In lieu of the usual chapter review, I present the chapter autopsy. In my 25 seasons of playing this game, this has been, by far, the dumbest of all seasons. It is so insanely dumb that if it had happened in our first season, there wouldn't have been a second. The only thing stopping me from quitting this game and spending more quality time with my family is my BDBL family.
As I have written here before, the underlying premise of this game is that the players on our team will perform somewhat like the real players themselves. We allow for a good deal of wiggle room due to random fluctuations on the bell curve. But in general, our players should mostly resemble their real-life selves. Otherwise, what's the fucking point?
We are now 83% into our season. Any huge random fluctuations should have been ironed out by now. Yet, as I type, Shohei Ohtani and Rafael Devers -- two of the best hitters in baseball a year ago -- are sitting at 29 homers combined. They hit 61 combined in MLB last year. They will need to double their output in the next 28 games to get to that number. If they hit even half that many home runs next chapter (which would be a near-record) they would not even finish anywhere near their MLB output for the season.
Devers owns a .412 slugging percentage. Ohtani, arguably the game's greatest power hitter, sits t .381. Ranger Suarez, owner of a 3.65 ERA in MLB '22, currently sits at 6.82.What is the fucking point of this?
Two chapters into this season, we owned the best record of any team in the BDBL not named the Los Altos Undertakers. We sat comfortably in first-place in our division by three games. At the all-star break, we owned a sizeable four-game lead in the OL wildcard race and sat just one game out of the division lead. Heading into this chapter, we shared the wildcard lead.
Today, one chapter later, we are so far out of the wildcard lead (six games) that a playoffs spot is highly-unlikely. We went 21-7 in Chapter Two. In Chapter Five, we went 7-21. This is the SAME TEAM, folks! We didn't trade anyone. In fact, we added a few players to our roster through trade that were supposed to help this team win.
2023 has become a lost season for the Florida Mulligans. We came into this season with sky-high expectations, based on the fact that we owned so many great hitters, a one-two punch of Ohtani and Valdez in the starting rotation, and a decent bullpen. All of that has gone out the window. As we now look forward to 2024, I see plenty of reasons to believe we can contend. However, given what we've witnessed this year, it seems that having great players on your roster doesn't matter when those players don't perform anywhere near their MLB numbers. So, again, what's the fucking point of this?
