CRL NEWS

February 23, 2021

“You want snow? Here’s your snow.”

- Jim Purcell, January, 2002

I uttered those words as I showed my assistant at the time a picture (the kind you had to take with a camera, because smartphones didn’t exist) I had taken during a week of training in Denver. She had never seen snow – in fact, never been out of South Texas – so I snapped a picture of a pile of dirty snow that had been scraped off a parking lot and piled to one side.

Greetings from the thawed tundra!

Before I bury the lead, let me say that there will be a CRL season in 2021, and the draft will be April 2. More on this in a moment, but I want to explain the reason I’m so tardy with this post (if you are not interested, you can skip the next five paragraphs):

I was going to put this out last week, but hard water got in the way. It all started on Valentine’s Day. I was scheduled to work 1pm-11pm that day. It was drizzling all day. By 5 pm, the temperature got to freezing, and it was still raining. A little while later, the decision was made to close the store at 9pm. Of course, by the time we chased out the customers and picked up all the registers, it was after 10 before I left and was in the 20s. I almost slipped and fell multiple times just trying to get to my car. Then I had to scrape the ice off all the windows. My normal 45-minute commute lasted over two hours – that’s what happens when you have to drive 20 mph the entire way.

Got home safely, but well after midnight and had no power. Back porch thermometer was reading 25. I had at least had the foresight to let the faucet by the patio drip before going to work. I went around the house and tested all the faucets and they all worked, so I set them to drip. Only one gave me an issue – at first, nothing, then a spurt of water before settling down to a steady stream. Was just in time on that one, because it was in the process of freezing.

The next morning, it was 19 degrees. I called in because I was not going to go through that white-knuckle drive again and went back to bed. When I woke up, I still didn’t have power and my phone was dead. I pulled my car half-way out of the garage and sat in there with the motor and heater running. Plugged in my phone and started calling around. My sister- and brother-in-law had power and said I could come over. Ended up being there all week. Every day, I would stop by my house on the way to and from work to check on the house and get a change of clothes.

On Tuesday, it was supposed to finally get above freezing for a few hours during the middle of the day, so I stopped by the house on my way to work and all the inside faucets were still dripping, but the two outside weren’t. So I turned off the water to the house and drained the pipes. Couldn’t drain the outside pipes, but opened the taps as much as I could. The last thing I needed was to have a pipe burst and spew water for hours while I was at work.

By Tuesday night, I had power but still could not sleep at home because now I had no water. It would be Saturday before I had a day off and could turn the water back on and check for leaks in the daytime. Through either my efforts, or dumb luck, no leaks and everything worked. But I had a ton of stuff to do – laundry, bills, shopping to replace all the food I’d had to toss from the refrigerator and freezer …

Anyway, before I get to our plans for this year, here’s an oddity from last year’s shortened season – The Mets had 9 runs and 11 hits on 9/11.

One change from my last newsletter – Fraser and I kissed and made up, so we are back to being partners again.

I have heard from most of you and will break down the responses. As for me, I will be in Vegas. We started giving the COVID vaccines in our store. On St. Valentine’s Day, before all the crap started, they called me to the pharmacy and said they had one dose left in the vial and asked if I wanted it. That answer was yes. I get my second dose on St. Patrick’s Day. (I guess I’m a saintly Irishman.) That means I will be fully vaccinated before getting on a plane for Vegas. (BTW, I had no side effects – unless you consider the misery of last week, which would make that a pretty powerful little shot.)

Everyone that has responded to my last newsletter has indicated they prefer a draft on April 2. There will have to be some type of remote access (I’ll just call it Zoom, even if we decide on a different format) because some of you have indicated that you will not be there. That solves one problem, but creates a couple of others:

Pro – If we had full participation, there is no way we could practice social-distancing in the size room we normally draft in.

Con – Glenn will need to inquire as to the cost of Internet access for the draft room.

Con – I will need help monitoring the Zoom feed because I cannot draft my team, run the draft, and run the Zoom call. If we have any groupies that are not involved in the actual draft, maybe we can talk one of them (dinner and a few drinks, maybe?) into doing that for us. If not, then the multiple-owner teams will need to rotate that responsibility either every round or every break.

Whether it’s Zoom or some alternative, I will need those of you who won’t be there to agree to a common format.

So, here’s a rundown of each team:

1 – Ken indicated he had a bad experience in Vegas when he went last fall. I don’t know his current thinking.

2 – Neither Otis nor Hutch can make it. Zoom.

3 – Glenn, Dennis and Craig are all undecided at this point.

4 – Scott said he’s in Vegas.

5 – No word yet from Farabee or Bill.

6 – Spence and Jared will be in Vegas

7 – The Rons will be in Vegas

8 – The Torrens’ will not be in Vegas. Zoom.

9 – I will be in Vegas. My partner has not indicated one way or the other.

10 – Marcus said he has their flight booked, but actually being there in person will depend on getting vaccinated before the flight.

I do not have a money deadline yet. I’m not as concerned about it as I am in normal years, because everyone still has the bulk of their initial buy-in from last year in Glenn’s savings account. I know we will have to pay for the stat service again (minimal, $99) and will have to pony up a to-be-determined amount for Internet access. I will circle back around with Marcus and Glenn next week when I have a day off again and see where we are money-wise.

This is normally the point where I put out the pre-season important dates. But there really aren’t any, because it’s a scratch draft – no trading deadline, no roster freeze day, no contracts or farm keepers. The only two dates on the timeline are:

Money deadline – TBD

Draft – Friday, April 2.

Because we haven’t had a draft since the end of the 2019 season, we will use the same order that we would have used last year:

Draft order – 4/9/5/1/6/7/8/2/3/10

Minor League draft order – 7/6/1/5/9/4/8/2/3/10

Finally, a couple of years ago, Otis threw out some proposed scoring category changes that he would like to see implemented the next time we had a scratch draft. He subsequently withdrew a couple, but four remain that we need to discuss and vote on:

On-Base Percentage (OBP) replaces Batting Average (AVG)

Wins plus Quality Starts (W+QS) replaces Wins

Saves plus Holds (S+H) replaces Saves

Net Steals (SB-CS) replaces Steals

I’ll share my thoughts on a couple of them:

W+QS – While I like the idea of getting a point when my starter pitches his guts out but gets nothing for it because the offense decided to take a day off, I do have one concern. When a starting pitcher gets both a W and a QS, that’s two points. In no other category can a single player get two points in one appearance (yes, a homer can provide multiple RBI, but RBI totals per team are usually 900 or so. Wins is a two-digit category and one player getting two points for one appearance seems excessive). Still, this would do two things – it would put even more of a premium on getting good starters, yet still reward middle relievers who vulture wins. There is also the school of thought that very few starters even go six innings anymore (part of the definition of a QS), so the two-point game may not be that big a deal. So, I am undecided on this one, but could be swayed by arguments from either side.

S+H – I like this one because it rewards those who draft good bullpen arms who just don’t happen to be closers.

On the other two, I could go either way.

Basically, I will need a vote on these proposals. So that we have enough time to prepare, I’ll give everyone until Monday, March 15 to let me know your team’s vote.

There should be discussion on these proposals. There are a couple of ways to do this: You cold utilize the message board feature of the stat service, or we can do it by email. Here are the league email addresses (doing this in jpg format so the addresses can’t be harvested by webcrawlers):

BTW, ignore my email address above. It’s a secondary address I use so I have a copy of everything I sent out. When contacting me, use the one I’m sending this from (the @jwp3.net one) because it’s the one I get on my phone.

So, in closing, I need to know three things from each of you:

Your draft plans as soon as you have them.

What platform we will utilize for remote-drafting teams (I’d like someone to take the point on this – any volunteers?)

Your vote on scoring category changes by March 15.

See some of you in Vegas.

Jim