For the third year, Fanhome was host to the YNOT game.  Attendance was up this year, which was possibly attributable to the amazing 2004 season for the Redbirds and their post-season run as well.  All the following (unless otherwise noted) deal with the regular season YNOTs, all 52 of them.

 

The Cal Ripken Award—We had a number of people set a record for most Fanhome YNOTs played with 52.  SkinnyPimp, Tulcard, and myself all played through pain and filled out the scorecard every time it was available.

 

Shooting Stars—No flukes this year.  No one won in the only game they played.  The fewest games played with a win was six, by BStark94.  WeWillStillWin was the only player to lose the only game he played, posting a 0 in Game 33.

 

New York Yankees Award—Given to the poster with the most wins over the season.  This year, it wasn’t even close.  ewttexas ran away with it, winning an amazing 7 times, including a span of 5 wins in 8 games.  Runners-up:  Mundane, Tulcard, and myself with 4.

 

Arizona Diamondbacks Award—Had to change the name of this award because the Tigers improved this year.  ZeppelinNick, however, didn’t, racking up 6 losses against no wins.  To be fair, ZN often picked against the Cards as a jinx mechanism.  Runner-up:  Mundane, 5.

 

Repeaters—Not too many were able to put together back-to-back wins.  Ducksnort2 (games 19-20) and ewttexas (back-to-back-to-back in games 21-23) were the only ones able to do it.  Ducksnort also put together back-to-back losses in games 10-11.  ZeppelinNick also accomplished that feat in games 26-27.

 

The Top 5—The best of the best!

1.        Cardinal70 24 (Game 17--Pittsburgh)

2.        StLfan10 24 (Game 24—Kansas City)

3.        Tulcard 24 (Game 40—Pittsburgh)

4.        CardsFan05 24 (Game 40--Pittsburgh)

5.        CardsFan05 23 (Game 19--Chicago)

 

Plugging Away—KiwiHab won this award last year, when he played in 24 games without a win or loss.  This year, he played in 50 games with no decisions, running his streak to 77 games since his last decision, a win in game 48 of 2002.

 

Starting Lineup—Following the trend that started in 2002, the results were listed out as “in the starting lineup”, “on the bench”, “the minors” and occasionally “the rest of the 40-man”.  The number of times eligible posters (posters that played in 65% of the games) made the starting nine:

 

                Cardinal70 21

                Gagliano 21

                Tulcard 19

                SkinnyPimp 17

                ewttexas 16

                Mundane 16

                Ducksnort2 15

                27ROLENISNO1 13

                jcgoldie 13

                KiwiHab 13

                MNCardsFan 13

                NJ 13

                jasonfarmer 12

                Smartpig 12

                razorsedge723 11

                StLunatic 11

                Fletchlives34 10

                AlGarlick 9

                Kodiac 9

                mccarn21 8

                NighthawkSU 7

 

Last year’s high was 31 and the low 18, which shows that there was a bit more parity in this year’s YNOT.

 

Stat Corner—A myriad of assorted stats:

 

• The largest number of posters was 42 (Game 29—Cincinnati).  The smallest:  16 (Game 49—Milwaukee).
• The average number of posters was 31.4, a new high and well up from last year’s 18.6.
• The largest margin of victory was 7 (Gagliano 22, Cardinal70 15).
• The largest drop in points after a victory was 18 (Tulcard from 24 to 6) and the largest increase after a loss was 13 (mccarn21 from 2 to 15 and ZeppelinNick from 2 to 15).
• The most dominating performance of the year was by Gagliano.  His 22 in Game 2 was 13.05 points above average.  The next four:

12.11—StLfan10 (Game 24)

11.09—Fletchlives34 (Game 45)

11.05—Cardinal70 (Game 17)

10.83—Smartpig (Game 48)

• The other end of the spectrum was turned in by WeWillStillWin, whose 0 in Game 33 was 10.91 points below average.  The next four:

  9.84—cbomb23 (Game 23)

  9.51—Mundane (Game 4)

  9.03—TheLaird (Game 43)

  8.84—Ducksnort2 (Game 11)

• The winner, on average, dropped 7.5 points the next game.  7 winners did not play the next game and one won the last game and had no chance to play again.  The loser usually increased 4.5 points.  11 losers didn’t play the next one and one lost the last game.
• The YNOT bullpen has filled in for me when I went on vacation in summer.  This year, I didn’t go out of town, but a couple of posters did fill in and give me a break.  The average high score for the bullpen games was 16.0.  The average high for the games I created was 17.4.  The difference probably isn’t statistically significant, since they did 2 games and I did 50!

 

Odds and Ends—Various items from this season

 

• Postseason YNOT returned to the Cardinal board, including the first-ever World Series YNOT.  Congrats to socalcardsfan (NLDS), jcgoldie (NLCS) and NighthawkSU (WS) on their postseason victories.
• New to the board this year were awards determined by formulas modified from the Braves poster grooveone.  These were posted earlier, but to recap:

 

Batting champ:  Cardinal70

Home run champ:  Gagliano

RBI champ:  Cardinal70

MVP:  Gagliano

Cy Young:  CardsFan05

 

Thanks to everyone that played YNOT this year.  It was a blast, all the way to the Series.  Let’s plan for another deep YNOT run next year!