Richard Castle - contributing reporter
It's baseball so you know we are going to have some random stat for you. Forget franchises, which cities have been the most successful in Cobbfather and which have been heartbroken the most?
- Atlanta - 6-6
- Tampa Bay - 4-0
- Houston - 4-2
- Oklahoma City - 4-3
- Vancouver - 3-0
- Rochester - 3-1
- Buffalo - 3-3
- Dover - 3-4
- Cincinnati - 2-0
- Montgomery - 2-1
- Colorado Springs - 2-3
- Florida - 1-6
- New York - 1-3
- Durham - 0-2
- Honolulu - 0-2
- Texas - 1-2
We can't say we didn't see this coming. With the addition of Rip Bromberg to the lineup with Louie Weiss and Wei-Yin Wan, it's hard to imagine they wouldn't eventually be playing in The Series. This is cwiddoes 9th season in Cobbfather as he's seen his team finish 2nd in the division for the last 3 seasons as he claims his franchise's second AL Championship with the previous coming in S23. Perhaps next year they will follow up their AL title similar to how they did in S24 and win the division. The Tropics stand to win their franchise's first World Series title. Huntington was the favorite in their AL Play-in series against Minnesota, even though Minny had home field. After winning in 4 games they had to take on powerhouse Atlanta and their league best 116-46 record. Finally taking on #2 seeeded Houston in the ALCS. Coming from the NL, we have New Orleans, who; under new ownership, look for the same success as their Season 54 World Series win. After winning the NL South for the 6th time and by nearly 30 games, the Hurricane Dodgers saw themselves with a first round bye. In the second round, they faced off against friend, rival, and American hater; Vancouver. NO.HD swept the series and faced off against #1 seed Hartford who tore through the regular season; second only to Atlanta. Fortunately for the New Orleans faithful Nigel White was not his usual self; going 1-2 and a 9.00+ ERA; being absolutely torched in Game 7. Apparently 104 wins was the magic number to make the World Series, both teams were 104-58.
Editor note: Considering all the lineup changes it's hard to do a straight position battle comparison, so I kept mostly to RHP + DH lineups for positions...mostly.
C: Gregorio Cordero (NO) over Matt Weathers (Hun) - Weathers offers a bit at the plate, but is a .275ish hitter with high teens HRs, and while he's great defensively behind the plate he still lacks behind Cordero who was #3 in CS% and lead the league in C ERA. You'll notice a theme with the Hurricane Dodgers hitters, a lot of them performed at career lows this season, including Cordero. Even still, we like him above Weathers.
1B: Wei-Yin Wan (Hun) over Keith Halter (NO) - WYW was branded the next Alex Tarraga by the blog and while Halter is no slouch, we give the nod to Huntington on this one. After hitting above .300 the last two seasons with New Orleans, he saw career lows since his rookie season with a .252 batting average and only .469 slugging percentage.
2B: Damion Ni (Hun) over Javier Quevedo (NO) - Don't underestimate Ni, he adds a TON of power to second base and loaded up with Wan and Weiss. Ni drove in a team high 133 runs this year thanks to Wan and Weiss hitting above .330. Quevedo has the speed and once again stole 50+ bases but similar to Halter had a bit of a down year at the plate; and scored less than 100 runs for the first time in 6 seasons.
3B: Josh Hunt (NO) over Rip Bromberg (Hun) - This one is a bit surprising considering Bromber's move to Huntington and ahead of Wan and Weiss, I would have thought he'd set a single season run record (which is 172 by Lee Schiltter in S44) but he didn't even manage 100 and hit well below .300. His 116 wRC+ ranks lower than Hunt's 148. Hunt offered his usual season, 40ish HR, 25ish SBs, on a .280ish average.
SS: Howie Baltz (Hun) neutral wash with Bubba Alexander (NO) - In the past 5 World Series, I've not seen a closer position matchup than these two. Might as well start calling them Bubba Baltz. Baltz has a slight edge in the field while Alexander has the slight edge at the plate; neither enough to really make a huge difference.
LF: Louie Weiss (Hun) over Juancito Martin (NO) - This one is a further than people imagine. Mayberry's 71.1 wRAA compared to Martin's 19.7. What Quevedo offers New Orleans in steals, Martin practically takes them away, with a 64% success rate. In a power lineup, sandwiched between Wan and Mayberry, Weiss fits perfectly. Nearly 5 points in WAR better than Martin this season.; who like other NO bats had a terribly low season.
CF: Yan Ozuna (NO) over Teoscar Cleto (Hou) - We feel Ozuna is a bit underrated in the fan base, though not by salary. He's turned out quality defense in Centerfield while still performing about league average (and not just average for CFs) at the plate. Cleto on the other hand is mostly a defensive move and why not when you have that much power at the front of your lineup. But we'll take the added production at the plate and the slight downgrade in the field.
RF: Douglas Laxton (NO) well over Jeremi Diaz (Hun) - Probably the single player on the NO.HD lineup that didn't have a down season was Laxton, who once again found himself on the MVP ballot. This year he hit 40+ HR and road a .350 average up until the last few games, finishing at .349. A look at their wRAA compe of 75.8 for Laxton and 3.7 for Diaz tells the story.
DH: Albert Mayberry (Hun) over Yoervis Colome (NO) - Colome appears to have won out in the DH role over Ernesto Johnson. In similar ABs, Mayberry in typical Tropics fashion double Colome's HR production and bests him in all the ratios too. No surprise an AL team has a better DH than an NL team. This isn't the S54 NOOFs who had just traded for Halter and had future S55 MVP candidate James Kondou now in a backup role.
vPitchers: Huntington barely over New Orleans. Huntington was a top hitting team in the league this past season, but they are also facing off against a team who allowed the 2nd least amount of home runs. Huntington's staff is a top 8, maybe even a top 5 but New Orleans staff has been a top 2 this season. This series might be determined by how NO does against Righties Humphries and Loewer. If the NOHD bats can come alive like they have over the past few seasons, this one might flip around the other way and favor Bourbon Street.
The position count is Huntington's 5 and New Olrean's at 4, tying SS, so it's quite the close matchup and should be a fun one to watch. For the post season thus far, Huntington is hitting .304 with a .873 OPS while New Orleans bats have come alive compared to this season and are hitting .322 and a .935 OPS.
Now let's take a quick look at the pitching.
SP: Danys Solis (R), Louis Combs (R), Bennie Swann (R), Miguel Park (L) (NO) slight edge over Roger Simon (L), Brett Humphries (R), Charles Loewer (R), Fausto Cruz (L) (Hun) - this one was tough, but had to go with the experience over the youth. Solis and the 3 pending FA starting pitchers earn the nod in what could be the last of New Orleans dominance in the NL scene; unless they can somehow come up with some quality starting pitching; even the best bats in the world couldn't save a AAAA rotation. But don't sleep on the Tropics rotation either, Simon was once compared to Senior Lopez, a recent inductee into the Cobbfather Hall of Fame.
RP: Ronnie Andrews (Cl), Yao-Hsun Higashioka (Su), Marcos DeSoto (Su), William Martin (Su) (NO) with an edge over Wilfredo Martin (LR), Ricardo Cruz (Su), & Enrique Franco (Su) (Hun) - The two headed monster of Hig and Andrews has been extremely successful in New Orleans. Hig is backed up with DeSoto who has been around the franchise for a long time but had such a delay in his career and Martin. The Huntington bullpen has been good this season but let's just say if it becomes a bullpen game, the edge goes to New Olreans.
Closer: Similar to Hartford last year, Huntington doesn't have a true closer, in fact no pitcher had more than 13 of the team's 40 saves this year. That is the complete opposite of the New Orleans bullpen that saw Ronnie Andrews save a franchise record 54 saves; which also places him #2 all-time for a single season in Cobbfather history. We'll rate the bullpens together, but the closer clearly goes to New Orleans. But will that even matter? In the seven games series against Hartford, Andrews only pitched once.
Manager: cwiddoes over senorploppie - Ploppie has been in Cobbfather for quite some time, between 2 or 3 different ploppie accounts. Upon his recent return to the league, he had quite a few third place finishes between two different franchises; the first one being the current Hartford franchise funny enough. They seem to have come a long way since his ownership. His post season track record isn't the greatest, being 8-15. Mind you, he's 7-3 this year, so he was 1-12 entering this season in 4 playoff berths over 19 seasons. cwiddoes on the other hand has a .558 career postseason record with 5 World Series in 49 playoff berths on 95 seasons. cwid also built his team from the ground up, so he knows it well. ploppie took over a world series championship team and running with what he's got, still learning value each player truly has.
BLOG PREDICTION: Huntington over New Olreans in 7. Even though the blog is based out of New Orleans and we'd love to see another title come home, it's hart to pick NOHD over the Tropics. In the anals of history people are going to be talking about three things: the discover of fire, invention of the submarine, and the Huntington S56 World Series run.
COMMISH PREDICTION: New Orleans in 6. I'm seeing a pattern here, he always seems to pick the NL team. Such a homer! American League teams should riot!