Cloverland Leagues: Into the Playoffs!

After the huge set of core dumps about Alt-1915 and a lot of leisure time spent mulling whether a scenario where the PCL is promoted to MLB in the 40s (and eventually there's a fourth league split off so that each league doesn't get unwieldy), I figured I'd post about the original reason for this blog: The Cloverland Leagues.

I've documented here various frustrations with the stats that are getting generated (even though I blame nobody but myself), and am seeing this season as something of an experiment. I'll eventually do a recap of season stats for real (I suppose), but for now I'll reiterate that the offense was bananas.

I managed the Yankees, who faded badly. Again, a post-mortem will eventually come, but they would lose games they should have won, losing early and losing late, losing by blowouts and squeakers, by not hitting and by not pitching, the works. I think they finished in 3rd in the division, but they might have somehow stayed ahead of Boston. 

The AL division winners were the 2017 Blues, 2018 Astros, 2019 Twins, and 2001 Mariners. I'm not sure how fishy that is given how heavily weighted the team selection was to later teams, but I guess I will note that the oldest teams also tended to do poorly in the AL--I think the 1973 Orioles and 1982 Brewers finished in last. The NL division winners were decided pretty early and pretty emphatically--the 1972 Pirates, 2019 Dodgers, 1998 Firecrackers, and 1975 Reds. 

I've played through the first round of playoffs, and they were mostly drama-free: the Pirates and Firecrackers swept, the Twins won in 5 (or 4? I'd need to look it up), and the Mariners won in 6. Looking ahead, I think my final impression will definitely be shaped by who wins it all. If it's Seattle, I'd probably be satisfied that for all the frustrations and stat weirdness the end result made sense (and even matched the MLB Dream Bracket earlier in the year). I could believe that Atlanta, with multiple hall-of-famers and well over 100 wins, was the best team of the DH era. But the prospect of saying "the 2019 Minnesota Twins are the best team of the last 50 years or so" is nonsensical. 

Anyhow, on with the LCS!