On a recent podcast, I made the comment that the Heartland was a better division than the Pacific in 2040, This was met by much agastness and not just a little grumbling and gnashing of teeth. The bottom line, though, is that the Heartland won 266 games against Pacific foes and lost only 246, a 20-game delta. Of course, once that news settled came the cries of “Remember we had Portland!” which, of course made Jacks fans happy, but at least had a dollop of merit. The expansionistic Portlanders create a bit of a rift in the numbers.
So we’re going to do a little playing with those numbers here.
Still, however, let me start by saying that it doesn’t matter.
There’s a story wherein Abe Lincoln once asked a buddy “if you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” and when the guy answered “five” good old honest Abe noted that was wrong because “calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.” We could do well to apply that logic in a lot of places these days, not the least of which might be in noting, for starters, that a division is a division and that saying Portland doesn’t count does not make Portland not count.
Follow that?
I knew you could.
Portland is in the Pacific division, so you can’t really pretend they aren’t.
Still, for a moment, let’s do a George Bailey on the Portland Lumberjacks and pretend they did not exist. We’ll start with a simple extraction. Here is the Heartland/Pacific head-to-head record in 2040 with and without Portland included
OFFICIAL “IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE CHRIS WILSON HEARTLAND/PACIFIC RECORDS”
With Portland: 266-246 (Heartland 20 games better)
Without Portland: 227-221 (Heartland 6 games better)
So, yeah, discounting Portland, the Heartland wins by six games. Don’t believe me? Here are the records of the Heartland teams against Pacific opponents. Go ahead and knock yourself out.
| Heartland | W | L |
|---|---|---|
| California Crusaders | 29 | 35 |
| Hawaii Tropics | 37 | 27 |
| Long Beach Surfers | 34 | 30 |
| Portland Lumberjacks | 39 | 25 |
| San Fernando Bears | 28 | 36 |
| Seattle Storm | 39 | 25 |
| Valencia Stars | 27 | 37 |
| Vancouver Mounties | 33 | 31 |
The Heartland struggled against California, San Fernando, and Valencia, and beat the rest.
To take this further, because that is what I do, right? I decided to recompile division standings by taking Portland out of the mix. In other words, I wanted to see how much the vaunted Pacific division’s records were bloated by having the expansion team in it. Those guys got to play 14 games against Portland, whereas the Heartland only got to shoot Jacks in a barrel 8 times each. That’s gotta make a difference, right?
To do this, I removed Portland completely, recalculated each team’s win rate against the rest of the league, and then projected that rate against 162 games.
For example, California finished 91-71 last year, but after removing games against Portland they were 82-66. This calculates to a non-Jack winning percentage of .554, or 89.9 games. In other words, California looks a little more than a game better than they are merely because Portland is in the league.
When we do this to both leagues we get the following.
PACIFIC
| W | L | G | % | W - Proj | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| California Crusaders | 82 | 66 | 148 | .554 | 89.8 |
| Long Beach Surfers | 80 | 68 | 148 | .541 | 87.6 |
| San Fernando Bears | 79 | 69 | 148 | .534 | 86.5 |
| Valencia Stars | 75 | 73 | 148 | .507 | 82.1 |
| Hawaii Tropics | 74 | 74 | 148 | .500 | 81.0 |
| Vancouver Mounties | 70 | 78 | 148 | .473 | 76.6 |
| Seattle Storm | 55 | 93 | 148 | .372 | 60.2 |
| W | L | G | % | W - Proj | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yellow Springs Nine | 104 | 50 | 154 | .675 | 109.4 |
| Louisville Sluggers | 91 | 63 | 154 | .591 | 95.7 |
| Omaha Hawks | 85 | 69 | 154 | .552 | 89.4 |
| Nashville Bluebirds | 74 | 80 | 154 | .481 | 77.8 |
| Chicago Black Sox | 72 | 82 | 154 | .468 | 75.7 |
| Madison Wolves | 71 | 83 | 154 | .461 | 74.7 |
| Des Moines Kernels | 66 | 88 | 154 | .429 | 69.4 |
| Twin Cities River Monsters | 56 | 98 | 154 | .364 | 58.9 |
There we are. The Pacific winner, California, comes in third in the overall division … by a wide margin. Omaha, the Heartland’s third place team, is only four-tenths of a win from taking the Pacific crown. Yes, the mid-pack of the Pacific wedges in ahead of Nashville, but the media darling Vancouver club (who destroyed Portland) fades to a deeply sub-.500 team and slots in below Nashville. Madison and Chicago are a game back, each, and Des Moines towers over Seattle by almost 10 games. A rebuilding Twin Cities – who also feasted off Portland – becomes the new weak sister.
So, yeah, the Pacific had a slightly better middle than the Heartland by this measure. Of course, you can then look at this in the opposite direction. As their top end opponents inside the division, Nashville, Chicago, Madison and Des Moines had to play Yellow Springs, Louisville, and Omaha 14 times rather then the relatively limp-noodle California, Long Beach and San Fernando. So of course their numbers will be down a bit.
BOTTOM LINE:
Who knows what tomorrow will bring, right? I mean, it’s possible that the Pacific will bounce back and be dominant in 2041. I mean, Heisenberg’s principle says the sun could rise in the west some day, so how can we suggest anything different? But the narrative that the Pacific division was a beast in the Frick was just blatantly wrong. The best division in the Frick was the Heartland, they proved it through the season by raw wins and losses, this “It’s a Wonderful Life” analysis proves it, and…oh, yeah…
Playoff Games
Omaha 3 – Long Beach 1
Louisville 3 – San Fernando 0
Louisville 4 – California 3
Overall Playoff record: Heartland 10 – Pacific 4
Grin…
