Yesterday I put together some stats to attempt to show how some teams got better or worse in the offseason based on the players they added to their team. I used the VORP stat to try to accomplish that which measures how much better or worse a player might be than an average replacement player in the league.
Generally the rule of thumb in a 162 game season a Major league position player that is a starter should score somewhere around 25+ VORP to mean they were a pretty normal starting major league player. Positional players that scored 30 or 40+ VORP could usually be considered one of the better players in the league with your all stars and superstars in the higher range of numbers 50+
Starting pitching likewise should usually get 20 or 25+ VORP as well, while relief pitchers just don't see as much action. Usually with a relief pitcher anything positive VORPwise is ok enough. That would mean on average a major league team should have at least 260-300 total VORP on their team to be a team of pretty average major league talent. Since we play a slightly less involved schedule, that total number could be a bit smaller, but most teams should at least shoot for a 250 VORP to be a respectable team. Teams with less than that likely are in for a long season.
From my numbers yesterday:
| Team | BVORP | PVORP | TVORP |
| Valdosta | 304.6 | 142.2 | 446.8 |
| Boston | 218.1 | 209.6 | 427.7 |
| Atlanta | 184 | 228.9 | 412.9 |
| Colorado | 122.6 | 274.5 | 397.1 |
| Brooklyn | 213 | 142.6 | 355.6 |
| Rio Grande | 152.5 | 186 | 338.5 |
| Baltimore | 257.7 | 74.9 | 332.6 |
| Quad City | 273.5 | 54.2 | 327.7 |
| New York | 196.9 | 120.5 | 317.4 |
| Columbus | 187.3 | 73.6 | 260.9 |
| Ann Arbor | 133.1 | 119.7 | 252.8
|
| Compton | 115.2 | 130.3 | 245.5 |
| Hartford | 57.5 | 163.7 | 221.2 |
| Toronto | 101.7 | 87 | 188.7 |
| Texas | 84 | 96.3 | 180.3 |
| El Paso | 96.4 | 76.8 | 173.2 |
We can guess that El Paso, Texas, Toronto, Hartford all are probably in for pretty long seasons. We could also guess that Compton, Ann Arbor and Columbus likely will be average teams this year. One interesting thing to note is of these 7 teams, 5 are in the RL. This means based on that an early prediction could say that the RL is very likely to be a two team race between Colorado and Boston with Quad City perhaps figuring out how to slide in there. Keep in mind this has no way to predict how poorly old players will age or rookies will improve though.
The CL looks however that it will have the first close pennant race in a few years this year. Many teams were hoping that Valdosta would end its run this year, and they have fallen back to the pack but likely not as much as others would hope. Based on these numbers it seems really likely that the CL could be quite close however with Valdosta, Atlanta, Brooklyn, Rio Grande, Baltimore or even New York figuring in the mix. Just like Quad Cities in the RL, New York, Baltimore, Rio Grande all have to be considered a bit longer of a shot to pull down the title right now but with the right luck or crafty moves, they could be close enough to sneak into first.
I'm going to make another post tonight before the sim regarding "Luck" in winning the pennant and a look back at past seasons of FOOL to see how it played a factor in some of the years, while in other years we perhaps shouldn't have been suprised at all by the final results.