Playoff Predictions: S2 Semifinals

Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood's picture
Submitted by Hadrian Mertins... on Fri, 2019-04-19 20:40

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Things are heating up inside the dome as 4 more teams were eliminated from championship contention this week. Read on for your semifinals favourites!

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Week 9: Prequarterfinals (April 8)

❌✅✅✅✅

Week 10: Quarterfinals (April 15)

[QF] TooTrains TootFurious (Al) vs. Tied Pod Challenge (Jon)
Prediction: 21-22 | Result: 20-23 ✅

[QF] Live Free or Tie Hard (Travis) vs. Pad Tie (Nat)
Prediction: 19-18 | Result: 27-19 ✅

[QF] Wu-hoo! (Heather) vs. #TimesUp (Kindha)
Prediction: 25-21 | Result: 25-17 ✅

[QF] Shantay, You Stay (Laura) vs. Higher Seed (Jaime)
Prediction: 21-17 | Result: 15-18 ❌

[5th play-in] S2: E9 Bedlam in the Big Top (Rachel) vs. Even (Adam)
Prediction: 20-17 | Result: 16-17 ❌

My predictions go just 3-2 this week (now 7-3 overall) thanks in part to a major upset by Jaime over Laura. For the second straight season, GM Boss is proving that she knows how to turn a mediocre regular season into a deep playoff run when the games matter most.

In the bottom bracket, Adam defied expectations by pulling out his first win since February 25th in a close game over Rachel.

Week 11: Semifinals (April 22)

[SF] Tied Pod Challenge (Jon) (20) vs. Live Free or Tie Hard (Travis) (22)
[SF] Wu-hoo! (Heather) (23) vs. Higher Seed (Jaime) (21)
[5th SF] Pad Tie (Nat) (18) vs. Even (Adam) (16)
[5th SF] Shantay, You Stay (Laura) (23) vs. #TimesUp (Kindha) (17)
[7th play-in] TooTrains TootFurious (Al) (19) vs. S2: E9 Bedlam in the Big Top (Rachel) (20)

Can the unlikely playoff runs of the #7 seed (Jaime) and the #9 seed (Jon) continue? My heart says yes, but the math says no. Travis and Heather make finals.

In the consolation bracket, Laura and Nat rebound to play for 5th. After upsetting Heather in prequarters, Al's team drops another to fall into the 9th place game.

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One of the biggest confounding factors in these predictions is the impact of absences/substitutes. As I've tried to illustrate with the effectiveness ratings, players of the same salary often have wildly different values. This could be an especially big issue this week as the long weekend disrupts rosters (e.g. Rachel is missing more than half her regular women). There's no way to correct for this, so take this week's game calls with a grain of salt!