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London Mets win their sixth National Title

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The London Mets made some more history at Farnham Park today, defeating London Capitals 14-4 to win the British National Baseball Championship for the third consecutive season, and a record sixth time overall.

London Mets 2019 National Baseball Champions – BBF YouTube

The Mets are only the fourth team in British Baseball history to win three national titles in a row, joining the Cobham Yankees (1986-88), Enfield Spartans (1989-91) and Southern/Harlow Nationals (2011-13).

The London Mets came to prominence whilst winning back-to-back titles in 2007 and 2008, but their recent run has put them at the top of the all-time National Champions list. They’ve participated in each of the past six finals, winning four and losing two to the Essex Arrows in 2014 and Southampton Mustangs in 2016.

Sunday’s final was set up by a pair of semi-final games on Saturday. London Mets were pushed hard by the Essex Arrows, but ultimately prevailed 4-1, whilst the Capitals booked their place in the final with an emphatic 17-6 win over Herts Falcons.

The Mets and Capitals finished first and second in the regular season so it was fitting that these were the two teams battling it out to the end. Ultimately, the Mets showed their class by jumping ahead in the final and the game ended on a well-hit line-out to third base in the seventh inning, with the game being called after seven innings and the Mets leading by ten runs.

It’s a great achievement by Drew Spence and his team and there’s no doubt that the London Mets are the benchmark in British Baseball right now.

The games are available to watch back in full via the BBF’s excellent YouTube coverage. The weekend also saw East London Latin Boys capturing their first Triple-A title with a 12-2 seven-inning victory over Cartmel Valley Lions.

British Baseball Beat: 2017 so far

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The British baseball season doesn’t stop for an All-Star break, but with the North American version rapidly approaching it’s a good time to take a step back and reflect on which teams are catching the eye in our domestic leagues.

Full standings, results, fixtures and reports can be found on the British Baseball Federation website.

All details included in this article are as they were recorded on the BBF website on the morning of Tuesday 4 July.

Birmingham and Norwich remain unbeaten

Team Div GP W L Pct
Birmingham Bandits AA-C 16 16 0 1.000
Norwich Iceni A-S 9 9 0 1.000
Richmond Knights AAA-S 17 15 2 0.882
Essex Archers A-S 8 7 1 0.875
East London Latin Boys AA-SA 14 12 2 0.857

There are two teams that remain unbeaten in the BBF leagues.

Birmingham Bandits won both games of a double-header against Leicester Blue Sox on 25 June to improve their Double-A Central win-loss record to 16-0 before going into two free weekends. They’ll resume their league campaign on 16 July with a home double-header against Stourbridge Titans, who they have deafeated four times so far at a combined score of 46-6. If they come through that unscathed they will have two away double-headers against Long Eaton Storm and Milton Keynes Bucks respectively before a final home twin-set against the Blue Sox.

Norwich Iceni, newcomers to the BBF leagues this year, won 15-3 on Sunday at Finsbury Park against London Musketeers to make it nine in a row. They will be favourites to make it a perfect 10 this Sunday in a home game against the 1-7 Tonbridge Bobcats, with four league games to follow in an attempt to go 14-0 in their debut season.

Elsewhere, Richmond Knights started the Triple-A season 12-0 before losing their unbeaten record on 11 June in a narrow 10-9 loss to Taunton Tigers. They avenged that straight away by winning the second game of the double-header 21-11 and whilst London Mammoths also got the better of them this past Sunday, the Knights are clearly a force to be reckoned with this season.

The most dominant teams

So far this season Single-A games have averaged approximately 32 combined runs, Double-A South 24 runs, Double-A Central and NBL 18 runs and Triple-A South 16 runs.

If we want to compare teams across the leagues one of the best simple measures is run differential, that is the team stat that looks at offence and defence by subtracting the total runs allowed from the total runs scored.

Team Div Run diff. RS/G RA/G
Birmingham Bandits AA-C 156 12.81 3.06
Norwich Iceni A-S 112 16.78 4.33
London Mets NBL 108 11.88 5.13
Richmond Knights AAA-S 102 11.06 5.06
Tonbridge Wildcats AA-SB 96 14.31 6.92
East London Latin Boys AA-SA 93 14.64 8.00

It’s quite possible, and not uncommon, for a team to be ahead of another in the standings despite having a worse run differential (take a look at the Minnesota Twins in MLB who, prior to Wednesday’s games, were posting a winning record of 43-40 despite having a minus 54 run differential). That generally means they are not blowing the opposition away, and often winning an unusually high number of close games.

Teams with the highest positive run differentials are generally those that are consistently winning well and so the fact that the top six teams are the current six BBF division leaders suggests all are worthy of their lofty positions (accepting, as always with British baseball stats, that we’re only dealing with a small number of games).

You can see that Birmingham’s pitching is being incredibly stingy in allowing just a touch above 3 runs per game, whilst Norwich’s batting lineup is dishing out plenty of punishment on Single-A hurlers.

Honourable mentions should go to Double-A Herts Hawks who have scored the most runs so far of any team (206) and Single-A London Musketeers who have the highest runs scored per game mark at 22 (note that the top 9 teams, and 11 of the top 13, in this category are in Single-A, reflecting the free-scoring nature of games at that level).

Teams looking to improve

Much as we should avoid being negative, it’s only fair to look at the bottom end of the run differential chart too.

Team Div Run diff. RS/G RA/G
Brentwood Stags AA-SA -144 6.69 17.77
Guildford Mavericks AA-SB -117 8.83 18.58
Herts Falcons NBL -110 5.22 11.33
Bracknell Inferno A-S -91 8.67 18.78
Tonbridge Bobcats A-S -84 15.00 25.50

There are a few unsightly runs allowed per game figures among this group and it likely will contain some newcomer pitchers and more than a few liberties being taken on the bases.

The line that stands out for me is the NBL’s Herts Falcons. Clearly they are up against the toughest competition and the NBL can be a harsh environment when things aren’t going your way. The Falcons are 5-13 and whilst they are certainly conceding more runs than they’d like, what’s really hurting them so far is the relatively low number of runs they are scoring.

Close competition

Another thing that we can look at when comparing the leagues is how competitive each division is based on the gap between the best run differential and the worst.  The idea being, the smaller the difference, the closer the competition is.

Div Best run diff Worst run diff Difference
AAA-S 102 -77 179
A-S 112 -91 203
AA-SB 96 -117 213
NBL 108 -110 228
AA-SA 93 -144 237
AA-C 156 -83 239
AA Combined 156 -144 300

This is only a quick guide and far from the full story, but nonetheless it’s interesting to see Triple-A coming out as the closest using this measure. I’ve added Double-A combined (as the other divisions all represent a single level of play) and they produce the widest difference, suggesting there’s a broader range of ability in this level of play, which would make sense with it being the level up from the lowest rank.

The NBL

Finally, let’s take a closer look at the top-tier of British baseball.

Team W L Pct GB GP RF RA Run Diff RS/g RA/g
London Mets 13 3 0.81 – 16 190 82 108 11.875 5.125
London Capitals 10 7 0.59 4 17 160 127 33 9.412 7.471
Southampton Mustangs 7 6 0.54 5 13 116 79 37 8.923 6.077
Essex Arrows 8 7 0.53 5 15 144 164 -20 9.600 10.933
Brighton Jets 3 10 0.23 9 13 112 160 -48 8.615 12.308
Herts Falcons 5 13 0.28 9 18 94 204 -110 5.222 11.333

The Mets are once again proving to be a formidable side and they are doing so by leading the way on both sides of the ball.

Reigning NBL champions the Mustangs have been close to them when it comes to keeping runs off the board though, with their 6.08 runs allowed per game being the fifth best mark in the BBF, one behind the Mets. Southampton have some games in hand on both the Mets and the Capitals so we’ll see if they can keep that up, whilst improving their run scoring, over the next few weeks.

Mets and Mustangs just fall short in Europe

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The potential fantastic Friday for our two British representatives in Europe didn’t turn out the way we hoped, with both suffering defeats and therefore missing out on making their respective pool final.

London left rueing their Stockholm slip

London Mets knew they had a difficult task in facing Sant Boi in their last pool game, knowing they either needed a win or a close loss to get a chance to face them again in the final of their Federations Cup Qualifier Pool 3.

A four-run first inning for the Spanish team immediately put the Mets on the back foot. A five-run third, followed by a seven-run fifth meant that Sant Boi ran out comfortable winners by a score of 16-1 in five innings.

Sant Boi went on to win the final on Saturday in a close encounter with Kaunas County B.C. by a score of 4-1. The Mets had beaten Kaunas in their opening fixture 12-4 to show that on another day London may have been able to run Sant Boi much closer than the 16-1 loss might suggest.

London’s frustration probably will come from the 2-1 defeat to Stockholm in their second game as that narrow loss in an evenly-matched contest proved the difference between making the pool final and finishing third.

Pool details on the CEB website.

Southampton fight-back falls short

There was more British frustration in Pool 2 where the Southampton Mustangs put up an almighty fight against the hometown Beograd in Serbia in what was effectively a semi-final, with the winner heading on to face Diving Ducks W.Neustadt.

Southampton looked out of it heading into the top of the eighth inning, trailing 11-4, only to put up a six-spot to bring them within one run. A clean top of the ninth meant that the Mustangs had the chance to get a walk-off victory, but a three-up, three-down inning saw Southampton out of the competition despite battling to the end.

As in Pool 3, the Pool 2 favourites prevailed in the final as Diving Ducks beat Beograd 9-3.

Pool details on the CEB website.

Concentrate on the league

Despite missing out on their pool finals, it was great to see British teams continuing to take part in European competitions once again.

Their attention will now return to the domestic season next Sunday (25th).

The London Mets host a double-header against Essex Arrows at Finsbury Park, whilst Southampton welcome the Brighton Jets to Mustangs Field

Big Friday for British baseball teams in Europe

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The CEB (Confederation of European Baseball) tournament website is a little dated, but it doesn’t matter what the graphics look like when they’re showing a victory for a British baseball team.

Just a few minutes ago, this was the site on the live feed from Stockholm:

(N.B. ignore the 10 inning reference, it automatically goes to the next inning after the previous one – such as the ninth – ends).

The London Mets secured a 7-0 victory over UKS Deby Osielsko to give themselves a chance to make it through to the Federations Cup Qualifier Pool 3 final.

Their final group game takes place at 11.00 GMT tomorrow (Friday) and it’s going to be a tough one against the Pool favourites, Sant Boi. The Spanish team are 3-0 and already guaranteed a place in the final, which might mean they take their eye off the ball. If they do, the Mets are sure to be ready to take advantage. London’s victory tonight means they are 2-1 in the Pool knowing a win on Friday will be enough to get a final berth.

If Sant Boi come out on top, that would probably result in a three-way tie for second place with Kaunas County B.C. (who are 2-2) and the hosts Stockholm who are 1-2 and strong favourites to beat UKS Deby tomorrow to even up their record. CEB tournament rules mean that the first tie-breaker (result against the other tied team) won’t separate the teams (they are all 1-1 in games against each other) so it moves on to the second tie-breaker: Teams Quality Balance (TQB). As explained in the rules:

“*Teams Quality Balance (TQB) is the sum of runs scored divided by the number of innings played on offense minus the number of runs allowed divided by the number of innings played on defense. (RS/IPO) – (RA/IPD)=TQB.

The TQB is calculated with four decimal places. The fifth decimal place is used to round up or down”.

Here is how things stand with Kaunas having played their four games, and London and Stockholm still to play their final games tomorrow.

GP RS OIP RS/OIP RA DIP RA/DIP TQB
London 3 20 26 0.769230769 6 26 0.230769231 0.5385
Kaunas 4 25 33 0.757575758 13 32 0.40625 0.3513
Stockholm 3 5 23 0.217391304 27 23 1.173913043 -0.9565

* This is my quick calculation, not an official tally (i.e. subject to error!).

If I’ve calculated that all correctly, at this stage the Mets are in the cat-bird seat; however the key difference is that the other two teams have already played the strongest team in the Pool.  Kaunas lost 8-0 to Sant Boi earlier today, whilst Stockholm lost 11-3 to them in their pool opener. So, if the Mets can’t quite get the better of Sant Boi tomorrow, they’ll need to work hard to keep the score close to stay ahead of Kanuas.

Southampton’s semi-final

It was a good day for the Southampton Mustangs too, competing in Pool B in Serbia. They defeated Atletico Alexandria 13-7 to make it two wins on the spin after losing their opener against pool favourites Diving Ducks W.Neustadt from Austria.

That victory sets up what is effectively a semi-final on Friday (15.00 GMT) against the home team Beograd ’96. Both teams have a 2-1 record and whoever wins the game will go on to face the Diving Ducks on Saturday. The Ducks are 3-0 and guaranteed a place in the final even if they lose against Athletic Sofia tomorrow lunchtime.

The Mustangs, reigning NBL champions, made it to their pool final last year where they were beaten by Sant Boi.

British baseball fans would really get that ‘Friday feeling’ if we end up with two teams in the final, with the Mets getting some British revenge on the Spanish team in the process.

You can follow the action live on the CEB website, with updates on their Twitter accounts (@LondonMets and @SotonMustangs) as well.

London Mets and Southampton Mustangs head out on another European tour

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Next week will be an exciting one in the British baseball calendar as two of our teams will be heading abroad to once again show the rest of Europe that – Brexit be damned – we’re still a part of European baseball and a good part of it at that.

Off to Serbia and Sweden

The reigning NBL champion Southampton Mustangs are in Belgrade, Serbia, for the Federations Cup Pool 2 qualifier. They will compete in a group alongside Athletic Sofia (Bulgaria), Atletico Alexandria (Romania), Beograd ’96 (Serbia) and Diving Ducks W.Neustadt (Austria).

The London Mets, currently riding high in the NBL after sweeping a double-header against the Mustangs, are in Stockholm, Sweden, in Pool 3. Their opponents will be Kaunas County B.C. (Lithuania), Sant Boi (Spain), Stockholm Monarchs (Sweden) and UKS Deby Osielsko (Poland).

British teams in Europe

It will be the third consecutive year in which the top two BBF teams will pit themselves against European competition after European participation had been a thorny subject for many years in the British ranks.

After early forays in the 1960s by Stretford Saints (1965) and Hull Aces (1966, 1968, 1969), British teams went through a strong spell of competing in Europe from the late 1980s to the mid-2000s. Teams flying the British baseball flag included:

  • Birmingham Bandits
  • Birmingham Braves
  • Brighton Buccaneers
  • Crawley Comets
  • Croydon Pirates
  • Edinburgh Diamond Devils
  • Enfield Spartans
  • Greater Berkshire 1938
  • Hessle Warriors
  • Hounslow Rangers
  • Hull Mets
  • Kingston Cobras
  • Leeds Royals
  • London Warriors
  • Menwith Hill Patriots
  • Nottingham Hornets
  • Richmond Flames
  • Windsor Bears

2005 was the high-water mark with three teams – Croydon Pirates in the Cupwinner Cup, Greater Berkshire 1938 in the European Cup B Pool and Edinburgh Diamond Devils in the Cup Qualifier – playing on the continent, but then we entered a drought.

The CEB introduced a revised European Cup qualifier structure in 2008, creating 4 Pools for the ‘smaller’ clubs to compete in. Whilst many European countries were represented – from Belarus to Lithuania, Romania to Serbia, Finland to Norway, Austria to Switzerland etc – Great Britain was a very notable absentee.

Back into European competition

The Essex Arrows and London Mets changed that in 2015 when they competed in European Cup Qualifiers in Antwerp, Belgium, and Karlovac, Croatia respectively. Both teams went 1-3 in the first European representation by British senior teams in 10 years.

The Arrows got the better of Finland’s Espoo Expos in their opener before three defeats against Belgium’s Borgerhourt Squirrels, Croatia’s Split Nada (the Arrows getting nada runs in the process) and Sweden’s Stockholm.

London went the other way, suffering defeats in their first three games to Olimpija Karlovac (Croatia), Zajcki Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Leksand Sweden before batting against Gepardy Zory (Poland) to ensure they came home with a victory.

Last year was another significant step forward with the London Mets, assisted by the BBF and BSUK, hosting a Federations Cup Qualifier at Farnham Park, the first European games on British soil for almost 20 years. Meanwhile the Southampton Mustangs travelled to Sant Boi, Spain.

Both teams acquitted themselves extremely well, with the Mets going 2-2 from their four games and the Mustangs making it all the way to their Pool final where they valiantly lost 6-1 to a strong Sant Boi’s team.

Follow the action

London Mets will try to get some British revenge on Sant Boi’s this time around and both they and Southampton will be sure to play hard and show that there’s plenty of talent in British baseball, just as Team UK did this past weekend.

Updates will no doubt be available on their Twitter accounts (@LondonMets and @SotonMustangs) with reports on the BBF website. Best of luck to the Mets and Mustangs.

Further information about British baseball teams in European competition can be found on the Project COBB website.