BNN Weekly Report
This Week in the CBO, BMU, and GBRL
by Nat Wright-Kawolski
10 October 2306
Sole Survivor Series Preview: County Crossing Bloodbugs (78-42) vs Roxbury Rad Sox (74-46)
Season Series
County Crossing 1, Roxbury 0
April 10 @CC: CC 9-8
Analysis
In this 11th Sole Survivor Series and 9th of the full CBO, Roxbury and County Crossing are meeting for the second time. The first time the two teams met was just two seasons ago when the Rad Sox clinched their second-straight title, a 4-1 series victory over the Bloodbugs in a battle of #1 seeds.
This time things may be a little different. The Bugs are the only #1 seed in this year's matchup and they won the only meeting between the two, a 9-8 victory in 12 innings. In that game, County Crossing overcame a 7-3 deficit in the 8th inning, scoring three in the 8th and then another in the 9th to bring it to extra innings. After each team exchanged runs in the 10th, the Bugs scored the winning run on a walk-off Newscap Waldorf home run. It was his only homer on the season.
County Crossing is also more of a loaded team than the 2304 version, finishing with the CBO's best record and then sweeping their way through both the Semifinals (Nordhagen Beach) and Association Championship (Sunshine Tidings) as the CBO's hottest team at the right time.
Roxbury is no pushover. Despite failing to clinch the SCA regular season crown, dropping 5 of 6 to Vault 81 to finish second in the Railroad and as the #3 seed, the Sox are a team that knows how to win. The Rad Sox proved that by disposing of Spectacle Island, 3-1, and then surviving against Vault 81, 4-3.
Looking at the team stats comparisons, County Crossing has almost all of the offensive categories as an advantage, while the Rad Sox have most of the pitching stats in their favor. We at BNN would argue that a better pitching staff typically dominates, but we saw the opposite of that in last year's Sole Survivor Series of the Party Boys against University Point.
We have previewed all of the top players from each team in the previous round, so let's just take a look at one more item: lineup vs lineup.
As you can see, the matchup of Game 1 of Roxbury's Urm Rehfeldt (11-8, 4.19) vs Gavin Eviritts (19-5, 4.11) gives the favor clearly to the Bloodbugs. Since the Sox's Nuke Laloosh is unavailable for Game 1 since he just pitched Game 7 vs the Dwellers, County Crossing actually has the pitching advantage in the Sole Survivor Series.
Prediction
That leads us to our prediction. First, history tells us a few things. First, the SCA has dominated the NCA, winning 7 of 8 and the last four. This Bloodbugs team, though, is more comparable to that 2301 Nordhagen Beach that was the first and only NCA champion. Another factor is that Roxbury has been here before and won, while the Bugs' one chance was a blowout when they came in also as a #1 seed.
We don't care about that. We are going to predict Babs Rooth and gang to harrass Sox pitching while the pitching staff will hold down Roxbury's best. We'll take County Crossing to take this one, 4 games to 2.