Every year at the end of the MLB season and when APBA releases their carded player list, our league gets a pretty good idea how the APBA baseball cards will look like for the following year. Like clockwork, our tireless commissioner, Mike Bunch, releases his predictions for the IAL league players.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… some guy just slaps some numbers together, right? All I know is Mike has been doing this for years and all of us in the IAL agree he the best.
Caveat: he predicts just the players in the IAL (but you’ll find a good amount of the starting players from the MLB in the list):
Here are his predictions (in pdf form).
I will say this… predicting baseball APBA cards seems to be getting harder in the last few years. The APBA Game Company seems to be
- varying their formula just a tad
- perhaps being a little more inconsistent
- and implementing unconventional methods (first column 6 on a double column card comes to mind, varying combinations of 8s and 9s, too)
APBA used to be SOOOO easy to predict. Ok, maybe not easy but it seemed to follow a certain formula. Not so much anymore.
Oh, if you must know, my team in the prediction sheet is the Thunderchickens. Unfortunately, Mike is probably spot on with my pitching forecast. I had three starting pitchers who either retired or were out with injuries for the year.
Time to rebuild… again.
The 2009 season is up on the card computer.
I’ve looked at card-making for over 20 years now. I haven’t seen much in the way of “unconventional methods” – the formulae for hit numbers certainly hasn’t changed. Small innovations have crept in over the past few years – first column 6s on 2-column cards, 3s in the second column, for instance. Certain low-walk first baseman cards with 22s have the 22 on 53 and 21 on 13.
I love things like that. It keeps things interesting.
…seems to me that i’ve seen a few players with one 8 with 2 9s. Mostly on little-used players and those players who either have a low BA or many speed #s.
that goes against logic in my opinion.
The big question for me is going to be the back end of my rotation. The front end is pretty clear – Felix Hernandez is an A, and Roy Oswalt and Jon Garland are CZ’s. Then comes Jeremy Guthrie, Ian Snell, and Andrew Miller. All could be C’s or D’s, and that’s 74 starts right there. Guthrie is probably the closest to a D – I can see him getting a DZ or a C without control, with the control probably making the difference. The other two I think will be CW’s. Which is its own problem, as I don’t have a whole lot of flexibility to make any moves this offseason…
So I’ll call Mike out on his Ellsbury card. I don’t think Jacoby will get 11 hits.
Steve, shhh!
I like Mike’s Ellsbury card just fine. :)
I was wrong about Ellsbury! Way to go, Mike. You almost nailed it. (he gets 11-11-10 instead of 3 11s)