Backyard Baseball League Season 7

## Season 7

Screenshot of the final score from the Athletics' Game 5 win over the Mariners.

## **The Beginnings**

Season 6 was the first BBL season where the participants were divided by skill level, and a similar idea was implemented for Season 7. The previous season had 12 teams each in the "Backyard League," for the veterans, and the "Frontyard League," for the rookies. This season introduced three 8-team divisions: The Backyard League still contained the veterans, the Frontyard League still contained the newcomers, but the "Indoor League" consisted of veterans not quite at the skill level of Backyard, and newer players who were deemed too skilled for Frontyard. Each team would play the other teams in their division twice each.

Due to the imbalanced skill of the three leagues, the 8-team playoffs would consist of 4 Backyard teams, 2 Indoor teams, and 2 Frontyard teams.

## **Setting Up the Season**

The 24 coaches signed on to Season 7 were as follows:

Backyard League

Indoor League

Frontyard League

## **The Draft**

The three leagues combined for a 24-team, 9-round draft. The format is known as a "scattered snake" draft, where each team gets one pick per round, but the order of each round is different in order to make each team's total draft positioning relatively even.

Coach Jarod Johnson of the Expos stunned the league once again. A season after selecting Angela Delvecchio with the first overall pick in the draft, JJ moved up in the draft to obtain the 1st and 7th overall picks, which he used to draft Leah Wayne and Albert Pujols

The last pick of the draft was Sophie Meyer of the Monsters, the clone of the 7th overall pick, Pujols.

## **The Season**

Some coaching changes took place during the season. Jarod Johnson was dismissed after his game 2 after being caught cheating. He was replaced by rookie coach hitace. jlund24 had to resign as coach of the Bombers due to a personal matter. Newcomer Repub92 took over for the rest of the season.

### Players of the Week

A new weekly tradition was invented this year, as each league was awarded a Batter of the Week and a Pitcher of the Week, given to the in-game players who made the biggest impact at the plate and on the mound. The winners were as follows:

### Match of the Week

Another tradition was created this season, as one game per week was featured as the Match of the Week on various league members' Twitch accounts. Both opponents recorded video of their games, sent it to the MotW organizers, who then spliced the videos together and provided commentary over them. Match of the Week became notable for featuring many close games throughout the season, even though the matchups were not always selected by how evenly matched the opponents were.

### Final Standings

At the end of the season, the final standings were as follows. Teams in **bold** made the playoffs.

The Mariners, Monsters, and Phillies were locked in a three-way tie for the fourth and final playoff spot from the Backyard League. The Monsters earned the top seed for the tiebreaker matches based on second-half record. The Mariners beat the Phillies and then the Monsters to secure the 4th spot.

The Dodgers defeated the Twins in a tiebreaker game to earn the 2nd and final playoff spot from the Frontyard League.

### Stats

The stats were well-kept throughout the season. The league leaders are listed below: (**Bold** indicates league record, ERA and WHIP are minimum 28 innings pitched)

## **The Playoffs**

The Season 7 playoffs may go down in history as the strangest BBL playoffs of all time. There was drama, do-overs, and an unexpected champion.

### Structure

Even before the playoffs began, there was controversy surrounding the playoffs format. As the league was divided into three leagues, for the BBL veterans (Backyard League), intermediates (Indoor League), and rookies or inexperienced players (Frontyard League), the playoff format reflected the differences in supposed skill levels. The top four teams in the Backyard would make the playoffs, and be the hosts in the first rounds to the top two Indoor teams and the top two Frontyard teams. The #1 Backyard seed would face the #2 Frontyard seed, #2 Backyard faced #1 Frontyard, #3 Backyard faced #2 Indoor, and #4 Backyard faced #1 Indoor. Some league members thought this was a fair playoff structure, as the Backyard teams are supposedly "better", and therefore deserved more playoff spots. Others disagreed, saying that it was too skewed in favor of Backyard and thus too hard for Indoor or Frontyard teams to make the playoffs. Indoor coach NateInDisney of the Angels even went so far as to forfeit a game in protest of the playoff format. In an ironic twist, the Angels missed the playoffs by one game and likely would have made it had they not forfeited that game.

### Participants

After the season and the tiebreaker games, the bracket was as follows:

* #1 Backyard: Red Sox (11-3) vs. #2 Frontyard: Dodgers (10-4)
	+ The Dodgers beat the Twins in a tiebreaker game to claim the #2 Frontyard seed
* #4 Backyard: Mariners (6-8) vs. #1 Indoor: Diamondbacks (13-1)
	+ The Mariners defeated the Phillies and the Monsters in a three-way tie for the 4th spot in the Backyard League
* #2 Backyard: Cubs (10-4) vs. #1 Frontyard: Athletics (11-3)
* #3 Backyard: Wombats (9-5) vs. #2 Indoor: Rangers (10-4)

### First Round

To add to the controversy of the Backyard getting 4 playoff teams compared to 2 in the other leagues, all four Backyard teams lost their first round matchup.

* The Red Sox lost two straight games to the Dodgers, who reached the 50-run safety net in both games against the weak pitching of the Sox in the hitter-friendly Steele Stadium.
* The Cubs lost to the Athletics in two straight games after their grounder attack was thwarted by the strong A's defense.
* The Wombats lost to the Rangers 2 games to 1; facing elimination, jyknight of the Rangers scored his first career 50-run safety net, and then staved off elimination in game three as well.
* The Mariners lost to the Diamondbacks in three games; each game was high-scoring and closely contested.

### Second Round

The second round of the playoffs sparked even more controversy. On the left side of the bracket, the Dodgers were set to face the Diamondbacks. Dodgers coach hitace had to leave town suddenly for a family situation, and chose to forfeit rather than make the whole league wait on him, as he wasn't sure when he would be able to play again. Simultaneously, Diamondbacks coach TheRealSisu was disqualified after failing to meet the requirement of submitting videos of each playoff game. This left the door open for the Red Sox and Mariners to get back into the playoff race. However, having being beaten fair and square, coach aesnop of the Red Sox decided it would not be right to re-enter the playoff bracket, so he bequeathed the World Series berth to JorgesBankAccount and the Mariners.

On the right side of the bracket, things went more smoothly, as the A's pulled off a second straight upset, beating the Rangers in two straight games to clinch a World Series berth.

### World Series

In an unlikely World Series matchup, the 6-8 Mariners, who won the berth by default, matched up against the 11-3 Frontyard League A's, led by rookie coach MelloMathTeacher.

* Immediately, it was clear that the Mariners' technique of tiring out pitchers would not work well, as the A's had several good pitchers and that stellar infield defense. The A's took Game 1 by a score of 13-8.
* Getting a couple more breaks to go their way, the Mariners tied the series at 1 after winning in a narrow 13-12 game.
* Game Three titled the scales back in the A's favor, as their defense shut down the Mariners offense, winning 10-4 and take a 2-1 series advantage.
* Facing elimination, the Mariners turned it all the way up. Getting a fortunate nerf on the AI side, the Mariners faced Ray Tran as starting pitcher instead of Todd Xavier, which made all the difference. The Mariners were able to use their dink-and-dunk offensive strategy, and it resulted in a 29-16 victory to tie up the series and send it to a decisive Game 5.
* In the second straight World Series' Game 5, both featuring JorgesBankAccount, the A's turned in a game for the ages. Dawn Cozart received a batting boost and used it to her full advantage, batting 3-5 with 3 HRs and 10 RBIs. The A's as a whole racked up 20 steals during the game. Ultimately, the A's captured the World Series championship, defeating the Mariners 21-14 in Game 5, 3 games to 2 in the series.

### Consolation Bracket

All non-playoff teams were invited to play in the consolation bracket. Exactly 8 teams volunteered for the bracket, so the format ended up being the same as the big playoffs. The 2-12 Melonheads were quite the shock, advancing to the consolation championship after upsetting the Backyard League representative Phillies. However, the Melonheads' Cinderella run stopped there, as the Bombers swept them away in the championship, 3 games to none.

## **League Awards**

After the season, all coaches were eligible to vote on three awards for the league: "The Jocinda" (modeled after the MLB MVP), the "Ace Wilson Award" (modeled after the Cy Young Award), and the "Goldie Glove" (modeled after the Gold Glove).

* **The Jocinda** was won by Jay Green of the Diamondbacks. Jay rewrote the record books with an otherworldly statline. He broke the records for batting average (0.934), slugging percentage (2.934), and home runs (37).
* **The Ace Wilson Award** was won by Brad Radke of the Mariners. Brad set a new league record with 130 strikeouts pitched, while also posting a microscopic ERA (0.30) and WHIP (0.33)
* **The Goldie Glove** was won by Star Moonbeam of the Wombats. As the dominance of catchers waned, the league recognized the dastardly defense of a super fast first baseman. Dropped balls or off-target throws were minimized as Star could run over to ball and still get back to the base in time.

## **Aftermath**

Season 8 will be highly anticipated. It will also be the first time that the defending champion did not return to defend their crown, as champion MelloMathTeacher cited a busy work schedule as reasoning to sit out Season 8.