The TBL Baseball Annual A publication of the Transcontinental Baseball League The New Normal 2018 Edition Walter H. Hunt All 24 Teams Analyzed Robert Jordan Using the T.Q. System Mark H. Bloom The TBL Baseball Annual A publication of the Transcontinental Baseball League by Walter H. Hunt Robert Jordan Mark H. Bloom with contributions from TBL’s managers and extra help from: Joe Auletta Ray Murphy Jim Dietz Copyright © 2018 Walter H. Hunt, except the “Justin K.” poem, which is copyright © 2018, Jim Dietz. This book was produced using a Macintosh with Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. I can be reached by mail at 3306 Maplebrook Road, Bellingham, MA 02019 or by e-mail at
[email protected]. The 2018 TBL Annual 3 the TBL baseball annual Welcome to the 2018 TBL Baseball Annual. This is the twenty-third year of the Annual in the book format. This year we’re looking at what we call The New Normal: hitting cards, and offenses, based on power with lots of strikeouts. One of our most insightful colleagues, Joe Auletta, gives us some excellent analysis on how things have already changed and what we should make of it all. Our usual features are mostly here, but we don’t have the Vegas Line this year due to our friend and colleague Paul Harrington’s illness. We hope to have it back next year. Enjoy the Annual and enjoy the season. Walter, Robert, Mark June, 2018 The T.Q. System Shamelessly stolen from the Mazeroski annual, the T.Q. System assigns points to each area of the team’s expected performance and totals the result.