For the past two years, we have written about the NBBA World Series statistical breakdown of Strength of Schedule. The Renegades have an analytical side. We break down much of the game into stats. It helps us baseline, set goals and improve. In 2014, we brought the concept of Strength of Schedule to the forefront. At first, a few teams thought it was non sense. Reality is its food for thought. As the league continues to grow, we need to help it improve. This past season may have been one of the most exciting beepball seasons ever. As in March madness, people fill out their brackets to see who they think will win. How many people would have picked the Indy Thunder over the Renegades in the championship game? Bet you didn’t have that filled out! The more discussion and thought we put into theses things, the better our league will become. With teamwork, communication, marketing and public relations will come great opportunity. Let’s move this league into the next level of competitive sports and get organized.
2016 Roster Changes
As we did the past two years, we have tried to come up with a method to measure the strength of each team’s schedule. This can be a telling story on how hard a World Series schedule each team has. Currently, the way the league seeds teams is to look at their finish in the prior year’s World Series. Keep in mind, this is all that is done to seed. If a roster is completely overhauled – the team does not move up or down the rankings. Here is where it gets ugly. If a team did not attend the previous year’s series, they are seeded in the order they got their registration fee into the league. All of these teams are placed at the bottom of the brackets with no insight into who is on those teams. This can produce a ton of problems for teams trying to play for a seed. We discussed that in 2015 there was 24 teams BUT only 16 teams returned from the 2014 World Series. This meant we had 8 teams playing in the World Series who were not seeded. This was less of an issue in 2016 because the World Series contracted a bit to 20 teams. Though before the World Series started there was already drama in the seeding. Have a seat and grab your popcorn as we look at some of the drama…
- #17 Indy Edge – There was a lot of drama in Indy in the off season. The RHI E-xtreme lost their sponsor and had to rename their team. There was some shuffling around but 6 players on the roster from 2015 returned. With the Indy shuffle, they also picked up some players from the Indy Thunder and the Indy Knights. The Edge also picked up two players from the New Jersey Lightning So, the NBBA seeding policy looks at this as a new team name though they had just one new player in the league. By the time they got to the World Series, they did have a rookie pitcher (who did great)..but to start the year, they were planning to go with the Indy Knights pitcher who took the Knights to a .375 batting average in 2015. This was no #17 seed?
- #18 San Antonio Jets – What do you get when you take the starting pitcher off the recent two time World Champs (Kevin Sibson), surround him with two of their young starting players (Zac Arambula and Axel Cox), add in a player who had won a title for them (Richie Flores), sprinkle in two long time players with a lot of success in the league (Dave Benney and Jason Ackiss). Then add in some of the most exicting rookies in the league with Ricky Ruzika and the Almanza cousins. You get a powerhouse offense. Some people were saying they would be contending for a championship…but they were seeded 18th!
- #19 Iowa Reapers – Ok…Iowa probably deserved this seed or something close to it. They had won two games in the 2014 World Series against the Athens Timberwolves. They did not play in 2015’s World Series. With the mindset of seeding new teams at the bottom of the league…this felt ok.
- #20 Seattle South King Sluggers – This truly felt right for them. Seattle had never played in a World Series before and this was a big step for them. Not one of their players on the roster had ever played in a World Series. This was the true meaning of a new team.
Every year, teams seem to shuffle their rosters and 2016 was no exception. Here are the rosters with the most turnover
- #1 Austin Blackhawks – Austin remained the number one seed despite losing their pitcher and two starters. Arumbala and Cox represented 31% of the runs scored in 2015. All of these three left for the start of the Jets. Austin replaced Kevin with Tim Hibner at pitcher (Tim won a few World Series with the Dawgs) and many consider him one of the top pitchers in the game. Austin also recruited Chance Cranford, a former world Champion with the Dawgs). But to give the Blackhawks a one seed with this team may have been a stretch because they simply lacked the depth and speed they had in the past.
- #3 Bayou City Heat – They lost a .500 hitter in John Kibodeaux and their leader in defensive stops, Greg Gontaryk. In their place, they picked up three players from the Colorado Storm and two players from the Long Island Bombers. This is a lot of turnover for a top team
- #4 Colorado Storm – Colorado Entered this tournament without two starters from the previous year in Doug Biggins and Mike Malloy as well as the loss of John Parker. This trio represented 28% of the Storm’s 2015 offense and 39% of it’s defensive stops not made by the human Vacuum, Ethan Johnston. Colorado returned Chad Sumner which helped the cause but he could not replace the results of three players by himself.
- #6 Indy Thunder – With the demise of the Extreme, they picked up a few of their players. This included Clint Woodard (who was 2nd on the RHI E-xtreme in defensive stops in 2015), Kyle Lewis (who hit .,533 in limited time with the Extreme) and Ed Brown(who hit .649 and led the Knights in runs). But they also had picked up a few very exciting rookies that had been lighting up local tournaments in Gerald Dycus and Zach Buhler. It should also be noted that Darnell Booker took a different role which allowed one of the top pitchers in the game to pitch. this pitcher had won a title with the Kansas All-stars and his name is Jarred Woodard. This team looked stacked going into the Series but remained a 6 seed. If Vegas had odds on a champion, it was a sure money bet the Thunder had the best odds.
- #9 Lone Star Road Runners – They lost their team leader in defensive stops (Richie Flores). Flores also gave them 12 runs of offense in 2015. Lone star also lost PJ Navarro and Marlon Stover. This is a whopping 57% of their offensive production from the 2015 team. With this loss and lack of proven replacements, they should have been knocked down a few seeds.
Which teams were impacted by the improper seeding?
With the break up of the RHI E-xtreme, Taiwan not returning and Austin losing players, it felt like for the first time in years there was a lot of parity in the league. In past years, the blatant mis-seeding had wrecked havoc on a few teams. The Indy Thunder and Long Island Bombers were last years victim of the mis-seeding This year in the end, the teams most impacted by the seeding were the Austin Blackhawks, the Minnesota Millers and the Southwest Slammers.
Why? Austin had to face San Antonio as their 2nd round opponent. If you believed they deserved the #1 seed, they should not have been playing the Jets this early in the dance. For the first time in years, Austin found its way to the loser’s bracket on Thursday morning. Minnesota and Southwest were two teams impacted in a different way. Both these teams earned a two seed in their bracket based on last year’s play. However, they both got bumped to the three seed after pool play was over because the Edge and Jets earned the two seed over them. At face value, this seems fare…BUT. One could argue that Minnesota and the Slammers earned their two seed more than the Lonestar Roadrunners and Atlanta Eclipse. The end result of this mis-seeding forced both the Slammers and Millers to have to play 10 games (no other team played more than 9 games). Their 1-2 records on day one forced them to play at 9:00am on Tuesday. With proper seeding, this would not have happened to them. In the end it may not have made a huge difference but it did force both these teams to play three games on three consecutive days in a row. This is a grueling sport to be forced to do this. It would take its toll on most teams in this league.
Let’s get to the Strength of Schedule stats
With all of this in mind, let’s look at the Strength of Schedule of the teams that played in the 2016 World Series. The math is simple. What we do is look at the final ranking of each team and add those rankings up. Then we divide that sum by the total amount of games played. This comes up with a figure that represents the average seed of the team they faced. So for example, The Boston Renegades played 9 games against the following teams San Antonio Jets (5) + BCS Outlaws (16) + Minnesota Millers (9) + Southwest (11) + Chicago (8)+ Colorado (3) + Indy Thunder (1) + Colorado (3) + Indy Thunder (1). This equates to a score of 57 and we divide that by 9 games to get 6.3. This means the average seed of a Renegade Opponent would be ranked 6th in the league.
Please note this Strength of Schedule score does not take into account the amount of games played. A team playing 9-10 games is forced to play 3 games on multiple days of the World Series- and this can take a huge toll on a team. Last year, the Taiwan Home Run were so mis-seeded they had to play what was possibly a World Series record of 12 games. This year six teams played 7 games. six teams played 8 games, six teams played 9 games and The Southwest Slammers and Minnesota Millers were forced to play 10 games each.
| SOS Rank | WS finish | Team | Games | Record | SOS |
| 1 | 2 | Boston | 9 | 7-2 | 6.33 |
| 2 | 3 | Colorado | 9 | 6-3 | 6.78 |
| 3 | 5 | San Antonio | 9 | 5-3 | 7.00 |
| 4 | 7 | Indy Edge | 8 | 6-2 | 8.00 |
| T-5th | 8 | Chicago | 8 | 4-4 | 9.50 |
| T-5th | 1 | Indy Thunder | 8 | 8-0 | 9.50 |
| 7 | 6 | Austin | 9 | 6-3 | 9.67 |
| 8 | 12 | Lone Star | 8 | 3-5 | 9.75 |
| 9 | 4 | Bayou City | 9 | 7-2 | 9.89 |
| 10 | 13 | NJ Titans | 7 | 3-4 | 10.29 |
| 11 | 10 | Atlanta | 8 | 4-4 | 10.38 |
| 12 | 11 | Southwest | 10 | 5-5 | 10.50 |
| 13 | 9 | Minnesota | 10 | 6-4 | 10.80 |
| 14 | 16 | BCS | 9 | 2-7 | 10.89 |
| 15 | 14 | Tyler | 7 | 2-5 | 11.71 |
| 16 | 15 | Arizona | 9 | 3-6 | 11.89 |
| 17 | 17 | Iowa | 7 | 2-5 | 12.29 |
| 18 | 18 | Seattle | 7 | 1-6 | 12.43 |
| 19 | 20 | Athens | 7 | 0-7 | 13.71 |
| 20 | 19 | Rochester | 7 | 2-5 | 13.86 |
As the Renegades climb the NBBA ladder, Boston has now played the toughest schedule in two of the past three years at the World Series (8th hardest in 2015). That says a lot for how far this team has come in its ability to manage a tournament and improve its play on the field.
- Click here to view the Strength of schedule review from 2015
- Click here To view the Strength of schedule review from 2014
Unlike last year where the quantity of games played was so varied (mostly due to the mis-seeding). Beyond the Millers and Slammers all teams played between 7-9 games. Some key findings from looking at SOS (Strength of Schedule) include:
- The Renegades made the title game and their only losses on the year came against the Indy Thunder. They had quality wins over San Antonio, Chicago and Colorado, twice.
- Colorado had a very tough road as well. Even tougher when you recall they lost three players from their 2015 roster. Two of their three losses came at the hands of the Renegades. The other was on day one, to the Indy Edge.
- Once again, the Bayou City Heat had an easy schedule. Four of their 9 games were against teams who finished 12th or higher. They entered the dance seeded 2nd and finished in the 4 spot. The best seed they played was Colorado and they lost to them twice. They had “easy” wins over Iowa (17th), NJ Titans (13th) and Lone star, twice- (12th).
- Minnesota which had a very tough year in 2015 had an easier time this year if you look strictly at strength of schedule. Though they played 10 games, 7 of them were against opponents who finished 10th or higher.
- The Indy Edge, which entered as a 17 seed, finished 7th but had the 4th hardest road to get there. It would be expected their road would be hard based on the fact they were mis-seeded. They actually beat the three seed (Colorado) in the round robin. However, they lost to the Thunder (1) and Austin (6) – the former champs to knock them out of contention. They were a scary team to have to face for sure.
- The Indy Thunder had an easy first two days as their first four opponents finished 20th, 19th, 8th and 13th
In Conclusion
What makes the NBBA unique is that many games are played throughout the year. Sadly, there is not an easy way (and cost effective way) for the league to track the progress of the teams…YET. Maybe with experience and finances this could change in the future. For now, we have to play with the World Series stats. Its the only thing we have for the Beep baseball seam heads who like stats. We come together for one glorious week to play ball. In 2016, we saw a lot of parity in the league. To start the year, we saw two top teams break apart as Austin and RHI had some significant changes. We also witnessed for the first time since 198o, two teams who had never been in a title game face off against each other with the Thunder beating the Renegades. As we look toward 2017, we hope we can make some changes to the way we seed. Heck, we can expect the Taiwan Home Run to be back..are we really going to seed them 21st again? I hope we have learned from this and the fact it hurts other teams just as much as it hurts them. Lets work toward seeding things correctly. And yes, this writer has a proposal for that. However, thats a story for another time