We have been off for a few months, as the summer and early fall has been very busy for your humble editor, working on three novels (as writing is part of what I do after all, and helping to organize a world event for peace) but we are back now and already collecting the materials for our December issue as well.  But before I discuss what we have for you in this new edition, we have to talk about the 2016 Chicago Cubs for a moment and their tremendous season, facing all type of challenges to win the 2016 Baseball World Series.

I have been alive for 61 years (young, born in 1955) and in my entire lifetime I have never seen the Cubs in the World Series.  It is hard to believe but this is true.  The Chicago Cubs have had their moments, when they had chances to be there - I remember listening to the audio broadcast of their playoff games when I lived in Holland in 2003 and they blew it to the Florida Marlins and of course last year, I watched the Cubs get shutdown by the Mets to miss their chance at the World Series.  So naturally, as I watched the Cubs this year in the playoffs, even though in my mind I knew they had the best team in 2016, the most balanced, as our readers know, I have played every game with them (and a few extra) through the new Baseball Daily, so I knew this team well, when the playoffs come, everything is reset and I saw during my replay of the 2016 season how good pitching could shutdown these young hitters.

But I believe it was destiny that the year of 2016 was there year, they were predicted to win before the season started, they had the best record, their starting pitching and team ERA was the best and their hitters showed they could hit.  So I watched the Cubs play against the Giants first, who it appeared in game 4, they were going to take the series back to Chicago for a game 5, but the poor relief pitching of the Giants caught up with them and the youngins', came up with key hits to take the Cubs into the NL Championship versus the Dodgers. Then in this next round, after the Dodgers went up 2-1, after two shutouts of the Cubs in a row, the Cub bats came to life, as this young Cubs team could feel it was their year and they basically annihilated the Dodgers in the next three games to win 4 games to 2.  But then here came the surprising Cleveland Indians, who also hadn't won a pennant for a long time who looked unbeatable in the AL Playoffs as their pitching came to life and their hitters were scoring just enough runs to win.

As we all know the Cubs were down 3 games to 1, and with the great pitching Cleveland had it didn't look good for them - but then thanks to Chapman they won game 5 3-2, finally the bats came alive in Game 6 and in Game 7, up 6-3 it looked like it was all over, but every team that reaches the World Series is there because they have momentum and Davis' 3 run homer off Chapman, I think everyone thought Cleveland would do it - but we heard, Heyward, even though have a tough time with his bat, rallied the boys in their dressing area, during a temporary rain delay and the rest of us know the story as the Cubs won 8-7.  I think this was one of the best world series I watched, two evenly matched teams, Cleveland can hold their heads high. 

To celebrate this victory as a former Chicagoan, I watched the victory parade on television, one could feel through the boob-tube - the excitement of the people of Chicago and I even now have one of their World Champion hats in blue.  I have been fortunate the last few years to see championships with my new adopted Seattle Seahawks in the 2014 season and how the city turned out for them, as well as the Chicago Blackhawks two seasons ago and now the Cubs.  And I do believe, even though the movie back to the future is one year off, they did say the Cubs won 3 world series in a row, we will see them back next year as they fill the holes left by their free agents (CF, a SP, and a closer and some help with relief). With Schwarber back next year and Russell and Baez and now Contreras only going to get better with age - who knows how many games they will win in 2017 but they will have some good teams in the NL to beat out for sure - watch out!

Ok, enough talk about the Cubs and my personal beaming - it just was such an exciting time during the playoffs - yes and all the good young players who came up and performed in 2016. Let me move to the conclusion of my playing the 2016 season with the Cubs using Baseball Daily.  Although as a new product it had a few rough edges during the early reason and there was a slight bug around the Allstar Game, I loved being able to play with my Cubs each day. And as you will see from my final report, although some players performed better or worse than the real life counterparts, the team performance overall was very similar. Of course, the computer was playing the games for my opponents but still at the end we were facing the same lineups and starting pitchers as the Cubs. I saw some great win streaks and a very few losing streaks when the Cubs bats went silent or the pitchers couldn't keep their leads but overall the replay was very realistic and what a season to pick to try out this new version of Strat Baseball.  So take a look at my final report to see how my 2016 Cubs did.

We are lucky this month to have several of our contributors return and one of the commissioners we interviewed, who has been very supported of the newsletter also sent us his first article.  So this month our good friend Bruce Bundy returns with his Strat Thoughts column as he reviews some of the key formulas he uses to make the cards and also tells you in the 2017 set who the "*" starred 3 day rest pitchers will be. Doug Brunet returns provider our readers with a great article about player's usage in a league and how to determine how many games they will be able to play. Glenn Wheeler, the commish of NASOMA shares an article about why we love Strat.  All very entertaining and interesting articles.

Then we hear from another Retro league - The Old School Baseball League with Jim Murphy, who had a chance while playing baseball in college to know some future major league ball players and then, we hear from Marc Wasserman about the latest videos on the Ultimate Strat Baseball Youtube channel including two holiday videos to our members shared in mid-December, one by Marc and a special holiday video I made for all of you with a few stories and remarks about the Cubbies.  Also about this time, we get a very special spreadsheet from Bryan Kernal that has the split stats on everyone who played in the 2016 MLB season but he has gotten busy so to hold our members (as few emailed me to ask when this sheet might be ready as it shows how players perform vs. LH hitting/pitching and RH hitting/pitching) I created my own spreadsheets I needed for my computer league which uses the latest cards, that you can use now till Bryan's version is ready. I have attached those spreadsheet to my email announcing the newsletter or you can download these two sheets (one for the hitters, one for the pitchers, sorted by the team{s} they played on) at:

Click Here for the Spreadsheet for Hitters vs LHP/RHP

Click Here for the Spreadsheet for Pitchers vs LHH/RHH

(these spreadsheets are Microsoft Excel format and when you click on the links you can either download these files to your computer or can view them in your spreadsheet software)