Standings Summary (and major player error issue) - Week 4

June is upon and as the summer approaches, the DMB game engine turns on the heat and turns up the offense. In the Mossback Division the Lusitania Death Speakers and John McDonald Fanclub had great weeks, winning 11 of 13 and 12 of 14 contests respectively. Lusitania has been very good over the past month and now sits atop the division with a 2 game lead on Dumai's Wells. Fanclub on the other hand, has been up and down this season showing signs of brilliance followed by inexplicable losing streaks. Currently, they have won 9 out of 10 and sit just 1/2 game out the last Wild Card slot.

While it too early to tell, the Mossback is setting up as a 5 team race for 4 playoff spots. Including the San Diego Puff, all 5 teams are within three games of each other giving us the tightest race in recent memory.

It's a similar story over in the Greenhorn Division, though to an admittedly lesser extent. Six teams are within 6 1/2 games of each other but the DC Chips and Sonoran Black Diamonds have pulled away from the pack as of late. Both teams had good weeks, with the Black Diamonds leading the entire division in Week 4 wins with 12.

This leaves four teams - Rochester Beau Brummels, Eugene Psycho Llamas, Big Mac Special Sauce, and Helena Handbasket to battle over the last two Wild Card bids. The Beau Brummels went 9-5 during the week, while the others played about .500 ball.

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The biggest story coming out of Week 4, unfortunately, has nothing to do with on the field play. The oft praised Frank Killen (78 IP, 44 H, 1.15 ERA) was found to have a grievous error in his real life stat line. Instead of recording 51 walks in 97 real life innings, 2 years ago I coded the lefty with 0 walks. Obviously, this one mistake on my part has turned Killen into an unwarranted juggernaut.

It is a situation with no clear answer and will leave bitter feelings with many owners around the league. I have made a decision on how to rectify and wanted to share the line of thinking with each of you.

• On one hand, ATB rules require owners to review of their roster in the pre-season to spot such mistakes.
  
• However, they were meant to protect the league and not the owner. If an owner doesn't spot a mistake on one of his players, he has to live with with that mistake all season long.
• Technically, this could be interpreted to cover the Killen situation but the intent of the rule was not to cover errors such as this, ones that result in crazy over performing players.
• I firmly believe that Killen needs to be corrected immediately. It is not a case of a missing HR or 2, but a complete misrepresentation of Killen's skills.
• On the other hand this is very harsh. The comish, not the Chips, made the mistake 2 years ago and the Chips, thanks two 20 resims of ATB XI data to support Killen's prowess, drafted the reliever with an 8th round pick.
• Now, this 8th round pick will likely turn into a complete bust for the remainder of the year. Harsh.
• I toyed around with the idea of splitting the difference for the current season, and recreating Killen's stat line with 25 walks. The Chips, thankfully in retrospect, were uncomfortable with this since Killen is still nowhere close to being correct. As an alternative, they suggested their FA move count be re-set to 10 and I agreed.
• This still leaves the Chips in a dire situation and I feel awful about it. Killen was drafted 149th overall and no number of picks in the 600th or so positions will come close to returning 8th round value. Thanks Steve for your honorable handling of the situation.

Still, this is far from perfect. Earlier in the season, before the start play, another owner found mistakes in their player lines that perhaps could have influenced draft position if they had been known earlier. While the mistakes were no where near has bad as Killen's, fundamentally it is the same principle we have to overcome. There is no formula (argh!) to decide when special solutions are required and I will continue to take them one by one.