Questions or comments: derek@dereksnyder.net

9/27:

Casa Villa's amazing season came to an end when Marios Pizza won the championship with wins of 11-10 and 17-2.

To see more pictures from the final night click here or click the picture below.

9/17:

Casa Villa beat Murphy's in a semifinal matchup for the ages. Murphy's took game one 14-13. Casa Villa came to hit in game two and won 15-5. In game three, Murphy's battled back from an early 14-6 deficit to tie the game in the 6th inning. After surviving a bases loaded scare in the top of the 7th, Erik Fisher led off the bottom of the 7th with a walk. Derek Snyder doubled him to third. Murphy's walked Phil Denise to load the bases. One out later, Kevin Jones laced a walk off single to right field to send Casa Villa to their first championship game in 6 years.

Come support your favorite softball team on Friday the 25th (6PM, Block Park) as they take on Mario's in the title game.

9/15:

Casa Villa takes on Murphy's in the semifinal playoff round this Thursday (9/17), 6PM at Block Park.

9/7:

Congratulations to Casa Villa, who claimed the 2nd seed in the upcoming postseason.

8/28:

All games this weekend have been moved to the Point due to feces at Block Park.

8/27:

Tonight's game vs. K&A has been cancelled due to a raw sewage leakage (no, this is not a joke). The makeup has been scheduled for Thursday, September 3rd, 9:00 at the Point.

8/24:

The makeup games have been scheduled for Saturday the 29th at 5:30 and Sunday the 30th at 5:30 and 8:00. Block Park.

8/23:

Tonight's games are cancelled due to rain. Makeups will likely be the weekend of the 29th/30th. One bright spot - Casa Villa is back in first place!

8/17:

The game on Friday the 21st has been moved from 6:45 @ Block to 6:45 at the Point. Also, our two makeup games are scheduled for Sunday 8/23 - 6:45 and 8:00 @ Block.

8/7:

With Thursday's victory, Casa Villa stands all alone in first place!

8/3:

No makeup dates for the two 7/31 rainouts have been announced yet.

6/30:

Our two rain makeups are rescheduled for 7/31 at Block Park (6:45 and 8:00). Position week will not be played. For the full up to date schedule please visit the Games page. Also, there is no game this week as the other team requested it be rescheduled for their convenience.

6/26:

Tonight's game is CANCELLED. There is no makeup date scheduled yet for tonight's game or last week's game. With no scheduled games next week, our next game is Thursday, July 9th at 9PM.

6/19:

The July 3rd game vs. Copy Hot has been cancelled. Copy Hut cannot field a team and the game has been moved to Monday July 20th, 9:00 at Block Park. There is no makeup date for Thursday's rainout yet.

6/1:

Position round is Friday, June 5th, 6:45 PM at Block Park vs. White Eagle.

5/30:

Some news items for this week. After a slow start, Casa Villa has rebounded with two consecutive wins. Next week is position week. Due to ties, we still do not know what time we play. It will be Friday the 5th for certain, and it will not be 5:30. Also, on Saturday the 6th we have a makeup game vs. Junkyard, 6:15 at Block Park. More info will be posted early next week when it is announced to the managers.

5/14:

Tonight's game is officially rained out. The makeup information will be posted as soon as it is known.

5/11: Troccia's Trough

Are We Rebuilding or Evolving? (It's One or the Other)      

Once again the season opener is just days away.  2009 will dictate the future of the Casa Villa Softball franchise.  Last year was tough season for the Mexican Assassins, missing the playoffs for the first time in many years.  There were many factors that could have resulted in the off year.  Injuries to our opening day infield, lack of power at the plate, and increased talent within the division are the popular excuses.  Was last year a fluke?  Do we still have what it takes to compete in this division?  Or, is the problem something else entirely?

Our team has always been competitive, even while losing we never get blown out on a regular basis.  So does that mean last year was a fluke?  The definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again and expecting different results.  For as long as I can remember our team would come together at the 11th hour, throw down a beer and get on the field and start the season.  We were never big on organized practice.  At the same time, for as long as I remembered this philosophy has been successful for us.  We win A LOT more then we lose.  We were always competing at the end of the season.  This being said last year must have been a FLUKE?

Depends…..one variable in this is AGE.  Obviously as we get older our reflexes slow down and we are not the same athletes we once were.  At the same time as we get older we get smarter, we play the game more cerebral.  We should be doing the little things that make winning easier.  The JETS have always done this.  They EVOLVE and make it difficult for the other team to win.  This starts on the mound.  When is the last time you saw a batting practice strike from a pitcher on the JETS?

Was Darwin a ball player?  Evolution is the only was this team is going compete.  Last year can be a fluke if we re-learn how to win.  Injuries will always be an issue.  The league is doing everything in its power to shorten the travel distance/speed of batted balls.  We used to win on power and athleticism, now most the other teams in our division hit the ball farther and field the ball better.  Are they better athletes?  SOME, maybe.  I think in general the other teams we compete against are more prepared then we are.

BUT, it's just recreational Softball.  He lies the dilemma.  We are all professional at SOMETHING ELSE besides playing Softball (except Fred).  Where do you draw the line?  Our team philosophy has always been to keep the same circle of players.  Once you’re "in" your "in".  This can't change, I love seeing the same faces year after year.  The line has to be drawn by each individual.  Each player has to take it upon themselves to show up prepared.  I would love to see us have a practice with 100% participation but that will never happen.  Some people have the ability to show up not picking up a bat in 6 months and still bat .600.  It's not up to me to decide who can and can't do that. Last year was an eye opener.  Things are no longer business as usual.  Unfortunately I see no change heading in to 2009.

The 2009 season promises to as competitive as ever.  The C division is stacked with 16 teams. There is once again an upper and lower division.  The schedule will be different this year than in past years, and because of this the 2009 season will be a true benchmark of our ability to compete.  We will be playing a balanced schedule this year, in other words we play the other 15 team ONCE.  Our record at the end of the year will be a true bench mark of our team's ability.

I love playing for this team.  The guys that surround me are some of the best individuals I have ever met.  A solution would be to find ourselves in a lower division.  That is a worst case scenario in my opinion.  I believe this team has the athletes and smarts to EVOLVE and change the way we do business.  I hope as individuals we all do whatever is necessary to make ourselves better.  Winning is fun, losing is not.  Wining produces camaraderie and a loyal base of players, losing drives us apart.  Winner's evolve and do what's necessary to win; Loser's leave and find another place to win.

Evolve or Rebuild? You tell me.

5/1:

After a lengthy wait, the schedule has finally been released! Opening day is Friday, May 8th. We play Melvin Higgins at 5:30 at Block Park.

The league has instituted several changes for 2009. First, the sponsor, out of town and game fees all were raised. The sponsor fee went up $70, the out of town fee is now $30/ea and the game fees go up $1/game. We are using a new yellow ball, which supposedly is softer and safer for infielders. We are also utilizing the pinch runner rule, where once an inning the last recorded out can pinch run for anyone on base.

There are 16 teams in C league for 2009. 8 teams in the Upper C and 8 teams in the Lower C. Each team will play each other team only once, with two position games mixed in.

3/8:

Finally, an update for 2009. The organizational meeting is complete and there are several items to report. The season will start the week of May 4th (one week later than usual) and run thru the week of September 11th, with playoffs to follow. This year we are trying a new ball. The ball is supposed to have a softer core and therefore safer for fielders. There will still be 2 wood bat games.

Practices will be scheduled as soon as the ground is dry and the weather allows.

12/12:

The Next Amigo merchandise page is online now!

Head on over to check it out!

11/27:

The Next Amigo

The Next Amigo is a groundbreaking softball reality show where the winner receives a spot on our 2009 roster. Head on over to The Next Amigo page for updates, commercials, cast info and episodes as they are posted.

11/5:

In It to Win it

When we last saw our heroes they were dangling on a cardboard precipice, contemplating a litany of photos which involved risqué lobster dinners.  Oh wait, wrong channel!  Last time we took a look the attributes of playoff bound teams here in the City of Kingston softball league (Kingston, NY).  We found that since a little more than half of teams qualify for the playoffs, teams simply have to be slightly above average offensively or defensively to be a playoff contender.  We also discovered the obvious importance of run differential.  But making the playoffs isn’t everything; one team each year will attain the highest reward – the prestige and gratification that comes with being called a champion.  I’m sure you’re all teetering on the edge of your seats waiting to find out just what it takes to win the big one.

Conventional logic would say that the better team should win a playoff series, especially in a best-of-three format.  However, the team with the better regular season record only won 54% of playoff series.  What if we use our “run differential” findings from the previous article?  Teams with the better regular season run differential advance at a 60% rate.  The table below shows the win percentage for teams that were better in each respective category:

This info shows us that teams that are far above average on either offense or defense are more successful than teams with a balanced attack.  The unbalanced teams likely overwhelm their more balanced opponents.  In fact, 87% of teams who won a playoff series were at least 10% above the league average defensively.  On average, teams who won a playoff series were 22% above average defensively.  That’s a huge number.  So in other words, if the league average was 11 runs per game, the average playoff winner only gave up 8.6 runs per game.  And some winners were close to 50% above average defensively!

What playoff teams advance at the highest rate?  Great offensive teams do well, but the teams that excel are the best defensive teams.  If you, like Nigel McGuinness, are “in it to win it”, come armed with a top notch defense or else you may miss your shot at history.

10/24:

Playoffs or Bust

What types of softball teams do well?  What does it take to make the playoffs?  These are some of the important questions that every organization asks of themselves each year as they try to improve their team and take their shot at history. 

Making the playoffs is easy, right?  Over the past 5 years in the mens City of Kingston C League (Kingston, NY), 28 of 51 teams have made the playoffs.  For the sake of competitive balance, let’s throw out the Lower C results from the past two years.  That leaves 39 teams, 20 of which were playoff bound.  That’s actually more than half!  So in other words, you only need to be average or slightly better to qualify?  Wow!

Not quite.  No 8-8 team qualified for the playoffs.  Even 9 wins isn’t likely to get you there – only one 9 win team has made it in.  For both a 16 and an 18 game schedule, 10 wins seems to be the benchmark.  All but one team with 10 or more wins made their way to the playoffs.

Ok, so 10 wins is the goal.  But HOW do you get there?  No team takes the field looking to lose.  Statistically, what makes a winning team?  As Sweet Tooth Tom Klonowski once said, “If you win the inning, you win the inning.  If you win every inning, you win the game.”  That’s common sense, but what Sweet Tooth is saying is, all you have to do is outscore your opponent.  Is being a high scoring team really all it takes?  Let’s see. 

The table above pretty clearly shows that you only have to score slightly better than the league average to make the playoffs.  17 of 20 teams in this situation qualified, while only 3 or 19 teams below the mark made it.

How about defense?  Does that matter?  The old baseball adage is that defense and pitching trump a high powered offense.  However, softball has a much higher run environment; typical games aren’t low scoring affairs such as in baseball.  Also, softball pitchers aren’t throwing 95 mph heaters and basically have to “lay it in there”.  So defense and pitching don’t matter, right? 

Wrong again.  Good defense is still very much a hallmark of successful teams.  18 of 24 (75%) teams who gave up less runs than the league average made the playoffs. 

In fact, run scoring and run prevention are so vital that if you look at all of the teams which were below average in both facets, not even a single one made the playoffs!  What about the teams we mentioned earlier – the teams which were below average in one aspect or the other yet still were on top of the league?  The low scoring teams compensated by having a remarkably good defense, while the poor defensive teams were offensive juggernauts.  The common denominator seems to be run differential.  If you rank the teams by run differential, the top 14 teams ALL made the playoffs.  Conversely, none of the bottom 16 teams made it in.

If you outscore your opponent by an average of 3 or more runs per game, history dictates that you will receive a playoff berth.  It’s that simple.

What have we learned?  Making the playoffs can be accomplished by scoring a lot of runs OR keeping your opponent from doing so.  As long as you are above average in either area you will be successful.  Even more important is a team’s run differential.  As Sweet Tooth said “It’s a hitter’s game, gentlemen!”, but if you’re not going to score, you’d better make sure the opponent doesn’t either!

Now that we see what it takes to make it, next time we’ll look at what types of teams win once they’re in.

10/18:

Got Wood?

For the first time in recorded history (i.e., since the 70’s), the Kingston Softball league used wooden bats for some games this year.  Each team was set to play two wood games each.  Actually what ended up happening due to a scheduling failure was that some teams had three wood games and some only had one.  But anyway, the league (not necessarily the players) has deemed the wooden experiment a success.  With 2009 likely to have four wood games per team, I thought it would be prudent to review the statistical differences between the wood and metal bats.

Since league wide stats are not readily available we have to work with what we have access to.  Conventional thinking will say that the ball comes off the metal bat faster, so teams should have a higher batting average while using metal in comparison to wood:

Their batting average with wood bats should be lower, right?  Nope.  Not a large difference, but what is going on here? 

Slugging percentage is where you can see the difference in the bats:

That’s 18% less bases per at bat, a significant change.  So, Casa Villa had more hits but less extra base hits.  Extrapolating the data, we find that Casa Villa had 17% more singles with a wood bat, but 21% less doubles, 41% less triples and 78% home runs.  78%!  What?  And to make things worse, the sole home run they did have with a wood bat was an inside the park home run.

What did we learn here?  You just can’t go deep with the wood bats?  Well, not quite.  The Charlton Precision Jets hit three home runs in their two wood bat games.  While that number is well under their metal bat home run percentage, it shows it can still be done.  If you combine the stats from both Casa Villa and the Jets, you get the following result:

It is clear that the wood bats favor singles hitters and punishes home run hitters.  So I’m sure you’re wondering what effect less extra base hits had on overall scoring.  I’m glad you asked. 

Without as many extra base hits, scoring was down a whopping 27%!  Is there anything else that we can learn from the data?  How about players who had experience with wood bats (Saugerties modified league, etc)?  I broke the players into three categories based on their experience with wood:  lots, some and little.  The results are quite interesting.

The players who knew how to wield the wooden bat had a distinct advantage over players who were not used to it.  They had more hits.  They even had more extra base hits.  In fact, their slugging percentage was actually higher with wood bats than with metal bats!

What is the conclusion of all of this?  When you’re building your 2009 team, fill your roster with more Phil Denises and less Fred Duffuses.  And remember – if chicks dig the longball, make sure to leave your wood bat at home, unless you really know how to use it!

10/15:

The 2008 stats have been added to each player's page and the lifetime stats have been updated on the history page as well. New player pictures were added where possible.

10/14:

Return to C

It’s now been five seasons since the team’s return to C league in 2004, following back to back D league championships in 2002 and 2003.  Let’s look at some of the statistics from the 2004-2008 timeframe.

First and foremost, following 2004’s changing of the guard, the team has established 11 consistent contributors.  The existing nucleus of Derek Snyder, Scott Liese, Fred Duffus, Mike Goodrich and Ronnie Schmadel was joined by two returning players, Tony Troccia and Kevan Dudek, and four new mainstays – Kevin C. Jones, Phil Denise, Lou Denise and Mike Hunter. Each of these players held a starting role for three or more seasons. This solid core played an integral part in propel the team to playoff appearances in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Here are the 2004-2008 stats for these 11 players:

There's also a 12th player who fits the criteria, but is no longer with the organization.

Some quick tidbits:

• In those five years, 44 players have played in at least one game
• Six players have amasssed 100 or more hits:
  • 166 Fred
  • 149 Derek
  • 128 Ronnie
  • 127 Kevin
  • 117 Tony
  • 107 Mike Goodrich
• Charlie Glass has legged out 10 triples, while Fred has batted 305 times without a single one
• Fred, Charlie, Tony, Ronnie, Mike Goodrich and Lou have all crushed 10 or more home runs, with Fred’s 64 leading the pack
• Fred has driven in 197 runs, 85 more than any other player
• Scott Liese has drawn 28 walks, twice as much as anyone else
• Charlie’s .600 batting average is tops among everyone
• The most games started at any one position was Scott who started 78 games as the pitcher
• The team batted .500 at Block but only .455 at the Point
• The team batted .518 in May, 30 points higher than any other month
• There were six hitting streaks of 15 or more games:
  • 29 Charlie
  • 29 Fred
  • 19 Ronnie
  • 18 Dudek
  • 18 Ronnie
  • 16 Mike Goodrich

Here’s how the teams from this year’s C league performed from 2004-2008:

10/11:

Several new videos are online, helping you get thru the offseason softball withdrawal.

Charlie Glass bangs some during batting practice before the 2006 season.

Tony Troccia takes batting practice prior to the 2006 softball season.

Mike Goodrich throws up the gang symbols during the 2008 End of Year Home Run Derby.

Keith Nickerson makes his pitching debut much to the opponent's chagrin.

George Resso flies out to left scoring Keith Nickerson. Meanwhile, George has crotch chops for all.

Bill Studt tries to go to Studt Field but instead hits a grounder to the pitcher. George Resso is NWO for life. while "The Big Show" Mike Jones wanders the dugout. Rob Hand makes the play but can't get it to 6'9" 1B Joe Whalen.

Stivic Burt induces the opponent to fly out to Charlie Freer to end the inning while Gary Felice lements.

Rob Hand takes advantage of an opponent's stupid base running error and makes an unassisted double play.

Fred Duffus speaks his mind after one of our softball games.

Discussion arises regarding a reported bromance with one of the team members following a softball game.

The fellas discuss different techniques for controlling ejaculation following one of the softball games.

The fellas continue the discussion on sexual techniques and gameplans following one of the softball games.

SS Rob Hand makes a diving play but former team member Burt Gulnick slides in safely.

Billy Davide (The Watcher) doubles to center field scoring Chad Plonski.

Joe Berry crushes a triple scoring Tony Troccia and John Finch.

10/10:

As the 2008 season is now old news, it has been moved to the history section archives here.