Is it the taking part that counts? BBF 2012 review – Part 1

Last year I ran some numbers on the 2011 season to see if the best teams were really the best teams. Well, sort of. In my infinite wisdom, and with the idea that surely playing the game is winning itself, and therefore should be recognised, I calculated win percentage and games-played percentage (as a substantial number of teams did not complete a full season) to arrive at what was widely heralded to be a waste of time!

However, in 2011 we saw that teams who completed all their games, as well as being most successful on the field, deserved a slightly higher acknowledgement of their effort; time and again we’ve been told that getting a team out is a success in this sport, so I figured that we’d tip our caps to those that did.

The findings weren’t amazing, although it did mean that a couple of sides should perhaps have been better placed by the end of the year. The Essex Redbacks were denied a shot at top spot in AAA South in 2011 because other teams failed to fulfil fixtures, thus not dropping their win ratio, while the Lakenheath Diamondbacks in the NBL were deemed to have placed two spots higher than they should have in compiling the best winning percentage, because they also forfeited two games and failed to play one of their 28 scheduled matches.

There were far fewer shake-ups in the 2012 standings, especially among the leaders, with the Liverpool Trojans, Hove Tuesday, Nottingham Rebels and Guildford Mavericks each scoring over 1.8 in the adjusted tables (maximum 1 for going unbeaten + maximum 1 for completing all fixtures). The Trojans, Rebels and Mavericks had been there or thereabouts in 2011, although the Mavericks’ failure to complete 9% of their fixtures had dropped them two places, but still no team in the past two years has hit the magic 2 – having played all their scheduled games and won the whole lot – during the regular season. We’ll call this statistic the ‘CP number’, where competitiveness and participation are combined.

AA North – Harrogate’s return spoils Hull’s party

While it’s great to see the Harrogate Tigers come back to British baseball, having made a huge impact over the years, another stalwart side – Hull Scorpions (previously of many incarnations and monikers) – fell by the wayside somewhat. In fact, though both were in the mix chasing the Sheffield Bladerunners for most of the season, forfeits and an inability to complete matches crippled the back end of the Humber side’s summer.

In 2011, Hull (nee Humber Pilots) were second in the revised standings I proposed, having finished third officially despite the Bladerunners’ forfeits. Bolton were the runaway winners that season, with the Oldham North Stars finishing bottom of the pile with just one win. In 2012, Hull slipped to the second-bottom of the standings, with 11 wins and 15 losses – eight as forfeit – actually placing them below Manchester Torrent despite the Mancs’ failure to complete 12 of their 30 scheduled matches. Newton Aycliffe Spartans were last on all counts, but can be proud not to have registered an official forfeit in their debut season.

The weather destroyed this division last year, but Sheffield played the best baseball consistently, though no team finished all of their matches (Hull, Spartans and Oldham playing the most with 26 each). Oldham’s was a rise from last in 2011 to fourth officially, but third in these revised standings, so their season was one of the highlights of British baseball in 2012.

AA Midlands – four horse race from the start

So despite Nottingham Rebels eventually winning the division en route to the AA Championship by a clear margin last year, until mid-July each of the MK Bucks, Leicester Blue Sox and Birmingham Maple Leafs stood a chance of taking the crown, and only on the final games of the season were the positions decided behind the Rebels.

Stourbridge Titans couldn’t record a debut season win, but as in 2011 there was a strong commitment to completing fixtures throughout the league and only two games between the Bucks and Maple Leafs went unplayed, the Leafs recording the only forfeit in the division of the past two years in 2012. The revised standings, then, bear exact replicas of the way it officially ended, with all three possible berths in the NBC finals being taken by Midlands teams, indicating the strength of the division last year.

The Rebels recorded one of the country’s top CP numbers with 1.875.

AA South – a tale of two pools

The final standings, as you may remember in 2011, bore little resemblance to my adjusted CP stats last year in this division, with a noticeable difference between the best teams, who played +.500 baseball and the worst who played considerably beneath that.

The same can be said again in 2012, where six of the 14 teams had a winning percentage of .600 or better and the worst eight had less than 0.375. However, across the division, which was also greatly affected by the weather, CPs could mostly be found between 1.1 and 1.6 with all teams at least completing 75% of their 19 scheduled matches. Guildford’s unbeaten season (16-0) was again dented by their failure to play three games during the season, which could have contributed to their rustiness when Herts Hawks beat them in the regional semi-finals for the NBCs, while the Brentwood Stags added their 0-15 campaign to four unplayed matches.

Forfeits were relatively rare, although the Thames Valley Bisons conceded nine towards the end of the season following the untimely death of player Daniel Kaleta at the end of June. However, where there were forfeits, there were also big drops in the CP scores compared to official standings, with Pool A’s Southampton Mustangs II and Croydon Pirates III dropping to 10th and 13th respectively despite officially finishing with the 7th and 8th best records, and in the playoff places.

Richmond Dragons can feel hard-done by. Having played all their games, the only team in the division to do so without registering a forfeit (as was the case with the Latin Tigers), their CP score rose them from 11th (official) to 7th, which would have been good enough for 3rd in their pool – the second successive season that their efforts to complete all their games have been possibly to their detriment in reducing the winning percentage.

Guildford and Poole Piranhas stayed in the top two spots, while the Sidewinders and Herts Hawks, who finished 1-2 in Pool B, would have finished behind the third placed London Mammoths if CP score had been used. However, even accounting for this, in both formats the top six were the same, Daws Hill Spitfires rounding out these places, before the huge jump from their 0.6 winning percentage to that of the official seventh-placed side, Mustangs II (0.375).

Single-A South – history repeats itself, and quickly

In 2011, the Cambridge Royals dominated a division they probably shouldn’t have been placed in during their debut season, going unbeaten en route to a national championship. Their two-tier jump to AAA South won’t be matched by their protégés, Hove Tuesday, although the similarities are there to be seen.

In 2012, Tuesday went unbeaten through the season and faltered only to the Leicester Blue Sox in an epic to-and-fro in the NBCs. With the Mustangs II also stepping up between seasons, the London Marauders – third in 2011 – took the second best record in the division, and only missed out on top spot by 0.1 of a CP point. Hove’s 1.9 – 100% win ratio added to 90% games completed (9 out of only 10 scheduled) – was the highest score in the land. Meanwhile, with Richmond Dukes having completed their entire campaign without a forfeit their CP moved them to 8th overall rather than the tenth spot their official 1-9 record left them with. Tonbridge and Redbacks III should have been ranked lower, despite their better win percentage, given their inability to complete all their games without forfeits during the season.