Never heard of the Massey Rating system? Well, you’re not alone.

In fact, I’d never heard of it myself until I just stumbled across this page, where the system is used to calculate who is likely to perform strongest in the Northwest League this season.

Whether there’s much to it or not is a question I’m not equipped to answer, but as a piece of trivia that keeps us talking until the season begins, it’ll do just fine, thank you very much.

So who does Mr Massey think will kick mucho tail this season?

Last update : 06/30/2005

NWL Team	Rank	Power	Offense	Defense	HA	Sched
Salem-Keizer Volcanoes	1	1	5	2	5	7
Vancouver Canadians	2	5	3	5	8	8
Spokane Indians	3	4	1	7	4	4
Tri-City Dust Devils	4	2	8	1	7	1
Everett AquaSox	5	3	2	6	2	6
Boise Hawks	6	6	7	3	1	3
Eugene Emeralds	7	7	6	4	3	5
Yakima Bears	8	8	4	8	6	2

Legend

Rank: overall team ranking based on merit (record relative to schedule faced)
Power: ranking based on predicted future performance
Offense: offensive ranking
Defense: defensive ranking
HA: ranking of team’s home advantage
Sched: ranking of team’s schedule difficulty (played so far this season)

So what does it all mean?

Well, it means that, just like the official standings say… we’re pretty close to first place. Which doesn’t suck.

It also seems to indicate something most C’s fans already know - that the annoyance of having to bus across the border multiple times per season, along with having extremely long bus trips to places like Boise and Eugene, seriously puts a ding in our hometown advantage.. or rather, it exacerbates our ‘away disadvantage’.

Massey doesn’t seem to like the Vancouver schedule either, which last year gave the C’s a nasty, long distance, multiple city road trip that ended as the playoffs began. This year will prove just as arduous, with the C’s scheduled to head down to Eugene for three games on the 9th of July, then back home for three games, then down to Tri-City for five games on the 16th of July, then three days playing at home, then back down to Oregon for three games against Salem-Kaizer, then a ten hour bus ride to Boise Iowa for five games there.

According to Mapquest, that’s an eighteen hour bus journey to and from Eugene, a twenty hour round trip to Tri-City, then eight hours to Salem-Kaizer, seven hours to Boise, and twelve hours to get home again… That’s a whopping 65 hours crammed in the back of a bus over 23 days!

And to think they say baseball is fun…

About Massey Ratings
The Massey Ratings are compiled by Kenneth Massey with the assistance of OurSports Central. The Massey Ratings are a scientific and full-featured system for analyzing the performance of members of competitive leagues.