Captain's blog stardate February 27, 2013: The first captain's meeting of the season took place on this night. What is usually a quick meet and greet turned out to be a long dragged out affair. In the first captain's meeting we talk about the budget, how registration is going, equipment, etc., pretty quick stuff. It was going smoothly until the point in the meeting when the prez asked if there was any new business. A couple of items were brought up and a discussion/ debate was underway. What seemed like hours later (probably more like an hour), the new business items were resolved (sorta) and the first meeting was in the books. The next captain's meeting (March 27) is the one that takes the longest to get through. The usual items are discussed, but the part that seems to take up the most time is going through the ratings of each of the registered players.
At the end of each season, the team captains rate all the players on their roster and these ratings are recorded and used to assist in the following season draft. The league also has a ratings committee who will go through the list prior to the March 27 meeting. The committee will comb through each level and try to place every player where they believe they should be. The ratings committee will spend several hours going through the players. With the captains ratings of the players and the ratings committee spending several hours looking at every player on the list, you would think that we would go in to the meeting and it would be all said and done. Not the case; there always seem to be captains that think certain players should be rated differently. And so the debate begins...and several hours later we have a ratings sheet. I would really like to see the captains rely on the judgement of the rating's committee. The difference between a rated 1 and 2 or a 9 and 10 is so small... and these are the kinds of numbers we discuss at length. In my opinion a high rated 2 is as good as a low rated 1.
Once we have the ratings figured out, we move on to team shirt colours and order of the draft. These two things move quite quickly; each team picks a number out of a hat or some other vessel (the last two years it's been an easter egg with some chocolate goodies and the number) and starting with number 15 this year, the teams select their shirt colours. The order of the draft is decided by the same numbers. The team that chose their shirt colour last will be the team picking first in the draft. The Hurtin' Units have been in the middle of the pack in all three season, and we will be in the middle of the pack again in 2013, picking 8th. In our first two seasons we picked Royal Blue and in the third season we ended up with Kelly Green as our shirt colours. We are hoping for a different colour this season. Captain's Blog Stardate March 27, 2013: The second captain's meeting of the season took place on this date. As I mentioned earlier this is the longest meeting of the season. I was expecting a long meeting (usually 3 hours in length) and I was not far off the mark. The ratings debate will always be the focus of this meeting and we hope, in the end, we get it right.
We hope we get it right; but with a fresh crop of new players every season, the rookie position, on our teams, is always a lottery pick. This season the rookie player will be slotted in as a rated number 6. This was a change brought up over the last several seasons and it was finally voted in for this year. The sixth slot seems about right; it's the middle of the pack. With the old setup, the new/ rookie players were slotted in the 10 position. There was nothing wrong with the players coming in as a 10, but unfortunately some of the number 10s were number 1s and some were number 12s. I agree that the players being brought in as a six seems, on the surface, to be a little more fair. We have seen in previous seasons that the rookie position can upset the parity of the league.
In addition to the ratings being sorted out, we also decided on the numbers of games played on the season and how many teams we are going have in the league. With the number of players registered, we had two options for the number of teams; we could go with 14 teams with a roster of 13 players per team or we could go with 15 teams with 12 players. The captains voted in favour of 15 teams of 12 players. There were two sets of captains/ teams that are not going to return for the 2013 season; The Lucky Stiffs and the Banshees are the teams not returning. And since we need 15 sets of captains, two new sets were brought on board. The new captains are John Tessier with co-captain John Barrow and Chuck Cragg with co-captain Steve Black.
The team picking last for team colour,
gets first pick of player at the draft.
As I mentioned earlier, this is also the meeting when the shirt colours are decided.The Hurtin' Units will be dressed in black shirts with yellow lettering in the 2013 season. I said I wanted a change and this is definitely better than the Kelly Green. Over the 3 seasons the team wearing black has won the T.O.T championship. Hurtin' Units were the eighth pick over all in the choosing of the shirt colours. We were not the first team to chose black, the first team (Dogcatchers) actually took black with white lettering. I'm looking forward to wearing a different colour this season, the Kelly Green last season was a little soft, black is definitely a tougher team colour.
Draft Order and Shirt Colour Order Team Shirt Colour/Piping 1 Grisslies Kelly Green/Black 2 Dodge City Rounders Purple/White 3 Tap Masters Gold/Black 4 Blues Brothers Cream/Blue 5 Gruesome Devils Forest/White 6 Beer Bros. White/Black 7 Draft Kings Teal/White 8 Hurtin’ Units Black/Gold 9 Hot Tub Woody’s Gray/Black 10 Brew Jays Navy/White 11 Dislocated Joints Maroon/White 12 Dog Catchers Black/White 13 Dusty Cleats Orange/Black 14 Red Dogs Red/White 15 Rusty Rebels Royal/Yellow The Draft is quickly approaching; Mike and I are looking forward to draft day and meeting our new teammates. Bring on draft day.
People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring." - Rogers Hornsby.
Get back, get back, get back to where we once blogged. It's time to stir in the man cave, and come out of hibernation. I don't usually start blogging the Hurtin' Units activity until the snow is gone and the player draft is in site. Sure, it's a good idea to get the blog out of the cave and take it out for a test spin, but what do I have to babble about? The weather? The Leafs? The Blue Jays? This is a Hurtin' Units blog and we haven't played since September.
Mike was asking me why I haven't posted anything in a while, " Nutin' to write about my card playing, stick it to the Jimmer (playing cards), co-captain". So since he wanted to see something on the Hurtin' Units blog, I thought I would write a little post to appease the wing man. After all, it's probably good to take the blog out for a pre-season spin to figure out how to navigate my way around it again. There are always new things being added to the blog world and I should keep myself a breast of what's going on. What the heck is this button for? D'oh!!...now I remember.
Test Boxscore
The draft is almost upon us and I really feel like I have been in hibernation for the winter. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled the winter is almost over and baseball is going to start in a soon. In fact, Mike, Piero and I went on a road trip today (March 16) to National Sports to check out the baseball goodies. A few small purchases went down, but I think we are all waiting for the sales to come up. The draft date is set for Saturday April 6, 2013, that's like 3 weeks away. This upcoming season is the forth for the Units and maybe it will be the forth time's a charm for us. Since we joined the league in 2010 it's been a pretty decent ride.
In the first season (2010) we had an impressive record of 19-5-2 and won the league with an impressive point total of 40 points. The Units struggled in the playoffs getting off to a slow start, but managed to get into a position on the Saturday to play anelimination game against the Wild. The Hurtin' Units would lose the elimination game by a score of 18-15. The Wild would go on to play on Sunday and win the Championship for the second season in a row.
In the second season (2011) the Units had a record of 10-12-2 for a total of 22 points. A losing season in the win/loss column, but a winning group of guys on the field. We a had 2 rookie players, a good mix of veterans and some real solid bats in the lineup, but we just couldn't put it all together. The Hurtin' Units highlight of this season was when they defeated the Dusty Cleats (a team that only lost 2 games all season) in August by a score of 15-14 handing the awesome Cleats their first loss. In the playoffs the Units struggled and on the Saturday we were knocked out with only 3 points in the round robin, not enough to even make an elimination game. . The Dusty Cleats and the Grisslies would would meet in the finals. The Grisslies would prevail by a score of 7-5 to win the T.O.T. Championship.
In the third season (2012) the Units had another losing record. Despite having a solid lineup, we only had a record of 9-13-2. We had 2 ties in each of our 3 seasons, we really like to get those 2 ties per year in, don't we? We struggled out of the gate and when you do that, it's tough to make up ground. The first game of the season seemed promising with a 5-5 tie against the Dog Catchers, but then our wheels started to spin. By game # 5 , the Units record was 0-4-1, four straight losses and the only team without a win. The thing that the standings didn't really show was that 3 of the last 4 losses were by a single run. In game # 2 we lost to the Grisslies by a score of 17-16, in game # 4 we lost to the Rusty Rebels by a score of 12-11 and in game # 5 we lost to the Brew Jays by a score of 22-21. The only game in the first 5 played, that we were not in, was against the H.T Woodies when the Units lost 22-9.
I've mentioned the number of games we lost by 1 run before, but the final standings could have been quite different if we could even turned one of those losses around. The Hurtin' Units had 5 one run and two 2 run losses in the 2012 season. If the Units could have even turned 1 of those losses into a win, we would have been tied for 8 place and 2 wins would have seen a 7 place tie. Despite having a losing record in the overall standings, the Hurtin' Units competed in most of our games. And maybe for this reason, it really shouldn't come as a real surprise that the Units went to the semi finals in the playoff weekend. I mentioned throughout the entire 2012 season that the Hurtin' Units were this Jekell and Hyde team...one night the team offense couldn't be stopped, but the defense was distracted. Other nights the defense was stellar and the offense was AWOL on the evening. It was that type of season!
It was also a season of injuries and boo-boos...Mike went down early in the season, Kidder was playing in pain, Clayton got eaten by a dog, Davey got his nose pierced and also hurt his knee, Mark pulled his quad in his first game, Anicete torn up his knee and Craig also pulled something (not sure what). These are a lot of distractions to overcome. In the 2011 season, the Hurtin' Units called for only one sub all season, in 2012 I couldn't keep up with the weekly requests. And on top of all the injuries, this was my first season pitching as a P1, need I say more...With all this going on, I think we held it together for a overall good season. It's been more than 6 months since the Hurtin' Units played their last game of the season. On September 16, 2012 the Units played the Brew Jays in the semi-final and lost by a score of 14-8, thus ending the Hurtin' Units season. The Brew Jays and the Beer Bros. would go on to the finals, the Beer Bros. would become the 2012 T.O.T Champions.
When I look back over the 2012 season, itwas the best of times, it was the worst of times:
In the HTKP tournament we went 3-0 in the round robin and earned a berth in the semi-finals vs. The Brew Jays, only to lose 12-5 when the Brew Jays scored 5 runs late in the game for the win. The Brew Jays would go on to win the tournament.
There were 5 Hurtin' Unit players that played for the Squirtin' Units in the August tournament. The Squirtin' Units would go on to win the tournament for the second year in a row. Thanks Rob, Clayton, Jamie, Cam and myself (Jimmer). The Hurtin' Units would win the Keg party. What can I say, we had 10 games at Coventry Park this season, 6 weeks in a row, very little time spent at the Legion and we come away with the Party. I guess this is payback for the rough schedule. Clayton Avery would win the "Most Improved Player" award; He was eaten by big dog and still wins Most Improved, a trooper indeed...
The Units beat the Brew Jays up real bad in the first game of the playoffs, shortly after they had just clinched the league championship. Final score 29-9.
We would end up in the top 2 in pool “A” in the playoffs, probably the toughest pool, and would get a bye in to Sunday. We beat the Grisslies in the quarter finals. In the semi- finals we would come up a bit short and lose to the Brew Jays again. I'm still a little bitter about a umpire call at second base that turned turned this game around.
We lost to the Brew Jays twice in a semi-final games; The first time was in the HTKP tournament, the second in the semi finals of the playoffs.
Mike and Anicete both going down with injuries. I'm disappointed that this year's edition of the Units didn't really get to play with Mike you saw a bit of what Mike brings to the team, unfortunately he was injured. I often wonder where we might have finished with Mike and Anicete both healthy. Mike's replacement (Mark B.) turned out to be very good addition to the Units.
I didn't like that Dave Kidd had to call it quits, I really liked having Dave on the team, what can I say, he made me laugh and he took on Tito...worth the price of admission for that one. Dave was a real character guy in our dugout, but with all his aches and pains, especially knees, he was forced to bow out half way through the season. This year was my first season as a P1 and I would like to thank everyone for your patience while I was going through some growing pains. I know it was painful in the early part of the season and we probably could have had a few more wins. I like to think my pitching improved over the season (still need to learn to throw) and I know I look forward to facing some of you guys next year. I know you guys a little better and I will try to stop you...LOL
2013 Hurtin' Units: The 2013 Draft is fast approaching; Mike and I are looking forward to captaining again this season. Over the first 3 seasons we drafted or picked up a total of 30 different players, not including Mike and myself. Amazing...30 different players over 3 years in the league. The 2013 draft is only 3 weeks away and there will be some new faces on our 2013 roster. Our first 3 seasons were a great ride, we have played with some great guys and we're hoping for more of the same in the forth. See ya at the draft.
