The Press Box

There's just a week left in the 2005 season, but there's still plenty to be decided. We asked a panel of baseball experts what they think is the biggest story of the final week of the DMBL season!

Who Will Win The Commissioner's Cup?

Gary Bettman

Gary Bettman
NHL Commissioner

In the NHL we have the Presidents' Trophy. In the DMBL, the equivalent is the Commissioner's Cup, awarded annually to the team with the most wins. This year, for the fifth straight season, the cup will go to either the Newark Sugar Bears ('01, '03) or the Arkansas Golden Falcons ('02, '04), who have been neck-and-neck all season long, headed for what appears to be a fourth straight World Series showdown. Newark (104-53) currently holds a 1-game advantage over Arkansas (103-54), but the Golden Falcons appear to have the easier schedule -- they have four games at 14th-place Phoenix, while Newark is hosting four games against 11th-place Tijuana. Coincidentally, Newark and Arkansas each has a 7-1 record against their respective final opponents.
In addition to a nice shiny trophy, the best regular season record also means home field advantage throughout the playoffs. But that doesn't guarantee post-season success -- in fact, 2001 was the last time that the Commissioner's Cup winner also won the World Series.
By the way, we'll also have to see how this week shakes out to see who finishes with the league's third-best record -- the Vancouver Iron Fist have a magic number of 2 with four games remaining (all against 6th-place Stanhope, which can't move up or down in the standings). And the battle for the No. 4 seed -- which is important, because the fourth seed gets home-field advantage in the first round -- is currently a tie between the Honolulu Sharks and the Philadelphia Endzone Animals. The Sharks have four games left, one against Newark and three in Columbia; Philly has five left, one at Hillsborough and four at Westwood. The Sharks need to win outright, because Philly has the tiebreaker by virtue of their 8-4 record against Honolulu this season.

Who Will Have The League's Worst Record?

Milli Vanilli



Fabrice Morvan
Rob Pilatus
aka Milli Vanilli

First of all, we would like to point out that "Girl You Know It's True" was No. 1 on the U.S. charts and had four hit singles, so it hardly qualifies as "worst record." What about Devastatin' Dave The Turntable Slave? That's a truly awful record!
But we're talking about the DMBL's worst record. Finishing dead last doesn't guarantee you the chance to draft Zach Duke, but it does give you the most balls in the hopper for the No. 1 pick in the lottery draft, plus the first pick in every subsequent round. On the other hand, there is the ignominy of being the league's biggest loser, the damage to your all-time team winning percentage, the shame of having to return your Grammies...
Er, anyway, back to baseball. The contenders as we head into the final week of the season are the Hillsborough Deductions, now third-worst with a 61-97 record (.386), followed by the Westwood Deductions at 58-99 (.369) and finally the Phoenix Dragons at 56-101 (.357). Hillsborough has four games left, a home game against Philly and then three games in Hoboken. The Cutters were just eliminated from the post-season but still have a chance for a winning season, so they're not going to roll over for the Destroyers. The Ducks wrap it up with a game against Phoenix and then four against Philly, which needs the wins in order to stave off Honolulu for the league's fourth-best record. And then there's Phoenix, which has the one game in Westwood and then four against the mighty Golden Falcons, who need to pile up wins in order to pass Newark for the league's best record. So it looks like everybody is up against top-notch competition with something to play for! It could go right down to the wire to see who is worst this year. Westwood has a slight edge in that they were awful against Hillsborough (1-11) and Phoenix (4-6), so they'll finish behind them in the standings if they're tied with either team; but Phoenix and Hillsborough split their 12 games this season so that could be a real headache if they finish tied for last. 

What DMBL Records Will Fall?

Jim Eisenreich

Jim Eisenreich
Former DMBL record holder

I've had a rough season, thanks to Phoenix's Ichiro Suzuki. First, he passed my 32-game consecutive game hitting streak record -- by one lousy game! Then, he broke my DMB Era (1997-present) record for most hits in a single season -- I had 238 in '97, the same year as my hitting streak, and Ichiro has 261 and counting. (Ichiro would have to have 34 hits in Phoenix's final seven games to beat the all-time record of 295 hits in a season, set by Deion Sanders in 1993.)
They say misery loves company, and I love that I'm not the only guy getting erased from the record book this season. Newark's Bobby Abreu has scored 175 runs, easily breaking the all-time record of 163 shared by Arkansas's Chuck Knoblauch (1997) and Barry Bonds (2002). The DMB Era record for triples (20 by Phoenix's Juan Uribe in '02) also fell, as Las Vegas's Carl Crawford already has 22 with four games to go in the season. No one will forget that Sanders had 62 triples in '93, so the all-time record will continue to stand, no doubt forever. The DMB Era record for strikeouts also was shattered: Hillsborough's Adam Dunn has whiffed 238 times this season, beating the record set in 1999 by Newark's Mark McGwire. But don't worry: Rob Deer's all-time record of 357 strikeouts with Waikiki in '93 remains unchallenged.
In addition, there are some records that will likely fall unless players have some truly awful final weeks. Newark's Carlos Guillen appears destined to break one of the all-time records Neon Deion set in '93, highest single season batting average. Guillen is hitting .399 with about 5 games left in the season, which means unless he hits under .200 the rest of the way, he'll still beat Sanders's all-time batting mark of .384 in '93. And Guillen could go hitless the rest of the season and still set the modern record for batting average (Arkansas's Frank Thomas, .365 in 1998). But Guillen needs a hot week -- something like 9-for-20 (.450) -- to achieve the seemingly impossible mark of hitting .400 over a full season... If Abreu can avoid getting caught stealing the rest of the way, his .964 SB% (27-1) also will set a new all-time record for highest stolen base percentage (.964), beating Hillsborough's Matt Lawton (32-2, .941) in 2000. Another record likely to fall is Bonds's .522 on-base percentage in '03 -- but the name will stay the same. Bonds has a .538 OBP this year, a new all-time high.  
There's only one all-time pitching record being challenged this season. Westwood's Steve Trachsel has 20 losses (7-20, 6.99 ERA), and -- unless he gets benched -- at least one more start this season. That gives him a chance to tie the all-time record for most losses (21), shared by  Chris Bosio and Rick Sutcliffe, each in '93. 
The experts polled are not affiliated with the DMBL, yet they are more than happy to offer their expertise. Other questions answered by the experts can be found in our Press Box Archive.