[BigRed75]

Both the Secret Harbour Pirates and the Bibra Lake Quendas made the playoffs this season. The Pirates are guaranteed of promotion to Gold while the Quendas, as the wild card, will need to win a game to be promoted to Iron. We will play the No. 2 team in our division, the Buckeyes. It is a case of teams moving in different directions, as we took a 12-game difference between the two clubs and slashed it to three in just six in-game weeks. I like our chances, but I've liked them before.

The Pirates accomplished what I set out to do - win the division (nearly) wire-to-wire. Our focus on improving the pitching staff these past couple of weeks worked, as we now have a top-3 staff. The additions of Billy Williams and Ralph Kiner have also helped to pull our offensive ranking back toward the middle of the league.

In the end, the Trash Pandas, aka the whale I was worried about since the beginning of the season, faded down the stretch and missed out on a WC spot by one game. By winning the division, we avoid the two strongest teams in the conference until a potential semi-final matchup. We will take on the Gamehendge Lizards, who we split a four-game series with at their place in Williams and Kiner's first action with the club. It should be a competitive series.

It's been a barren tournament week for the Alpacas. I will need to spend some time and re-vamp the tournament roster as we have acquired a fair number of bronze cards since the last time I did that, and I have no doubt some of them can make the tournament roster better. In the league, the Alpacas barely survived what was honestly an unnecessary relegation battle. Our -8 Pythag differential was easily the worst in the league, and if not for all that bad luck, we would have had a comfortable mid-table finish.