Eauxps I. Fourgott

## About

**Eauxps I. Fourgott** has been a coach in the BBL since Season 3. He is known for coaching the Super-Duper Melonheads in every season, deliberately making some suboptimal draft picks ("picking with my heart instead of my head"), and refusing to follow the gameplay meta, instead following the playstyle that has become known as Melonball. He also has been a coach in the BFFL since Season 3, and was the Season 3.5 champion in the Frontyard League.

Eauxps is also one of the most prolific media creators in the BBL, having written about some seasons in his blog, and posting videos of all of his official games to YouTube.

## League History

### BBL

#### Season 3

Eauxps was the last of three new recruits to the league in Season 3, having been hooked in via a recruitment post on Reddit. In the league's first 24-team season, he ended up coaching the Super-Duper Melonheads in the NL Central, and the Seattle Mariners in the AL West.

He quickly displayed a disregard for any traditional drafting strategy, taking Achmed Khan, Luanne Lui, and Sidney Webber for his teams in the first round. A general lack of draft focus resulted in two relatively hodgepodge teams.

The Mariners, captained by Sidney and Ashley Webber, were the more dynamic of the two teams, with more strong hitters and a better defense, but struggled despite a promising start to the season and finished with a 6-8 record, eliminated in the first round of the Tier 2 playoffs by the Chicago White Sox.

The Melonheads, captained by Achmed and Lulu, ended up becoming a fan favorite team among the league community. For the most part, they were not a particularly great team, ultimately finishing with a 5-9 record. They did defeat the New York Mets in an upset in the first round of the Tier 2 playoffs before being swept in the second round by the Milwaukee Brewers.

Eauxps's most notable achievement in this season was setting a new IP record and winning the Ace Wilson award with the Melonheads' Chucky Flinder.

#### Season 4

Eauxps returned for Season 4, and was one of three coaches at the start of the season to coach two teams. The Super-Duper Melonheads returned, this time playing at Sandy Flats in the AL West, while this season his second team was the Atlanta Braves in the NL East.

Eauxps entered this season with a much better understanding of the meta, and this was especially evident in his draft, which focused more on AI defense. However, some antics, like trading to acquire three of the first five draft picks at a premium price, indicated that he was still willing to make suboptimal moves. He also continued to refuse to follow the gameplay meta; in some games of this season, he made friendly agreements with other coaches to follow a ruleset that became coined as "Melonball". Predictably enough, his deviation from the meta resulted in him again failing to be a serious contender.

The Braves, who took Henri Deschenes with the #1 overall pick, had the stronger defense of the two teams, with Deschenes in particular giving opponents headaches, but this came at the cost of much offense. In a couple of games they showed that they could rack up runs when the defenses weren't too tough, but against most of the leagues' strong defense they crumbled and were unable to accomplish much. They finished the season with a 4-10 record and were swept by the Green Monsters in the first round of the Tier 3 playoffs.

The Melonheads, captained by Maria Luna and Keisha Phillips, had a philosophy of picking "big bats at Sandy Flats" while also keeping an eye out for defense. However, in practice, the bats that they picked ended up being inconsistent in their production, which, combined with a rather slow team overall, resulted in a team that only occasionally racked up the runs. A couple of defensive holes, most notably Angela Delvecchio, also prevented this from being a top-tier defense. However, the team did prove stronger when playing in Melonball match-ups. The Melonheads finished with a 5-9 record for the second straight season, tying for last place in the division but getting the nod for the Tier 2 playoffs by having beat their tied rivals, the Fishes, twice. Melonball agreements in the playoffs allowed the Melonheads to prosper, as they beat first the Oakland Orioles and then the Minnesota Twins to advance to the final round. In the Tier 2 Championship, they once again had a Melonball agreement, this time with the Mighty Wombats, and ultimately played all five games of the series, prospering in their matchups at home. However, away at Eckman Acres, they were clearly outclassed by the Wombats, ultimately losing the series 3-2.

#### Winterball

Eauxps was one of eight coaches to take part in the Winterball short season that took place after Season 4. He once again coached the Super-Duper Melonheads. In the draft, he had first pick of draft slot and chose the #1 overall pick, which he used to take Jay Green. Overall, Eauxps's draft in this season focused less on defensive meta-based choices, and more on good hitters and kids who would be fun to play with. The result was a team that, while possessing a noteworthy strong offense, was overall less strong than most of the teams in the league.

Even with a stacked offense, the Melonheads struggled to reliably produce against the stacked defenses that the league featured, only having one really big game (against the relatively weak defense of the Houston Astros). They ultimately finished the league tied for last place with a 1-6 record, having accomplished nothing of note during the season.

#### Season 5

Eauxps declined to participate in Season 5's Paste league, making it the first official league that he did not compete in since joining the BBL. However, he did return for the Lulu league, considered by many to have an advantage due to his familiarity with the Melonball ruleset that this league enforced. Eauxps coached the Super-Duper Melonheads once again for this season.

Eauxps had an overall much more conservative draft this season, only trading draft picks twice and abandoning his initial draft plans in favor of taking strong players who fell surprisingly far in the draft. While not entirely neglecting defense, he still focused primarily on offense in this draft, as a result putting together his most intimidating band of hitters in a regular season yet.

The team delivered on their promise in the regular season, as other than a 2-1 loss to the AI of the Blue Hornets, they were able to consistently put up high scores, and as a result Eauxps enjoyed a far more successful season than he had with any previous BBL team. While the team was somewhat weak on defense, and ups and downs led to some poorer performances, the Melonheads were on the whole a powerhouse team. They finished the regular season with a 10-4 record, winning the AL East as the AL's #2 seed for Eauxps's first appearance in the main playoffs.

In the playoffs, the Melonheads were demolished by the 3-seed Houston Astros in the first game, but won Game 2 when the Astros fell apart and put up a very low score. The deciding third game was suitably close, ending with a 21-20 final score, but the Melonheads won to move on to the ALCS. However, in the ALCS, they were summarily defeated by the AL champions, the Philadelphia Athletics, in two games, to be eliminated from the playoffs.

### BFFL

Eauxps joined the BFFL in Season 3, choosing the Superlative Melonheads as his team name. As part of the first season with two separate leagues, Eauxps ended up placed in the ten-team Backyard League.

With no prior fantasy experience of familiarity, Eauxps decided to approach the draft largely based on who the players were, focusing on good names and players he liked from the regular games. This resulted in an overall relatively weak team, that in particular had no star quarterbacks. While the Melonheads were capable of putting up high scores once in a while, often led by Stephanie Morgan and Maria Luna, they were an unreliable team and thus ended up losing more games than they won. The Melonheads finished the season with a 6-8 record, defeating Aesnop's Vikings to be crowned as the 7th place team in the Backyard League.

Eauxps returned for Season 3.5, a midyear season that reused the Season 3 savefile. He was placed in the six-team Frontyard League, again coaching the Superlative Melonheads. This time around Eauxps had a much better idea of how to draft, and had a couple of picks that he was arguably lucky to get a chance at, resulting in a powerhouse squad. The Melonheads powered through most of the season without much opposition, although a couple of their victories came with narrow margins. They finished the 10-game regular season with a record of 8-2, the number 1 seed in the Frontyard League. In the first round of the playoffs, they steamrolled the #4 seed Pablo and the Pablitos, finishing the two-week matchup with a score of 360-240 to advance to the championship game against #3 seed barking tree.

The championship game, a two-week total point affair like the previous round, turned out to be exceptionally tense. While the Melonheads were 2-0 against barking tree in the regular season, in this matchup the teams' performances were almost completely identical, and the Melonheads exited Week 1 with an extremely narrow lead of 203-200. Week 2 remained very close, with some players on each team putting up dud games but some players putting up big scores, and the lead went back and forth as the results were revealed. However, at the very end, the Melonheads ended up winning the match by a single point, 373-372, thus claiming the championship and providing Eauxps with his first Backyard Sports champion trophy.

Eauxps returned once again for Season 4, as one of ten coaches in the single league. As a reigning champion, he got a low first-round draft spot and thus had no chance to pick from the biggest names, and went on to mostly pick B-list players with no huge stars. However, he was able to get enough largely reliable players to assemble a team that could put up decent scores almost every week, and snatched up RB/TEs on the waiver wire week after week to try and get an extra edge in each matchup. As a result, although they lost the first two games and did particularly poorly in Opening Week, the Melonheads have been successful since that point, also largely due to the league's players mostly having good days when they were facing off against *other* teams. Season 4 is still in progress, but the Melonheads currently have a 4-2 record.

## Players Eauxps has coached in multiple BBL seasons

* Luanne Lui (Season 3 Melonheads, Winterball, Season 5)
* Fabienne Callahan (Season 3 Mariners, Season 4 Melonheads, Season 5)
* Lisa Crocket (Season 3 Mariners, Season 4 Braves, Winterball)
* Achmed Khan (Season 3 Melonheads, Winterball)
* Vladimir Guerrero (Season 3 Mariners, Season 4 Melonheads)
* Chucky Flinder (Season 3 Melonheads, Season 4 Braves)
* Angela Delvecchio (Season 4 Melonheads, Season 5)
* Fernando Diaz (Season 4 Melonheads, Season 5)

## Trivia

* Eauxps also co-created and hosted the BBL Challenge Tour.
* Despite a lackluster overall record, Eauxps has a record of 5-1 in Opening Day BBL games.

## External Links

Eauxps's YouTube channel

Eauxps's Backyard Baseball blog posts