In the beginning of the season, we set up the Deathship to track what how everyone's team would fare if they just played out the season with the players drafted. As this chart tells you, the Deathship ended up being a horrible predictor of league success:
# | Actual Order of Finish | Deathship |
1 | The Spam Avengers | Suck It, Silver |
2 | The Revenge Society | Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke |
3 | Gowanus Superfunders | The Situation Room |
4 | Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke | Gowanus Superfunders |
5 | Le Dupont Torkies | The Revenge Society |
6 | Enrico Palazzo | Enrico Palazzo |
7 | Jeters Never Prosper | The Spam Avengers |
8 | pastywhite tyrones | Jeters Never Prosper |
9 | The Situation Room (T9) | The Little Green One |
10 | Suck It, Silver (T9) | Wu Tang Financial |
11 | The Little Green One | Le Dupont Torkies |
12 | Wu Tang Financial | pastywhite tyrones |
But really, is the Deathship a predictor? At the end of the day, it tracks players that the teams drafted and set in stone in March the season goes along. Meaning we can use it as a comparison between the real league to show how well or poorly everyone managed their team during the year. So let's take a look at the two leagues compared based on the difference between where everyone finished:
Team | League | Deathship | Difference |
The Spam Avengers | 1 | 7 | +6 |
The Revenge Society | 2 | 5 | +3 |
Gowanus Superfunders | 3 | 4 | +1 |
Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke | 4 | 2 | -2 |
Le Dupont Torkies | 5 | 11 | +6 |
Enrico Palazzo | 6 | 6 | 0 |
Jeters Never Prosper | 7 | 8 | -1 |
pastywhite tyrones | 8 | 12 | +4 |
The Situation Room | T9 | 3 | -6 |
Suck It, Silver | T9 | 1 | -8 |
The Little Green One | 11 | 9 | -2 |
Wu Tang Financial | 12 | 10 | -2 |
Based on that chart, the managers seem to fall into five categories:
- Those who greatly improved their teams during the season (Alex, Tucker).
- Those who somewhat improved their teams during the season (Ironhead, Scot)
- Those whose tenures were benign (Teddy, Andrew, Jake).
- Those who made things somewhat worse for their team during the year (Will, Andy, Jon).
- Those who royally sucked this year (Corey, Angelo).
However, this doesn't seem fair. It's hard to argue that Scot, Teddy and Will weren't all doing great jobs during the year. Maybe the correct way to compare the Deathship to the actual league is to really look at the total point differential.
Team | League | Deathship | Difference |
The Spam Avengers | 97.5 | 65 | +32.5 |
The Revenge Society | 94 | 74 | +20 |
Gowanus Superfunders | 93.5 | 75.5 | +18 |
Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke | 84 | 81.5 | +2.5 |
Le Dupont Torkies | 68 | 47.5 | +20.5 |
Enrico Palazzo | 65 | 66 | -1 |
Jeters Never Prosper | 60.5 | 59 | +1.5 |
pastywhite tyrones | 55 | 43 | +12 |
The Situation Room | 47.5 | 78 | -31.5 |
Suck It, Silver | 47.5 | 84 | -37.5 |
The Little Green One | 47 | 55 | -8 |
Wu Tang Financial | 20.5 | 51.5 | -31 |
Now we get results that make a little more sense on judging who did a good and bad job of managing during the year:
- One superstar, who also happened to win the league (Alex).
- Three who did a remarkable job of improving their hand by 18 or more points (Teddy, Scot, Tucker)
- One who had a sneaky good year (Sahil).
- Three who did an admirable job of keeping a steady hand on the tiller (Will, Jake, Andrew).
- One who was probably more negative than positive (Andy).
- Three who completely shit the bed (Angelo, Corey, Jon).
Intuitively, this seems about right--the top 3 finishers all clearly had strong positive influences on their team. The 4th outstanding managerial performance went to Tucker, who made lemons out of lemonade better than anyone else. Not surprisingly, he wins the league about half the time.
As a closing note, we think we've actually found the best use for the Deathship. Let's compared the order of finish to a different chart we've seen recently:
# | Deathship | Predicted Order of Finish | Difference |
1 | Suck It, Silver | Suck It, Silver | 0 |
2 | Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke | Le Dupont Torkies | +8 |
3 | The Situation Room | The Revenge Society | +5 |
4 | Gowanus Superfunders | Gowanus Superfunders | 0 |
5 | The Revenge Society | The Spam Avengers | -2 |
6 | Enrico Palazzo | Jeters Never Prosper | +3 |
7 | The Spam Avengers | The Little Green One | -2 |
8 | Jeters Never Prosper | The Situation Room | -2 |
9 | The Little Green One | Enrico Palazzo | -2 |
10 | Wu Tang Financial | Duck-Duck-Duck Fuke | +1 |
11 | Le Dupont Torkies | Wu Tang Financial | -9 |
12 | pastywhite tyrones | pastywhite tyrones | 0 |
At heart, our predictions that we make in March are based on what the teams look like after the draft, with some adjustments made for people's expectations of what the managers will do during the year. But the key element is the roster composition on March 31. And that is precisely what we freeze in the Deathship, meaning that at some level, our predictions should really mirror not the actual league finish--it's impossible to take into account when people will tank and go for it--but the Deathship.
And lo and behold...the league did a fairly good job of doing that! Three of the predictions were spot-on accurate, including the winner and last place finisher. Five others were within two slots of where teams actually finished, and a ninth was only 3 slots off. In essence, our predictions whiffed on three teams:
- Tucker, who we've already noted managed the shit out of his team this year, and probably got a ton of extra credit from everyone as being the league's best manager.
- Angelo, who started the year with a goofy roster (three guys who stole a lot of bases, three stud pitchers) that he in some respects "broke" the Deathship model.
- Will, who we never get right.
So we'll do the predictions again next year kids. Just don't expect them to mirror the actual finishes--expect them to mirror the Deathship.
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