HAPPY 2022 WHITE SOX OPENING DAY! Woooh! Talk about the timing, huh? I was just able to pull this off and process the results of this year’s challenge. This is the 3rd year of the White Sox Twitter Lineup Runs Simulator Challenge and it was by far, the strongest participation to date with 122 lineup submissions! Compared to last year’s measly 14 entries, we saw entries grow by 771%!
I truly want to thank each and every one of you for participating, sharing, re-tweeting, and most importantly: submitting! I must not forget to thank our wonderful sponsor More Than Dawgs. More Than Dawgs is a locally owned hot dog stand located at the southwest corner of 3400 S. Shields during game days and most evenings during the summer. The More Than Dawgs crew were very generous and are providing $200 of gift cards to top performers and some random winners! Be sure to check them out during the summer and do note that they also can cater parties!
As a reminder, if you’re unfamiliar with the concept, be sure to check out my post for the first run of the challenge and the post from last year’s challenge. As a quick reminder, I run each lineup for 10 seasons, and take the average of their simulated run totals. This ensures that the exercise gets to the core of the lineup's ability and isn't ranked on a very high or very low simulation. I would run more seasons, but it would take quite a long time so I cut down the number of sims to 10 for time efficiency's sake. Additionally, the numbers used to feed the simulator come from the ZiPS projections via Fangraphs' website.
Wow, this was a crazy competitive year! As I noted earlier, there were 122 entries. That's a lot of folks who think they're smarter than your average Tony La Russa. Of which 95 of the lineups were unique. This was pretty surprising as I had thought there would be more overlap with the lineups submitted. Of the duplicated lineups, there was one entered 10 times, two were entered 4 times, two were entered 3 times, and eight were entered 2 times. This leaves us with 82 lineups only entered once. BAM! Without further ado, let’s get to the results and the awards.
Results
The Awards Section
The King of the Castle Award:
With so many new folks, I figured we’d see someone new claim the throne. Presenting your 2022 White Sox Twitter Lineup Simulator Challenge King of the Castle Award Winner: @richwp01! As such, you will be walking away with a $50 More Than Dogs gift card! Enjoy the spoils of your title and enjoy a couple two, tree dawgs before your next Sox game. Hope to see you next year!
The Middle Man Award:
Last year’s King of the Castle, James, is now smack dab in the middle, hanging out at the median ranking spot of 61st. Pick a side, won’t ya?! Better luck next year!
The "OOTP Isn't Real Life" Group Award:
Another year, another poor showing from the online OOTP league guys. George finished 84th, Ben 100th, and Jeff at 117th! At least we have the defending champion, Tequila Man, showing up well in 13th. And I thought y’all knew baseball… S M H!
The "House Divided Cannot Stand" Award:
Nothing tests a new marriage quite like the WST Lineup Simulator Challenge. Goose has performed well as of late (the origin of the Golden Goose Award) and placed tied for 16th place (shoutout Carlos!). Mel was right behind him, only trailing by 2.6 runs and took 19th place overall! Get him next year, Mel!
The President of the Yoan Moncada Fan Club Award:
I don’t know @JasperRoos, so please don’t get mad, but placing Yoan Moncada in the 9 slot was an interesting choice. Were you trying to be savvy with the lineup flipping over or are you part of the contingent of WST that is offended by the very thought of Moncada swinging a bat? I don’t know but I’ve deemed you President of the Club. Thanks for playing and hope to see you next year!
The "Where's Your Wand?" Award:
Last year’s Wizard of White Sox Twitter must have gotten lost on his way back to Hogwarts…! @SamR33v3s finished 2nd overall last year and came in at 72nd this year. Here’s to wishing you well on your new online sports media venture and to finding the lineup magic again next year!
The Golden Goose Award:
Last, but not least, is the only Cubs fan (ewwww) that willingly entered a lineup to the challenge. So, to nobody’s surprise, it came in last. @Justpech…stick to crushing beers and catching home runs in the bleachers up at Wrigley. Leave the baseball know how to us!
Prizes
I mentioned prizes but only explicitly called out the winner, richwp01. We have a few more prizes to hand out, which will be detailed below. I will be in contact with you regarding sending the gift card to you.
Prizes:
1st Place ($50)
@richwp01
2nd Place ($30)
@Alex_M_Day
3rd Place ($20)
Thebennettk
Randomly Pulled Participation Trophies ($10)
Jake Grinz
Daniel Corral
@whitesoxlefty
@Buffalo__45
@thatbasebaIIfan
@RossRead
@BabsatronXX
Tej Seth
@brianrios9649
@mikemeingasner
To wrap things up, I want to once again thank everyone for participating. This year was a huge success and we hope to see you back next year!
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