Seattle Sluggers

Sitting around, kind of bored, another couple of days wait for USCL action I started thinking about BionicLime's "Power Rankings". Actually, thinking about how much grief Bio seems to get over them. I understand that every fan feels their team isn't getitng any respect and wants to let the world how unjust this is, never realizing that the world is more in tune with the mathematics Bio uses than the overzealous emotion the fan has, well every fan except for yours truly. Eventually, I decide to try my hand at some rankings, not as an avocation or to produce irrefutable evidence of my team's coming epoch. No, I decided to come up with my own rankings for one reason, entertainment. My own entertainment, but if you get something out of it all the better.

I have neither the patience or spreadsheet skills of BionicLime, so I came up with another way. I wanted my method to be simple because, frankly my boredom is a direct result of being lazy and I don't think it is fair to ask me to change for some stupid rankings. My final plan was this: rank the teams by i) Match score, ii) game points and iii) opponents average rating. Here is my list for the teams after USCL week 4:

1) New Jersey
2) San Francisco
3) Boston
4) Seattle
5) Miami
6) Baltimore
7) Tennessee
8) New York
9) Arizona
10) Queens
11) Dallas
12) Philadelphia
13) Chicago
14) Carolina

Ok, the first thing to note is this isn't a perfect list... I mean it doesn't factor in the level of competition each team has faced. Still, it is based on the teams performance so far. I will be very curious to see how it compares to BionicLime's rankings this week. So much for the science (ugh), now for the perception. I have to tell you that Chicago hasn't really struck me as the second team from the bottom? They got pummeled the first 2 weeks, but have come on by winning over Tennessee and almost drawing with the Mechanics. They might not be as strong as some of the other teams, but they come to play. Next team to make an impression is Dallas. I think the Destiny have suffered from 2 things; inconsistent focus on where to win matches and the other teams are really gunning for them. I don't think they are out of the playoff picture yet. Boston is interesting from the perspective that any reasonable improvement in their record ( my suggestion is a tie with Dallas) would only move them up to second. For all the surprise that the loss to Dallas caused, it was only one match. I would say that Philadelphia is a bit of a disappointment, but maybe their past success was due to over achievement? Otherwise, I don't think any of the teams is much out of place. New Jersey is on top simply because of their perfect match record yet I wouldn't have bet that they would be out of the top 4 at the start ( honesty time: I rarely bet on anything and when I do it is not on somebody else ). That is my perception of the league after 4 rounds.

Two matches on Monday night. Baltimore vs. Boston - this is one of those matches that reminds me of "vector analysis". That is, Baltimore is coming off a win, has some momentum and is running into Boston which seems to have refound the train tracks it was on. Baltimore is a favorite on board 2 while Boston has the edge on 3 and 4. I just have the notion that this is too good an opportunity for Baltimore and they will pull it out. Carolina - Miami 2 teams playing for completely different things. Miami is looking to stay in the race for first in the west while Carolina is looking to earn some respect. We can gauge how much vigor the Cobras have for the rest of the season on this match by their performance here. Miami is the easy pick, and as I said I am lazy so i will take them.

Well, that killed a good 30 minutes... wonder if I have any cheesy puffs around here???