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Of all the mid-sized leagues in the country, few teams have absolutely destroyed the competition more than Freaky Franchise of Ontario County Wiffleball Association. They dominated in the regular season with an 18-2 record and went 4-1 in the playoffs and won the OCWA championship. They rank 9th on the final National Wiffleball League Association (NWLA) rankings. Despite somehow snubbed from the New York State Wiffleball Rankings , Freaky Franchise stands out in a state bustling with over a dozen leagues...that's quite the accomplishment.
So how did they pull off such a great year in 2011? To find the answer, I decided to ask the team myself. Their team captain, Ryan Bush, was happy to answer any questions I had but I found I only had only one question - what is the secret to their success? The answer seems simple: great pitching.
Bush seems to be the breakthrough player from the team being decorated with 3 OCWA Awards (Pitcher of the Year, Strikeout King, & Silver Slugger) and leading his team to the championship. The attention he receives is well-deserved when you look at his pitching stats: 10-1, 0.81 ERA, and 114 Ks. What's interesting is that he had only 3 complete games, in fact there were only 4 complete games thrown by any of the 4 players on the team during the entire regular season. This can only mean one thing: they have a solid pitching rotation and they know when it's time to bring in relief for the starting pitcher. Bush elaborated on their pitching strategy, " Unlike most of the other leagues we have a pitching rule where each player has to pitch a minimum of 2/3 innings in 15 out of the 20 games (the other 5 games we allow complete games). With this rule we usually had [Jon] Suhre pitch the first inning, Nate [St.Ours] pitch the second inning, and then I would pitch the third and fourth. Suhre is a guy who pitches [for] contact so defense is huge when he is on the mound. Nate and I are strikeout pitchers so the defense wasn't quite as important when we were pitching. In our league it is huge to have three guys that can consistently throw strikes and we were lucky enough to have that." With a strategy like this it's no wonder that this team killed the competition. Constantly switching up pitchers ensures that they stay fresh and that the other team never gets very comfortable with any one pitcher from the team and can keep the opposing team guessing. Sharing pitching duties like this can also keep any one particular teammate from being too drained to perform well at the plate.
Bush is no stranger to championships, this is his second consecutive league title, winning the 2010 OCWA Championship with the BT Storm. Bush has always been strong on the mound and has impressive career (2008 - present) stats thus far: 20-5 win/loss record, 154.1 IP, and 388 Ks. It's safe to say that he'll easily make it into the NWLA Hall of Fame the moment he stops 'retires' from the game. As jaw-dropping as these numbers are it's important to remember that, although he probably did a lot of the heavy lifting, he didn't do it all by himself. Nate St. Ours and Jon Suhre pitched a combined 6-0 with 37 strikeouts - not bad. St. Ours had a 4-0 win/loss record and 34 Ks but allowed 31 of the team's 98 earned runs for the season and gave up 72 of the team's 139 walks. As for Suhre, he had a 2-0 record with 3 Ks but somehow managed to allow 31 earned runs in only 15 innings pitched.
You may be wondering who the team's fourth man is... Brett Bigler only played in 4 games this season and pitched a total of three innings that spanned over three games. He managed to get a win in there, earning him a 1-0 record, but he only struck out 2 batters and allowed 12 runs which gave him a 16.00 ERA (one of the worst ERAs in the league). However, Bigler had the second highest batting average in the league (.680) and scored 21 RBIs and 4 homeruns in his short season. If Bigler would have played in more games he may have been able to find redemption on the mound and his skills on offense could have possibly given Freaky Franchise the necessary runs to have gone undefeated in 2011. He didn't play in either of the two games the team lost during the regular season, both of which were low scoring games.
Freaky Franchise were not as impressive at the plate as they were on the mound. They had the 4th highest team batting average (.388), far from impressive when you consider their league has only 6 teams. Their team hit the least amount of home runs (25) and were next to last in runs scored. In many cases they only won their games by a couple of runs - meaning that when they got a lead they held it with their spectacular pitching and defense....but that's not to say that they didn't win games without an occasionally rally at the plate. Bush admitted that," Our hitting wasn't the best in the league but we definitely got the job done when we had to, eight out of our eighteen regular season wins were comebacks where we took the lead in the third or fourth inning." |
