IBC

So this is it...

From the American League - Andrew Howard's Minnesota Twins.

From the National League - Aaron Dorman's St. Louis Cardinals.

Congrats to both guys. Both are original IBC members and both are looking for their first championships.

Who is it gonna be?

also, you two should play ASAP so the rest of us can trade draft picks.

Draft pick trading will start November 1, regardless of when they play.

Also, it seems kind of bass-akward to be announcing a Series matchup when the LCS teams haven't even gotten all their playoff game in for posting yet.

StL has some pretty good SP, but neither team is all that good looking.

Your face isn't all that good looking

Good matchup. I'd be happy either way, as Aaron has been in the mix for several years, so it would be good to see him get one, and Andrew could bring a WS to the ALC.

I'd like to see Aaron win it. Mainly because he's one of my good friends, but also because I'd like to see the title count even at 3-3 between the AL and the NL.

Cardinals wrote:Your face isn't all that good looking

real mature.

Well John, these might not be the sexiest teams in the IBC, but both survived the season in good form (and did Aaron not have the best record in the IBC?) and made it through two rounds of playoffs (although I owe a sheep to Jupiter for allowing Jake to knock out the Yankees...I did not want to play those badasses). So while we might not be your prime masturbatory imagery, we're still pretty damn good.

In all honesty, I'm a bit frightened of Aaron's stable of stud arms--at least among his starters. If I can get past them into the bullpen, I like my chances much better. This'll be a battle of strong starting pitching versus a strong offense...I hope that my solid starters can tip the balances. Although if they don't, losing to Aaron isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's certainly not as nice a prospect as beating him, a la 1987.

And Bren, my series will be into you, whenever Jake sends it.

Post scriptum: Brett, I notice that at this point (1800 CDT) you are the one league cross-over in the vote for series favorite; otherwise all the AL squads back me and all the NL squads back Mr. Dorman. I mark this piece of treachery and swear that you will pay for it. Or something drastic and dire.

Gabe can attest John, that's about as good as I'm going to do as far as insults go.

I think me and Andrew are a good matchup. Andrew has finally reached the apex after struggling through rebuilding from Day 1. I've always been in the mix for the most part, but had too many flaws in my past playoff teams to be a threat to do anything more than win a division series barring some major luck, and I took Nils powerhouse teams to 5 games each time. My team is built around pitching and enough hitting to get the job done. With the season ending injuries I've had to deal with, I have the likes of Matt Kata, Julio Franco and Brian Horwitz starting games for me. Andrew's got a powerful offense. Looking over it now, I'm a little worried about the amount of power that he has. His pitching is nice, but after Weaver and Pettitte, he's rolling the dice with Billingsley and Piniero. Should be a good and interesting series, since we didn't play each other all year so our head to head styles are foreign to each other.

First, both Andrew and Aaron's squads are better than I think some are giving them credit for.

Second, the two of them being in the Series is a testament to how H2H has changed the league. Now, you don't need to just assemble a good team, you have to manage it well, too. It puts pressure on guys in the league to be good managers and GMs. It also makes it easier for the powerhouses to be upset because the games aren't being decided on "paper" anymore. Gotta play to win. Me and Aaron have often wished for a feature that allowed others to watch H2H games being played. Because I would watch this series, I think it's gonna be good.

RedSox wrote:Draft pick trading will start November 1, regardless of when they play.

Also, it seems kind of bass-akward to be announcing a Series matchup when the LCS teams haven't even gotten all their playoff game in for posting yet.

Bren, actually I think you're wrong here. When I announced draft pick trading, and even ran the post by you, I had stated:

"There are two conditions in which it has been restored. The first being that picks may only be traded from the conclusion of the regular season until the beginning of the draft. This is a dual purposed reason: so we can better assess the value of the pick being traded and so the draft isn't held up. "

Unless I am mistaken, which we all have overlooked since you've been saying that we need to wait till 11/1 to trade them, we should actually be able to trade them now since we know the order and the relative value of the picks won't be changing any time soon.

While this is true, I haven't built draft pick trading into OOPSS yet, I'm expecting to have time to do it any day (including a draft order page), so please bear with me until I can get it in.

Twins wrote:Well John, these might not be the sexiest teams in the IBC, but both survived the season in good form (and did Aaron not have the best record in the IBC?) and made it through two rounds of playoffs (although I owe a sheep to Jupiter for allowing Jake to knock out the Yankees...I did not want to play those badasses). So while we might not be your prime masturbatory imagery, we're still pretty damn good.

In all honesty, I'm a bit frightened of Aaron's stable of stud arms--at least among his starters. If I can get past them into the bullpen, I like my chances much better. This'll be a battle of strong starting pitching versus a strong offense...I hope that my solid starters can tip the balances. Although if they don't, losing to Aaron isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's certainly not as nice a prospect as beating him, a la 1987.

And Bren, my series will be into you, whenever Jake sends it.

Post scriptum: Brett, I notice that at this point (1800 CDT) you are the one league cross-over in the vote for series favorite; otherwise all the AL squads back me and all the NL squads back Mr. Dorman. I mark this piece of treachery and swear that you will pay for it. Or something drastic and dire.

Okay, trade me Hatteberg and I'll switch my prediction.

To Aaron: Good analysis of the series--this is exactly how I've analyzed it in my own head. One quibble, I was never in a rebuilding stage, as I never had any building to begin with.

To Gabe: While I love and appreciate the merits of H2H, my first H2H games this season were only in the ALCS...the Blue Jays series win was all the product of the SIM.

To Brett: I rather like being the underdog; it has served me well thus far this postseason! And Hatteberg has been pretty damn money for me this October...but since he is only a matter of 0s and 1s, loyalty toward players shouldn't be a huge factor.

Ryan Howard is out stealing third on Yorvit Torrealba and Matt Kemp is hitting pitches out of the strike zone out of the park, plus the Metrodome AC is going full bore. It's Andrew's year.

I just don't want to see guys harassing the WS GM's to get it over with so they can start pick trading. November 1 just makes more sense IMO, much less of an arbitrary date.

Interesting, I'm not sure what "harassing WS GM's to get it over with" has anything to do with "end of the regular season"...can you enlighten me Bren?

I misread JP's post but I was under the impression, as it seems a lot of others were, that it wasn't allowed until the end of the playoffs or November.
End of the regular season makes no sense since NO trading was allowed prior to the end of the playoffs until less than a month ago.

Actually, it was a typo, which none of us caught or thought about. Draft pick trading should not start until after the playoffs are over.

Any chance of getting the rest of the A's-Twins series posted?

It's been emailed in.

Sorry guys, was away for a funeral and from trying to keep up with schoolwork while away, i was very off this week. Boxes will be up soon and the WS database will be out.