McCarthy Madness

Many baseball authorities would rank Tommy McCarthy as the worst player in the Hall of Fame. His career totals would be lousy enough for a middle infielder, but for a corner outfielder they're downright atrocious. Not surprisingly, then, McCarthy rode the pine for the first four seasons of my Strat-O-Matic league. He bounced around between a couple of teams, getting in some work here and there as a pinch hitter or late-game defensive replacement. 

Last season, the arrival of our expansion team, the Resolutes, drained the talent pool and turned a lot of benchwarmers into starters. McCarthy found himself the Opening Day third baseman on the Resolutes, but his athleticism and skill as a defensive outfielder did not translate to the hot corner. The Resolutes shipped him out to the Canaries midway through the season as a throw-in to a blockbuster trade headlined by pitcher Rube Waddell and center fielder Pete Hill. 

The upshot was that McCarthy got more playing time on the Canaries, and now, in Season 6, he cracked the lineup as the Birds' everyday right fielder. How's he doing on his new team and in his new role? Well, at about the one-quarter mark of the regular season, he's leading the league in home runs! Of course, it's a statistical fluke -- he had zero home runs coming into this season -- but it's cool to see this bit player get his moment in the sun.

Druid Cycle Matrix

For years -- see this blog post from almost exactly seven years ago! -- I've wanted to create a spreadsheet to track all of my Druid Cycle campaign information, such as the names of people, places, etc. The sheer scope of the project put me off, despite having created similar spreadsheets for my Shattered Realm and Torchlight settings. The truth is that Druid Cycle is bigger than everything else put together, with threads that go as far back as 1991. That's thirty years ago, people!

I've been chipping away at a Druid Cycle spreadsheet for a while, and now I'm pleased to report that I've completed a first draft. As of this writing, there are 742 named characters, 67 groups, and 342 unique locations. What's next? Lots of review, for one thing. The stat blocks are a major issue for this review. Every non-immortal NPC in the character list, no matter how minor, is tied to a stat block from the Monster Manual or another D&D reference book from the current edition of the game. If he's got a name, he's got a stat block. However, I'm not entirely confident that the characters are "ranked" properly. The flat math of Fifth Edition really compresses the power curve between the least- and most-powerful characters (especially compared to the previous-edition-that-shall-not-be-named), but I still need to be able to show meaningful distinctions between the abilities of characters. I'll also need to deal with the game's most prominent characters, for whom generic stat blocks just don't work. I'll probably create full-fledged character sheets for the likes of Cyfrinach and Iskander, but that's a project for another day.

Playoff Heroes & Zeroes

With five seasons in the books for my historical hockey league, there's enough data to start looking at interesting trends. I was curious about which players have tended either to shine or falter in the playoffs, and after reviewing the data, I've found that we have some clear playoff heroes and zeroes. (Note: For the purposes of this post, I'm focusing solely on outliers and ignoring guys whose playoff performances have been consistent with their regular-season performances.)

Heroes

• Frank Rankin: This three-time Creighton Cup champion now ranks second in career playoff goals and points, and he's first in career playoff games played. Although he's had more opportunities to compile playoff stats than any other player, Rankin has definitely turned it up a notch in these high-leverage games; he's posted 0.64 goals per game and 1.14 points per game in playoff action, compared to 0.37 goals per game and 0.87 points per game during the regular season.
• Mike Grant: Small sample size alert! Grant has played only six postseason games, but he's absolutely dominated during those contests, such that he sits third all-time in playoff goals and points. The guy is rocking out at 1.0 goals per game (vs. 0.31 in the regular season) and 2.17 points per game (vs. 1.19 in the regular season). Those numbers are on par with the regular-season and playoff scoring pace of Cyclone Taylor, the league's best player.

Zeroes

• George Richardson: It pains me to write this passage, because Richardson is a quiet star in this league (and, in real life, a war hero who died in battle in World War I). In the playoffs, however, this steady point producer has struggled. Despite 0.47 goals per game and 1.03 points per game in regular-season play, he's produced just 0.13 goals per game and 0.38 points per game in the playoffs.
• Riley Hern: The award for worst playoff performer ever goes to star goalie Riley Hern. He's second all-time in regular-season wins and has put up great stats (.908 save percentage, 2.93 goals-against average), but in the playoffs he really stinks up the joint (.873 save percentage, 3.78 goals-against average). His record of one win against eight losses only adds to the ignominy; in fact, Hern all by himself has racked up 47% of all playoff losses in league history!

Opening Day(s)

Baseball is back! With the Canaries hosting the Resolutes, rookie John McGraw lined out to George Wright to get Season 6 underway. With aces John Clarkson and Tim Keefe toeing the rubber, the game moved at a brisk pace. Keefe wasn't quite as sharp as last year's Pitcher MVP, however, and the Resolutes played with a lead for most of the game. The most dramatic moment came in the top of the sixth, when Fred Clarke homered off of Keefe on Opening Day for the second straight season. The Canaries made it interesting in the eighth and ninth against the Resolutes' new closer, Joe McGinnity, but the veteran managed to hang in there to seal a 4-2 road win.

Opening Day for our other two franchises involved the Blue Legs visiting the Haymakers in a rematch of last year's championship series. Playoff MVP Cy Young clearly didn't have his best stuff, and the Legs jumped all over him. Nap Lajoie's two-run shot was the backbreaker in a 6-1 triumph for the visitors. Old Hoss Radbourn, pitching for the Legs, managed to tie John Clarkson's record 21-inning scoreless streak (set at the beginning of last season), but a Bobby Wallace single prevented him from claiming a new record. I guess that's about the only positive takeaway for the Haymakers from that game.

It doesn't get any easier for the defending champs. Tomorrow, the Haymakers visit the Resolutes, where the legendary Christy Mathewson will make his first career start in this league!

Is It Baseball Time Already?!

I may be slogging through the Soulbound rulebook and working on a massive but top-secret Druid Cycle project, but I made sure to take some time tonight to prep for the upcoming Season 6 of my nineteenth-century Strat-O-Matic baseball league. It seems like forever since these lads took the field, but the new season really snuck up on me.

Last time around, the Haymakers captured their third championship in five years with a Creighton Cup series win over the Blue Legs. However, the balance of power in the league may well shift, as I had one more batch of players to distribute before I have, at last, reached the end of the Hall of Famers who have even the most tenuous ties to premodern ball. In the final player dispersal draft ever, the Canaries landed little-known but phenomenally talented hurler Addie Joss. The the second-year Resolutes, meanwhile, loaded up with stud pitcher Christy Mathewson and leadoff hitter John McGraw; I like the way our newest team is shaping up. I'd love to see them make a run at the playoffs, much like their expansion cousins -- the newly minted league-champion Millionaires -- did in my hockey league. 

Opening Day is tomorrow!

All Is Forgiven...For Now!

Games Workshop guys: "Uh oh, John is really unhappy with the Soulbound RPG Starter Set. We'd better announce some awesome new Age of Sigmar stuff to placate him!"

Damn you! I want that Extremis box!

The Isles Win It All!

On a brighter note, I won the Stanley Cup today with the New York Islanders in NHL '94 -- my first championship in that video game since, well, the actual year 1994. Why the Islanders, you ask? Why not my semi-local Golden Knights, my beloved Rangers, or even the long-suffering Sabres? I've really grown to like the Isles over their last two postseason runs. Maybe next year they'll find a way to get past the increasingly irritating Tampa Bay Lightning and newly-emerging supervillain Nikita Kucherov, who's likely to find a place of (dis)honor -- alongside the likes of Tom Wilson, Alex Ovechkin, and Brad Marchand -- in my pantheon of hockey heels.

TPKs are Not Fun

A starter set for a roleplaying game can have many objectives, but among the most important, surely, is the need to draw players in, excite them, and leave them eager to play more. The Soulbound Starter Set, by contrast, makes me want to stuff its terribly unbalanced introductory adventure into a troggoth's maw. One combat encounter early in the adventure gives players a two-in-three chance of encountering either a spine-worm or multiple bore-beetles. In either case, the party is completely overmatched. Both creatures have attacks bearing the outrageous Rend trait (with attacks at 8D6, so you're looking at a 77% chance per attack for permanent armor damage), and both also have Mettle -- a game mechanic that (among other things) allows a character to make a second attack on their turn. Maybe I'm truly not understanding the math of the game, but I can't see how you can avoid a TPK unless you have a full party of five heroes, all at full strength, and you get really lucky. How is this fun?!

Sigmar, Smite This Starter Set!

I really dig the Soulbound hardcover rulebook, but I'm quickly becoming disappointed by the Starter Set for this Warhammer Age of Sigmar (I still think they need a colon there) tabletop roleplaying game. In a well intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to teach new players the rules of the game in a piecemeal fashion, the end result is a confusing hodgepodge that leaves me with more questions than answers on every page. The worst part is that there's a showstopper of a problem in the very first combat encounter. 

So, I'm asking myself, do these fyrehunter critters really destroy the characters' armor during the first battle? Like, permanently destroy it? Yes, and yes. Maybe I'm just having flashbacks to the dreaded rust monster from D&D days of yore, but I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the game designers' decision to gank the party right from the get-go. I mean, I get that the setting is intended to be more harsh than a typical D&D campaign, but what do you say to players when you hamstring their characters before they have any idea of what's happening?

LOL grimdark, amirite?!

Here's how it goes down. In that first combat encounter, the party faces no fewer than four fyrehunters. The book indicates that these creatures use their armor-destroying attack on the second round of combat (and the monsters are too tough to one-shot during the first round). Their attack has the Rend trait, and in Soulbound it means that for every unmodified roll of 6 on a D6, the attack permanently reduces the defender's Armor rating by one. The fyrehunters roll 4D6 for that attack, and the odds of rolling at least one 6 on 4D6 is 52%. Most of the pre-generated characters in the Starter Set have an Armor rating of 1 or 2, so even a single 6 is a crippling blow to their defenses. Although the full rulebook provides rules for repairing armor and prices for purchasing new armor, the Starter Set includes none of this information. A character whose armor is destroyed during this first encounter is stuck for the rest of the adventure. If I ever play this system with the boys, you'd better believe I'm houseruling that Rend trait!

Soulbound

So Warhammer Age of Sigmar has a tabletop RPG called Soulbound. I picked up the gorgeously-illustrated core rulebook this week during my long-awaited trip to Ra-cha-cha. Soulbound looks like a lot of fun, and utilizes that oh-so-trendy dice-pool mechanic, along with some additional rules that encourage the party to work together...or else suffer together! I'm not sure the boys and I will find the time to play it, but it should provide some great reading material.

Season 5 Awards

I love handing out the (imaginary) trophies at the end of each season! Let's take a look at our star performers from Season 5!

Scoring Title: Cyclone Taylor, D, Victorias

Taylor paced the league with 30 points (10 goals, 20 assists), notching his second 30-point season; he finished just two points shy of the record he set back in Season 2. A model of consistency, Taylor scored double-digit goals for the fifth straight campaign; no other player has more than three seasons of 10+ goals. As if he needed more black ink in the record book, his 20 assists are a new single-season mark. This year's scoring championship is Taylor's third such title in the league's five-season history.

Runners Up: Barney Stanley, RW, Millionaires; Dan Bain, C, Thistles

Forward MVP: Barney Stanley, RW, Millionaires

Although Taylor passed him in the scoring race, Stanley finished second in the league in points with 26 (13 G, 13 A), and his 13 goals led the league. He also set a single-season record with a +14 rating, a testament to his peerless play at five-on-five hockey.

Runners Up: Dan Bain, C, Thistles; Gord Roberts, LW, Bulldogs

Defenseman MVP: Cyclone Taylor, Victorias

In a great year for D-men, this season saw two blueliners among the league's top five in points and four in the top 15. Hod Stuart had an epic season and appeared to be the frontrunner for much of the year, but the numbers don't lie: Taylor outscored Stuart by six points (30 vs. 24) and beat him solidly in plus/minus (+5 vs. 0). Taylor has now won this award in four of the league's five seasons.

Runners Up: Hod Stuart, Thistles; Graham Drinkwater, Millionaires

Goaltender MVP: Riley Hern, Thistles

Of all the awards this year, this one was the easiest call (especially because playoff performance doesn't factor into the decision). Hern led the league's netminders in wins (9), Goals-Against Average (2.63), and Save Percentage (.914) en route to picking up the second Goaltender MVP of his career. Kudos to Hugh Lehman, however, for taking a big step forward in his sophomore campaign.

Runners Up: Hugh Lehman, Millionaires; Bowse Hutton, Victorias

Rookie of the Year: Duke Keats, C, Millionaires

Two deserving candidates, but only one trophy! Frank Foyston set a rookie record with 15 points (5 G, 10 A), while Duke Keats was right behind him with 14 (6 G, 8 A). Keats had the better plus/minus (-4 vs. -8), although neither man would have cause to brag about those numbers. Where Keats separated himself, however, was in leading the Millies' top-ranked penalty-killing unit and establishing himself as one of the best faceoff men in the league. All things considered, Keats was truly the most valuable rookie.

Runners Up: Frank Foyston, RW, Comets; Jack Walker, LW, Thistles

Playoff MVP: Hugh Lehman, G, Millionaires

This was the most difficult trophy to award, probably because it forced me to acknowledge an earlier mistake. Last season, Paddy Moran of the Bulldogs won this honor, but as I looked again at the numbers, I really think that his teammate Bruce Stuart should have won instead. However, I can't punish Lehman for that oversight, as the Millies' goaltender put in a superlative performance (4-1, 2.60, .920). Goalies have now won this award in three out of five seasons; I guess that's...okay, as they do add more to their team's chances of winning than any other position, but it still seems weird.

Runners Up: Duke Keats, C, Millionaires; Graham Drinkwater, D, Millionaires