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9/30 - I'm not going to track Smallworld Points for the postseason games, but yesterday would have produced 2 games for the "Best Games" list, as Kevin Brown's effort was worth 221 SWP, while Mo Vaughn's outburst tallied 93 SWP. In fact, the two Vaughn's accounted for roughly one-third of the overall total of yesterday's hitting points!

I may put together a retrospective piece on the Smallworld baseball season. If you have any insightful observations to share, send them to me.

Football trading day. Be careful when trading. When I went to sell one player this morning, I noticed that the confirmation page showed the name of a different team. So I exited without confirming, and logged back in - this time with apparent success. I'm not sure what's up. That may be why two trades I thought I had done last week (for my "second team") weren't there this week. Maybe they went through for some other team? I suspect I actually just forgot to do them, but now I wonder. In any event, not doing them turned out to be the better choice, so I'm not complaining. But be careful.

I'll post an updated team ranking list after prices are reset. Look for it late afternoon or early evening.

9/29 - Good baseball game, but where were San Francisco's bats? Stopped by Steve Trachsel? Also, it was comforting to see Jose Mesa come in and work his special post-season magic once again. I say comforting because this means he won't be pitching for the Tribe this post-season. Tribe fans know what I mean.

Football stats are in process of posting, and should be completely up by noon EST. Several people emailed me yesterday to report that I neglected to charge 325 SWP in the football Assimilator for bye defenses. I know. It's intentional. Without some special programming, to include this charge would also incorporate it into the totals and averages for each team defense, which I don't think is desirable. And I'm not convinced that it's worth programming around this. RotoGuru users should be able to accommodate this in their heads. I also have not included the bye charge in the YTD totals for the sortable summary stats. Same reason. If you want to look at pure per-game averages, there's a column for that. Sort on it.

9/28 - One more regular season game to go. Most leagues, including Smallworld's, include wildcard playoff games, like today's Cubs/Giants game, as a regular season game. So, if you've got Bonds, or Sosa, or Beck, or Nen, then you've still got some potential stats yet to come. Based on one avid reader's personal calculation, "We are Borg" currently stands in 20th place, but could realistically finish anywhere from 17th-22nd. If both Bonds and Sosa do well, I'll (or should it be "we'll") move up. All this in spite of my weak pitching picks for my final three trades. In fact, my last pickup, Matt Morris, cost me 14 SWP yesterday. Ah well....

On the MLM front, I did a reconcilation of pitcher's hitting stats this morning, and found a few errors, which is not surprising since I've basically maintained those stats by hand. So, if you see some delist value popping up today without any apparent stats to back it up, it's just a catchup adjustment. Nothing major - although Mike Gardner picked up a few RBI points, and with his start today against the Cubbies, makes for an interesting buying opportunity.

Football stats for Sunday's games should hopefully be posted by early afternoon.

9/26 - What a great wildcard race! And no matter what happens today, all three contenders will still be alive tomorrow.

"We are Borg" continues to drive toward the top 20 in Perfect Rotation. Through stats of 9/24, they are ranked 26th, and benefited yesterday from the nice outing by Kenny Rogers. Today, we're going with Roger Clemens, Al Leiter and Carlos Perez, with one trade left for tomorrow. Who should I pick up? Hmmm....

Meanwhile, "Species 8472" is unlikely to make it to the top 50 on the Smallworld site, where they currently rank 70th. Still, it's gratifying that both teams have finished strong.

9/25 - I feel like I've been away for awhile. My cable modem went down from noon until late at night yesterday, and this morning I played 18 holes. Anyway, yesterday's stats are now posted, the Assimilator seems to be working, MLM tables are updated, and - if anyone cares - final Smallworld baseball pricing results will be up later this afternoon.

I'm a bit backlogged in updating the feedback page. I've gotten some good letters in the last couple of days, and I'll try get them posted by tonight. I've also got a few more teams to add to the rankings, and they will be updated later today as well. So much to do....

I suppose that, as a longtime Indians fan, I should point out that the '54 Indians won 111 games in a 154-game season. So it seems as though this year's Yankees ought to have some sort of asterisk. But if this year's Yanks have the same post-season success that the '54 Tribe did, I'll be glad to waive the asterisk!

9/24 - You know the Yankees and Indians are working hard to keep their frontline pitchers out of view when a late September matchup features Jason Jacome vs. Mike Jerzembeck. What a treat!

What's up with Anaheim? Three runs scored in a three game series vs. Texas? Disney should move the franchise to Manila (so they could change the team name to the "Folders").

Football pricing was somewhat interesting. Randall Cunningham was the big gainer, and I'll confess I didn't see that one coming. I figured the action among lower priced quarterbacks would be more evenly split among Cunningham, Trent Green, Charlie Batch, and Neil O'Donnell. In a sense, I was right, since they all did well, but Cunningham certainly walked away with the Lion's share. (Or should I say Viking's share?). Steve Young's gain was less than I expected as well, though that may have been due to some uncertainty about the timing of bye week trading. Or maybe because, if history repeats, he's about due for another concussion.

Duce Staley finally came through (thanks for getting those player stat leaders posted, Smallworld!). Fred Taylor moved up less than I thought, though his bye in week 5 might have kept some people away.

Defense was another interesting category - in particular the leader, Miami, since they have an upcoming bye. Do you suppose people are buying them for the bye, or because their first three games have been so strong? Could be both, though I would be surprised if alot of people are aware of the "bye benefit". Also, Oakland is showing the adverse effects of a weak start and a heavy draft (since there were a lot of people who were able to sell them.

Among players, I don't see much of a bye week pattern. Glenn Foley's demise is obviously unrelated, and Terry Glenn is the only other one showing close to a half-$million decline, again probably because he was fairly heavily drafted.

I updated the RotoGuru team rankings last night. A few new teams have been submitted since the current list was run, and I'll update again later today. (Incidentally, a blank in either of the columns showing the weekly change means that I wasn't able to capture that team's stats prior week data.) I dropped the column showing each team's worldwide rank, since by mixing teams from two sites (Smallworld and CNN/SI), the rankings aren't all comparable. Maybe I'll stick them back in with a notation to indicate which site they are from. This might also help identify whether there is any obvious impact of the extra 4 trade allocation granted solely to the Smallworld site teams.

9/23 - Three home runs from Mark Lansing last night! So where has he been all year? Meanwhile, Matt Morris posts a 200 SWP game while shutting down the 'Stros. I hope all you late-season pitching rotators picked him up yesterday, and not Mike Mussina!

Server response remains sluggish. I still haven't heard what the problem is. Believe me, "I feel your pain!"

Fortunately, I managed to squeeze my football trades in the brief window when trading was enabled last night. The SW server was pretty slow, so I gather I wasn't the only one there. With trading de-activated most of yesterday and again this morning, I see that Smallworld has delayed today's repricing until 3PM CST. Not only that, but it appears that teams at the Smallworld site have been given an extra 4 trades - to compensate for technical difficulties! (Folks at the CNN site, it appears that you don't have this benefit.) Go figure.

I've finally added analytical tables for MLM Football. Actually, in the first few weeks, delist values don't matter much, anyway. I added an extra column in the tables to show percentage gain over the past day. This may help you identify the big movers. I also show some dividend yield info for the team stocks. I'm not sure how meaningful this is, particularly as a predictive tool, but I had some columns to fill.

9/22 - Hats off to Roger Clemens. Might as well just hand him another Cy Young award right now.

It wasn't long ago that the Yankees had thoughts of winning 120 games, blowing away the ML record of 116 wins in a season. Now, they have to win five of their last seven just to set a new AL mark of 112. What a difference a month makes! In fact, the Yankees are just 9-11 so far in September, and 15-18 since August 19th. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are only 7-14 in September. The Angels have a September mark of 7-11. Only the Rangers (11-8) and the Indians (13-6) have played above .500 this month.

In the NL, San Diego has been slumping with a 7-12 record in September, but the other contenders have been playing well: Houston 12-7, Mets 12-7, Atlanta 11-8, Cubs 11-8, & San Fran 10-8.

9/21 - I think I have good football stats posted in the Yesterday page and the Assimilator, but the process is still somewhat manual (especially for team defenses), so if something looks wrong, it just might be. I realize that bye week defenses show up as a zero, rather than -315 SWP, but I'm not sure there's a good way to adjust for that without screwing up the other defensive averages. I'll think about it. Report any other errors to me, as always. I'll have the sortable summary stats tables up later today.

In baseball, there were four shutouts in the NL - I don't recall that happening before. The best effort belonged to Darryl Kile, which probably had little significance to Smallworld managers, because who would have had him on their roster? Of much greater import was Kevin Brown's 155 SWP - in spite of failing to garner a win after 9 innings of shutout pitching. Carlos Perez and Al Leiter also threw nice games, and may have had some impact on the standings, as they could easily have been on some rosters - especially in a late season "pitching rotation".

9/19 - I've been in and out all day, and have been updating the site off and on, but haven't gotten around to the blurb until now (it's just after 10PM). I think I'll make this my weekend blurb.

A couple of you in Perfect Rotation noticed that "We are Borg" finally cracked into the top 50 yesterday, currently at #43. It's been a long journey, and I hope I can hang in there through the last week. On the Smallworld side, "Species 8472" just rose into double digits, ranked #99. I have my doubts as to whether this team will sneak into top 50. But I'm satisfied with my results. And I know a few things I could've done better. Don't we all?

I've upgraded the football Assimilator to include links from each player's name to his stats page. The player page will pop up in a separate browser window, so you won't lose your place in the Assimilator. Hope I didn't break anything in the process. Enjoy! I think this feature will be quite useful.

I've now updated the Team Rankings page with all teams I've received through 10PM Saturday. If you think you sent yours to me before then and you don't see it, send it in again. I found one more RotoGuru league on the CNN/SI version of the game, and included those teams, too. Since we have an intermingling of teams from two game sites, the worldwide rankings aren't consistent. Next week, I'll replace that column with one which shows the results for the previous weekend.

Incidentally, I'm having trouble reconciling the previous poll results (on this week's franchise value increase) with the Team Ranking tables. In the poll, 12 people claimed they had a value increase exceeding $10 million, and another 22 clicked on $8-$10 million. Yet, in the team rankings, I have 200 teams listed so far, and only four show an increase of greater than $8 million, and none even exceeds $9 million. The poll results are looking a bit exaggerated. So what gives? Wishful thinking, or lousy arithmetic?

9/18 - Jose Offerman had a distinctive night. He posted 93 SWP without hitting a home run, becoming the first hitter to exceed 90 SWP without hitting one out of the park. He had a triple, 3 singles, 4 runs, 2 ribbies, a walk, and - most critically - 3 stolen bases.

I received an email yesterday from Doug Mayfield (here's your 15 minutes of fame, Doug!) asking how to best compare his team against those in other RotoGuru divisions. I thought maybe this would be a useful feature to add to the site, so today I have a new page showing the current points and franchise values for all of the active teams in any Smallworld league whose name begins with "RotoGuru". I realize that many of you are probably in non-RotoGuru divisions, too, so if you'd like me to track your team along with these others, send me your team name and its "user_id". (See the note at the bottom of the table if you don't know how to find your team's user_id.) I excluded 4 teams with either zero or negative points, but if they want to be included, let me know as well. My objective is to give all RotoGuru users a broader universe of managers to compare against - all of whom use the same, state-of-the-art statistical data available at the RotoGuru site.

I've already been asked if I'm planning to cover fantasy hockey this winter. Frankly, I haven't decided yet. I'm not a hockey fan, and have never played a fantasy hockey game. Last year, Smallworld's fantasy hockey game had a relatively small base of participants, so I don't think the "cost/benefit" is particularly attractive. I also have no idea whether statistical data is going to be easily available in user-friendly format. I'm very reluctant to try to bite off more than I can reasonably chew - and I consider maintaining this site's quality and timeliness to be more important than expanding the coverage beyond my ability to efficiently cope. On the other hand, if the NBA season is delayed, it may be the only game in town for part of the winter. So, I'll continue to ponder the workload implications.

9/17 - Manny Ramirez was the top hitter (in SWP terms) for the second consecutive night. That hasn't happened often. (I'm not going back to count, however.)

Do you get the feeling that Sosa is going to lead the majors in home runs (by himself) this season for only one day - which will be the last day of the season? He keeps catching McGwire, but never passes him. If it happens that way, remember, you heard it here first.

On to football. A lot of you wrote to me yesterday to call attention to the price changes which exceeded the stated limit of $1 million. Some people were pretty irate about it, as it impacted their trading strategy going into this repricing. Most, however, just found it curious. Some even tried to rationalize it as perhaps being related to the fact that it reflect two weeks of trading, and the rules said the limit was $1 million "per week".

Well, if you haven't noticed, sometime in the dark of night the rules page has mysteriously changed. Now they say that the maximum weekly price change is $3 million. Hmmm... Seems like with the liberalized trade limit and a higher weekly cap, it's "deja vu all over again". Let's get those roster values inflating!

Obviously, I'm perturbed by the series of rules changes which have occurred after the start of the season. But, what can you do? I've always felt that fantasy football was a bit of a random game anyway. With only 16 games per player, individual games - good and bad - have a disproportionate impact relative to other fantasy sports. Now, I guess mid-season rules changes just add to the element of randomness. You'll appreciate the game more if you learn not to take it too seriously. Trust me.

It is apparent (to me, at least) that the lack of ranked SWP lists at the Smallworld site had a material impact on the trading patterns. The big gainers were the players who were in the headlines, or who were "name brands". Some of the lesser known players - like Duce Staley, for instance - were difficult to detect. Had there been a way for the masses to notice him, I suspect we'd have seen a Bartolo Colon-like price spike. (SW baseball players may remember that Colon began the season with a 196 SWP shutout over Anaheim, which propelled his name - with his low $670,000 price - to the top echelon of early season pitching leaders. He turned out to be the biggest price gainer in week #1.) Hopefully, player lists ranked by points will be available soon. I hate games that are inefficient and grounded in ignorance. (In the spirit of full disclosure, you can guess who owns Duce Staley on his roster.)

There doesn't appear to be much of a bye week effect in the price changes, either. I wonder how many people will get caught with "pointless" players this weekend, since the next allocation of trades won't be doled out until after the weekend. (Unless, of course, the rules are relaxed again.)

Finally, back to baseball for one more comment. Many CNN/SI "Perfect Rotation" managers have emailed me in the last few days to report that they can't access their teams. (Since my email address is the only one which appears anywhere at that site, I get all the complaints!) Although this is evidently a widespread problem, I have been able to get in without problem. (This may explain why my "We are Borg" team has been able to advance its ranking of late - now at #61 through Sept. 15. Ha - ha! Resistance is futile! You will be Assimilated! Oops, sorry - just couldn't resist...) I don't know what the problem is, but I'm sure Smallworld is aware of it. So, you don't need to notify me. Between baseball managers who are high and dry, and football managers who are trying to figure out the rules, my email box has been quite active over the past several days. And to all you football players who thought that changing the rules was a frustration, now you know what to really dread....

9/16 - Manny Ramirez blasted three deep ones last night, missing triple-digit SWP territory by one pt. Manny will never qualify as a brain surgeon, and Tribe fans always hold their breaths when he runs the bases, but he has quietly put up a 40 HR, 129 RBI, .295 avg season.

I think I have accurate football stats posted now, although I'd appreciate your continuous checking. Team defense stats are still the most suspect, since I've had to assemble them manually.

9/15 - Last night offered the extremes of pitching and hitting. El Duque threw his first major league shutout, a 3-hit, 9-K jewel at the ("Here we go again!") Red Sox. Hernandez may have the greatest volatility of any pitcher, with 6 negative SWP games, but also 5 games above 150 SWP. Carlos Perez also threw a beauty, surrendering only a meaningless 9th inning HR to Colorado. Carlos seems to have found his groove in Dodger blue, and will be an interesting pitcher to consider in next season's fantasy draft.

At the other end of the spectrum was the White Sox 17-16 squeaker over the Tigers. This game featured four (count'em, 4) blown saves, 18 pitchers (tying a ML record), 12 walks (11 courtesy of Detroit pitchers!), a 5-hit, 5-run, 4-RBI, 97 SWP night for Juan Encarnacion, and a 5-hit, 5-RBI night for Albert ("it's not about money") Belle. Three other teams also scored in double digits last night.

Turning to football, Garrison Hearst will provide an interesting early season test of the "bye week" effect in trading. He's gotten off to a great start, but has a bye this Sunday. Without the bye, he'd be a cinch to appreciate the max. But because of the bye, you'd expect him to be sold by anyone who was alert. It's a tough call, as there are evidently a lot of SW managers who are "a few bricks short of a full load." (Check out the latest feedback letter for a clarification of the handling of bye week pricing, which is different from last year's treatment.)

If you haven't yet seen it, SW has changed the football trading rules, evidently because a lot of players couldn't figure out the previous rules (hence, my caustic comment in the previous paragraph.) As I interpret the new rule, we now get 64 trades over the course of the season (4 trades per week for 16 trading weeks.) That's an awful lot of trades - I'm not sure I know how to use that many productively.

I'll have completed football stats posted by mid-afternoon (fingers crossed). Yesterday was a real treat. I started by surfing around late yesterday morning, trying to find any site with stats updated through Sunday's games. ESPN's individual player stats were updated, so I used those for the first pass - only to discover that they had somehow botched the fumble data. USA Today had updated data on team defenses, only I later discovered that some teams were updated, others weren't, and some data was incorrect. Finally, in late afternoon, Yahoo posted player stats that seemed to be both complete and accurate. So, after several false starts, I finally got preliminary stats posted last night. (Team defense stats still have a few errors which will be corrected today.) It appears that "haste makes waste" will be the watchword for football stats posting this year, and going forward, Monday night will probably be the earliest I can typically get Sunday's stats posted.

9/13 - If you're looking for the answers to yesterday's trivia question, I put it in the feedback section.

My Perfect Rotation team, "We are Borg", has finally cracked into the top 100, with a ranking of 89th through 9/10. Don't know if I can sustain it, but it's nice to be in double digits, if only for a day. "Species 8472" still hovers in the mid-100's on the Smallworld site. Each team has 8 trades left, so pitching trades over the last two weeks will decide the ultimate level of success.

9/12 - The big stick yesterday was wielded by the unlikely Gerald Williams, with 2 homers (including a grand slam) good for 94 SWP, tied for the 13th best hitting game of the season. Williams' blasts helped propel yesterday's biggest price gainer, John Smoltz, to his 15th win in a very respectable 116 SWP outing.

Here's a good trivia question I heard the other day: Can you name the only pitcher who has faced Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Roger Maris in a major league game? I'll post the anwser tomorrow. (It's not all that difficult, actually.)

A good number of you have questioned the validity of the team defense points posted at the Smallworld site. I kept waiting for Smallworld to post a notice about this, but I guess not. When stats were first posted on Wednesday, the SWP formula used for team defense was incorrect, and thus, all team defenses were improperly scored. After noticing the error, SW quickly corrected the points awarded to Smallworld teams, but the listing of points for individual team defenses in the roster section still shows the incorrect total. I'm sure they'll get this corrected next week, but in the meantime, your team points are already correct.

9/11 - Compare these stats for two nameless pitchers:

Name    IP    H   BB   SO   W-L   ERA
 "A"   236  207   48  238  18-6  2.35 
 "B"   233  185   37  188  17-8  2.20