Who will win the summer league in all divisions?

[quote]Originally posted by LatinJock:
Who will win the summer league in all divisions?

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The KHC Jaguars!!!! (hey, I gotta support my boyfriends team dontchya know )

I pick Stray Cats, Destroyers, Hollywood X and Mayan Warriors. I do not know about KFC...

A - Stray Cats are a no-brainer
B - Don't know 'bout Destroyers (Indians will give 'em a good run)
C - Hollywood X / Rusty's / Ziggy's /Abbey all have good chances
D - Mayan Warriors...they, along with 3-4 other teams should actually be in the C-Division. If they remain in D and go to the WS, they will most likely be protested by another city and lose, causing LA to face a fine, sanctions, and possibly being DQ'd for a year. The Warriors are a good team, as are the other 3-4 (Crushers, Pirates, Bandits come to mind immediately)...but they aren't DEVELOPMENTAL teams (which the D division is supposed to be about).

Indians should give a run for there money, but I think the Destoyers have more experience. what happen to the Trunks team?

As for D division, I hope nobody takes it that far to protest. I know that some of the frustrations of the teams such as the Bandits and Mayan Warriors, is the inability to compete with the Upper C Teams who are stacked with B players. But then again the other leagues are not so fair as well.

The problem with the LA league is that there are enough players to make 3 "A" teams. But if that were to happen, there would be two teams getting creamed by the Cats...or the talent would be distributed, and the all-important WS (which really is not important at all) would find someone other than an LA team winning it all.
So where do those A players go? They go to "B." And this "spillover" effect causes lower-B players to play in "C."
Eventually you wind up with mass cheating...which is exactly what LA (and Long Beach) are plagued by.

Injuries forced me to take take time off from LA's league. The Tammany Hall politics were enough to keep me away once I got better. One day the time will come when NAGAA finally wises up, and tells all of Los Angeles County to get its shit together and stop the maddness of players' ratings falsifications.

And no, I'm not bitter. I am cursed by a strong sense of justice and fair play. And in LA those qualities are not valued.

The LB Sharks, who won the LB C and who then were disqualified at the GWS, after losing their 2nd game, went to LA and were put in the D division. They are not a bad C team, but the ploy disqualifies at least one of their B players - the very one whose rating of 13 was challenged at the GWS. Pretty clever, huh? [BTW, one of the Sharks told me that some of the LA C teams - like Hollywood-X - are incredibly under-classified]

I just started a new team in LB - pretty foolhardy, I know. Charlie's Angels - lol! Last Sunday we gave up 11 runs in the first two innings, then rallied to tie 11-11 in the top of the 6th, but lost it in the bottom of the 6th with 2 outs, 0-2 count, when, alas, they hit it to one of the outfielders who can't catch. It was marvelous!

Why such fun has to be mired in all this nonsense is a great mystery. San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, and - especially - San Jose seem to have solved the puzzle, but I'll be damned if I know how to change LA and LB.

First off, LA/LB are NOT the only cities dealing with falsified ratings...NAGAAA across the board has problems with ratings (Ft. Lauderdale, Minneapolis were two cities DQ'd for mis-rating players).

The true problem is in the ratings themselves. Whenever you have guidelines that call for objectivity in determining whether someone "consistently" does a skill or "occassionally" does it, you open up a MAJOR Pandora's Box because what one person sees as "consistent" can greatly differ from what someone else sees.

My true feeling is that the ratings need to be COMPLETELY overhauled and criteria be less ambiguous in order to make some sense out it. Until then, teams will constantly attempt to falsify ratings. Some teams are so desparate to win a tournament or the WS that they will bend/break the rules to do so. What really is disturbing is that league boards allow them to get away with it.

As for not thinking that other cities will protest a team because it's D-Division...just look at WS 2001 with 4 teams being protested, and one player (the Sharks had a player protested, not the entire team), and you'll see that protesting is now the rule, not the exception. I don't necessarily agree with it, but if there is a glaring example of teams being too talented for the division they are in, they will be protested (just ask Ft. Lauderdale Stingers, LB Blue Dot, Minneapolis Smoke...they all were DQ'd).

RE: LA's D-Division teams that I think should be in C...I'm not saying that they would, or should, be able to compete for the division championship, I'm saying that they are not "Developmental" teams with a TEAM rating below 110, and should be in the C-Division. There are plenty of C Teams that don't have a chance at the division title, but also shouldn't be in D-Division. That divison is for teams that have a majority of players that are fairly new to the sport and are DEVELOPING the basic skills to play the game.

The only way a team is going to get better is to compete with teams that will challenge what abilities they already have and force them to raise their game...not constantly beat up on extremely inferior teams just for the sake of winning. That's not fair to either team.

How did the LA teams fair in Phoenix Tournament?

I don't think the Phoenix tournament was as good as it has been in the past. The first day teams were spread out to three different fields, which limited the comraderie and the ability to watch different teams play. There was a lot of waiting around on Saturday. But Sunday was a much better turnout, the weather cleared up and was a more competitive day.

In the C division, where I play, the results were:

1st - Palm Springs Desert Nighthawks
2nd - Ziggy's Zephyr's
3rd - Hollywood X

The LA teams did pretty well overall. LA Express played very well and were there at the end competing for the top 3.

In the B Division, the Indians were definitely in the Top 10 although, I don't know their exact place. They knocked out the Destroyers though.

The Stray Cats, although they did not have their best team, were competing in the Finals. I am not sure how that ended.

So I think LA represented very well.

I definitely agree that the Phoenix Tournament was not nearly as good as in the past. The tournament officials seemed to have sacrificed quality for quantity (78 teams overall).

The tournament as a whole seemed to lack communication, organization, and in many instances logic (wrong scores being reported, brackets done incorrectly, teams getting eliminated on the first day, etc.).

As far as results:

D-Division
1st Portland Red Wings
2nd unknown
3rd unknown

C-Division
1st Palm Springs Desert Nighthawks
2nd Ziggy's Zephyrs - LA
3rd Hollywood X - LA

B-Divison
1st Rich's - San Diego
2nd Chicago Spin
3rd Arizona Angels - Tucson

A-Division
1st Atlanta Power
2nd LA Stray Cats
3rd LA Fever

Women's Competitive
1st LA Bent
2nd Kaddywhompus - Phoenix
3rd unknown

Women's Alternative (Rec)
1st Phoenix Xtreme
2nd The A-Team - San Diego
3rd unknown

The Teams were great, games were fun, and overall it was nice...just that the tournament committee needs to think things out SIGNIFICANTLY better next year, or teams will stop going.

One objection is the 1-1 count, which in PHX was extended last year to the entire tournament instead of the pool games. I don't know about this year, because that's enough to discourage teams from making the trek. But evidently they get enough snowbird teams to make money.

On the problem of divisions, I suggest that too many teams is never the problem!! Surely more divisions can be provided, so that teams play at their own level.

On the rating scale, I just did the ratings for my team, and there are lots of problems with a 27 point ordinal scale where interval scale refinement is attempted. I have a player whom I rated a "12", which is the individual player limit for a D team. A D team can average out 10 points per player. I don't think you can be that precise in ordinal rankings.

It would be more useful to have a few criteria which give us a clear idea of what a C or B player looks like. [Volleyball has a 5 or 6 division system which runs a lot better.] In the case of a subjective rating process, getting consensus across leagues is the best way to go.

Otherwise it fits too easily into a corrupt structure. Managers are notorious for overrating players so they can pick them off C and D teams for their own higher-rated teams. It's all part of the "George Steinbrennerism" in older bar-and-bath gay softball leagues. This stops gay softball from coming anywhere close to reaching its potential as a broad-based gay community sport, as it has become in San Diego and San Jose, for example.

What teams are a surprise or disappointment as we near the midway point? And what is the playoffs system for this year?