Hi Fans,
Voting for the 2020 APBA Blog Pitching Grade Challenge is now concluded. Thanks for everyone who participated!! This is the third year I’ve done the Challenge and it was a record-breaking response. I still need to verify ballots (wow, this mirrors current events in so many ways, doesn’t it?) but a quick look shows that full 138 ballots were submitted. That eclipses last year’s amount by seven. Thanks to all of the APBA fans who participated!
Before anyone reads too much into the conclusion of the Challenge, I do not know when the APBA GO season will be released. Hopefully soon! Once it is, I will announce the winner of Challenge.
Here’s a blast from the past!
Why do I facilitate the Pitching Grade Challenge?
I can be cynical and say that I want to best my fellow Illowa APBA League managers. That didn’t work out so well as several did a little better than me last year. Seriously, I do it for a variety of reasons, I suppose. Mostly, it’s a homage to the APBA Journal Pitching Contest which was run for years. You can see an example of it above. It’s also fun to see the ballots come rolling in. I recognize most of your names and each year, I learn more.
I’m not doing an aggregate summary until the grades come out. I will however say that all three former winners participated in this year’s balloting. Jesse Elicker, the 2018 winner and Joe Deauseault and Darren Schulz who were co-winners in 2019 all voted this year.
Be forewarned.
Tom’s ballot
While I did not officially enter the Pitching Grade Challenge, I filled out the ballot for the Challenge because I want to see how I stack up against everyone.
Because of the incredibly shortened season, it was difficult for me to predict the grades of the twenty pitchers I chose. Can I give a starting pitcher with just a couple wins a B grade? How will the APBA card makers adjust the grades? This was a definitely a tough year for the Challenge to be sure.
The league ERA in 2020 (4.44) was not much different than 2019 (4.49). That said, I’m sure there was a much higher standard deviation. In other words, there were many who were lower and many that were higher as well. We will find out soon whether APBA will adjust for that.
As promised, here are my guesses for the 2020 Pitching Grade Challenge.
| Pitcher | W | IP | ERA | Tom’s vote |
| Carrasco | 3 | 68 | 2.91 | B |
| Civale | 4 | 74 | 4.74 | C |
| Cole | 7 | 73 | 2.84 | B |
| Dobnak | 6 | 46 2/3 | 4.05 | C |
| Duffy | 4 | 56 1/3 | 4.95 | C |
| Eflin | 4 | 59 | 3.97 | C |
| Eovaldi | 4 | 48 1/3 | 3.72 | B |
| Fiers | 6 | 59 | 4.58 | C |
| Flaherty | 4 | 40 1/3 | 4.91 | C |
| Fleming | 5 | 32 1/3 | 2.78 | B |
| Gausman | 3 | 59 2/3 | 3.62 | C |
| Glasnow | 5 | 57 1/3 | 4.08 | C |
| Gray | 5 | 56 | 3.70 | B |
| Hendricks | 6 | 81 1/3 | 2.88 | B |
| McCullers | 3 | 55 | 3.93 | C |
| Paddack | 4 | 59 | 4.73 | C |
| Scherzer | 5 | 67 1/3 | 3.74 | C |
| Turnbull | 4 | 56 2/3 | 3.97 | C |
| Valdez | 5 | 70 2/3 | 3.57 | B |
| Yarbrough | 1 | 55 2/3 | 3.56 | C |
I want to emphasize these are only my guesses and not the official APBA grades. APBA Company has yet to come out with the APBA GO season and when they do, I will post the results of Challenge.
Thanks to everyone for participating!! Stay tuned for final results!
