The Parity Report

At LeagueJoe, we are obsessed with parity. The reason we developed this draft system was to make sure we could create a way to balance teams using science and data rather than random draws. After each and every event, we comb through the data to find out how we did and we use that learning to train the models to make each future event a little more even.

If you love numbers and data, then settle in for a long post full of transparency, statistics, and analysis.

The “Championship” Edition

I don’t think we could have asked for better weather or a better weekend. Thank you so much to all the players, volunteers, and staffers who helped make it possible. Let’s dive right in….

Other Events

🦞New Orleans - Players from 27 States - 29% locals, 71% out of state

🍑Dalton - Players from 14 different States - 35% locals, 65% out of state

☀️Perris - Players from 9 different States - 92% locals, 8% out of state

🐦St. Louis - Players from 21 different states - 50% locals, 50% travelers

🟥Cincinnati - Players from 17 different states - 75% locals, 25% travelers

🏖️Virginia Beach - Players from 18 different states - 65% locals, 35% travelers

🏎️Indianapolis - Players from 22 different states - 69% locals, 31% travelers

Eight years ago, League Joe started in Indianapolis because we were sick of our beer league teams getting used as tee ball practice on Wednesday night co-ed leagues. The league had become a meat grinder where 3 traveling D tourney teams abused the hapless fourth team so badly that they quit the league. We were the only idiots who stuck around for more than a single season, and after three seasons and zero wins, we began to think there had to be a better way.

Unsurprisingly, our local players (and many of our O.G.’s) showed up and represented hard. But a special shoutout to the many of you who came as a follow up to other tournaments - it was fun welcoming you to our home town and we hope you enjoyed it!

So while the locals were definitely highly concentrated, Indy had the unique advantage of all of the local players having been adjusted 3-5 times because of all the league play they had participated in. In Virginia Beach, we set new parity records for these tourneys. So…… how did it turn out in Indy?

🥎20 total teams
📊PRE-BALANCE - The #1 pre-tourney team (Indy 300) had an average salary of 12.33 compared to the #20 team (Circle City Sluggers) with an average salary of 11.09. The difference of 1.24 is slightly high, but within striking distance of our goal.
📊PRE-BALANCE COMPARED TO END RESULTS - So how did they do? Indy 300 finished as CHAMPS! …..of the Doghouse :) Circle City Slugger finished in the teens after being the #14 seed after pool play. The tournament was won by the #7 pre-tourney ranked team The Golden Bombers (11.67), second place was won by the #6 pre-ranked team Star Spangled Slammers (11.73) and third place was #13 JSE (11.5) and fourth was #18 Vicious and Delicious (11.25). That’s a strong spread!
0️⃣Undefeated Team and 2️⃣Winless teams. We’ll visit the Winless teams here in a bit. How about overall parity?
🤏26 games out of 71 (36%) of Games in the overall tournament were close (within 3 runs). While not a record, it’s a very strong showing in terms of our close games. Pool play was even better, with 13 of 30 (43%) of games being close.
🤏🤏🤏18% of our games were decided within one run! Close to the Virginia Beach record, but VA Beach remains king. However, pool play was awesome…. 8 out of the 30 pool play games (27%!) finished within one run.
🪳We take a lot of pride in our jersey designs, but SOMEBODY decided that our racecar looked like a roach. (We will let you be the judge below). That SOMEBODY (Ali) decided to bring hundreds of little plastic roaches and spread them around the parks. They were in cars, in bat bags, in our merchandise boxes, and probably more than a few beers.

Said ISP Park Director Kate Brenchley, “I’m still finding them everywhere. In dugouts, and even in the volleyball court!”

Well played, Vicious and Delicious. Well played.

THE COMPOSITION OF WINLESS TEAMS

The worst possible outcome for one of these drafts is for a team to go winless. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we haven’t had any winless teams in our draft leagues (yes, Dawn, your team did win a pre-season game and it counts! :P ) but that’s across a 10-week, 20 game season. With tournaments that have 4 or 5 game guarantees, it’s really hard to manage. The best teams in the world can go on 0-5 streaks, so it’s reasonable that random draft teams would occasionally go winless.

In previous tournaments, we had brand new coaches who left without a victory so it was tough to look at those teams objectively. Perhaps those teams simply had coaches who didn’t draft well? Maybe a catastrophic drop or injury? In Indianapolis, we had a different situation as two amazing coaches and even better people (Steph Garza and Nikki Denton) and their respective teams took the excessive L’s. Both coaches are long-time League Joe veterans and both have drafted and led successful league and tournament teams, including Nikki with a 3rd place finish in New Orleans and Steph with a 4th place finish (with 9 players!) in Cincinnati. So what happened in Indy?

-- Pre-Tourney Rosters

‘Ship Happens (Steph) was the #10 pre-tourney team with 11.58 salary. 12 players, 3 women with an overall strong and balanced lineup. They had one late sub, and he ended up being a no-show

Batting Brigade was the #19 pre-tourney team (11.18 salary) with 11 players, 3 women and had a couple late subs due to late drops. With the sub additions, their team looked like the major positions were covered.

-- The Tourney Results

‘Ship Happens lost their games by an average of 5 runs, with a 1-run and 2-run loss, and a loss in an unusually low scoring game of 4-9. Their worst losses came to the same team who they played twice due to seeding. They were 10-run ruled twice.

Batting Brigade had a couple close losses of 1-run and 3-runs so they were in striking distance, but they also suffered a few 15-run losses. They had a key injury to a strong player bring them down to 10 players, and struggled after that point.

The beauty and frustration of our game is that the best teams in the world sometimes go cold and go on an 0-5 streak and the worst teams in the world can get hot and go 5-0. We’ve interviewed both coaches on what they saw and both expressed some concerns with how salary was calculated for a couple players, and we now have some markers to help adjust that going forward. But both coaches used some version of the phrase, “We had fun, we just couldn’t put it together.” Sometimes the ball just doesn’t bounce your way… but we come back on a different weekend to try to turn our fortunes around!

Speaking of, wait until you hear about Myrtle Beach where a winless coach from Dalton led her team on an undefeated streak to their championship…

For the players who have been on winless teams, we hope you had fun despite the result on the field and we hope to see you again - perhaps you’ll be on that next undefeated squad!

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We started this year thinking, “Let’s try New Orleans and what happens after that…. Who knows?”

Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of experiences and trial and error and learning. We are humbled and encouraged by how many of you have expressed amazing experiences and new friendships and we personally have made so many new friends in the softball world - we can express nothing but gratitude. Thank you all.

That said, we are not ignorant to those who haven’t had ideal experiences. With experimentation and trying new things, there comes miscommunications and mistakes and players who don’t get the experience they feel they wanted or deserved. If you’re reading this and that describes you, we’re going to make this better and we will work to make it up to you. Please email me direct at [email protected] so I can learn more about what happened and how we can fix it going forward.

We have a mini-break as the tourneys cool down in the winter (Arizona, you’re on the clock next in November!) and we’re going to spend that time cleaning up the processes and creating consistency for our 2024 schedule.

Thank you all again for being amazing. See you on the field again soon!