downtime is more frequent, but not so frequent that you consider it a problem. You know when you need to increase your hosting package and you do so and those problems go away until your site gets even busier.

But I have never had the number of problems that Dreamhost has caused us. Not just with another host, but all of them combined over an 8 or 9 year span. It was so bad that i actually can't count on one hand the number of times Dreamhost fucked up. They didn't just fuck up briefly either. The site was down for 20 minutes, several fucking hours, 30 minutes, a few more hours, 25 minutes and so on. It was ridiculous, but it wasn't over.

We decided to go back to Host Gator and increase our VPS package and if necessary we would get a dedicated server with them. They've been great to us and while ACB was with Bloguin they were great to ACB and Bloguin. I had been associated with Host Gator since 2009 and never had an issue that I didn't cause myself. We looked forward to be rid of Dreamhost and their problems so we sign back up at Host Gator and they transfer all of our stuff for us. I'm so burned out with this shit that I don't think I would have had the patience to do it.

They get it all set up. It looks great. Runs smoothly. Perfect. Comes time to change the DNS to point to our VPS with Host Gator. It's a very simple task. The way to make the change is slightly different with each host, but all you do is go in and find the DNS and change it. In our case we were to change ns1.dreamhost.com and ns2.dreamhost.com to something equally simple. You also point each of those to an IP address, which is provided by Host Gator. It's as simple as that. You click save and then it takes awhile for the ISP to recognize the DNS change. It takes anywhere from 1-48 hours to do so.

Your site remains up. You may be accessing the one server and then get sent to the new one and even back. Within 48 hours that's all resolved and you're on the new server. Just how it works. It can be annoying, but there's nothing you can do about it. Even though there is some weirdness going on, the site is always accessible. It's actually a very simple process. it's kind of like clicking the save button to download something and you may have to wait a long time for the download to complete. That fucking simple.

Nothing is simple with Dreamhost. I go to change the DNS and it's just as simple as I remember. Enter some shit in and click save. Then go access the site and within 48 hours you're on the right server. Nope. Site goes blank.

Contact Dreamhost. Suddenly they're not so quick to get back with you. Site has now been down for hours and at least this time it's something we did, but like I mentioned before, we had to have Host Gator help us figure out what the fucking problem with Dreamhost was.

We're now back with Host Gator and I don't think we could be happier. The last 2 to 3 months with Dreamhost was just one failure after another for us. I'm sure some people have had good luck with them, but in our experience with them, they have to be one of the worst fucking hosts around.

We'd like to apologize to our readers who have had had to deal with this shit too. For those of you who were around ACB when Bloguin added the Livefyre commenting system, let's just say that Dreamhost is the Livefyre of commenting systems. Thanks for your patience.

If anyone is reading this because they're interested in whether or not you should sign up with Dreamhost, there are a million other hosting companies and 99% of them are better. We'd highly recommend you pick anything other than Dreamhost.

The post Our Dreamhost Review (they suck!) appeared first on Obstructed View.

Sometime Saturday morning we'll begin the migration to the new server unless we say otherwise.

The post Site may be offline this weekend appeared first on Obstructed View.

GW mentioned awhile back that we should have a contest where people choose over or under for the players. It's a great idea and today we're starting the contest. We wanted to stick with the primary players plus a couple others, but doing so could create a situation in which there were multiple winners. We think you're all winners, but for this contest we want only one winner. Because of that, there's an over/under choice for 3 categories. The 3 for position players is plate appearances, wOBA and WAR. For pitchers it's innings pitched, FIP and WAR. All playing time projections are the Obstructed View playing time projections.

The first two for each category is easy to get. We know exaclty how many times someone bats (or pitches) and thanks to Fangraphs we know what their wOBA or FIP is. WAR is the tricky part. There's fWAR and rWAR that are commonly used. Most of the time these two are similar enough, but some times there's a big enough difference that choosing one of them could cause issues. So what we're doing is taking an average of rWAR and fWAR. If someone finishes the season with 1 rWAR and 2 fWAR, we're using 1.5 WAR and we'll compare that to the projection. If there's a situation where we have a player with an fWAR of 1.7 and rWAR of 1.8, the average of that 1.75. We're rounding to the nearest tenth so for our purposes, that player will have produced 1.8 WAR. Also, this is for the entire season so even if a player is traded, we look at his total for all teams at the end of the season.

If someone was projected to bat 400 times and they batted exaclty that many times, for the purposes of this survey will consider that to be under the projection. The same is true for wOBA, FIP and WAR. To be right in predicting over the player has to be over his projection. Simple enough.

There's a tiebreaker at the end of the survey. Enter the number of runs you think the Cubs will score in 2012.

All the questions are mandatory, but it should not take much time to fill it out. We also need your username (or name if you aren't a member of Obstructed View) and your email.

The winner will get an Obstructed View t-shirt and  a copy of the 2013 The Hardball Times Annual. Those are usually released sometime in November. If the winner would prefer the Bill James Handbook, that can be arranged too. The person who comes in 2nd place gets an autograph from Aisle 424 and Berselius. For an extra $10 you can also get autographs from And Counting and mb21. 3rd place winner gets a free subscription to Obstructed View.

There are two things of importance to note: the projection for Jeff Samardzija is the mean PECOTA projection scaled to 122 innings pitched. PECOTA projected him as a starter and instead of fudging the other numbers, which were mostly as a reliever, we went with PECOTA. Because of this, Samardzija's end of season WAR will be from Baseball Prospectus and not the average of fWAR and rWAR. Also, for pitchers over/under, if a pitcher is projected to have a 4.00 FIP, over means higher than 4 (not better than 4).

You have until Thursday, April 12th to fill it out. If injuries take place after others have voted, those are thrown out so there's no advantage to waiting on submitting your votes. I've embedded the survey below and if you'd prefer you can access it directly by clicking this link.

The post An Obstructed View Contest: Enter Now And Win Big appeared first on Obstructed View.