Tuesday March 19th, 2024
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2020 What if? What if SIS/Thunder had not folded?

 

2020 Smashit/Thunder/Backman/Albicocco

Link to all of the Smashit/Thunder video clips and pictures from 2020

In 2020 SIS/Thunder/Backman/Albicocco was a Major team that started the season with a victory at one of the Hall of Fame Classic Dual tournaments at Space Coast Stadium in Florida.  They also finished 3rd at the first Dual, 3rd at the River City Major, and 3rd at the Cincinnati Major before folding just before the Columbus Major in August.  The team was 23-7 on the season and 7-6 vs the Major division.  Only Dan Smith had a better record against fellow Major teams.  The record below shows them 23-11 but that is because they included the 4 forfeit losses in Columbus after the team parted ways.  So what if Thunder had stayed together?  I realize they were fighting a rash of injuries and players were not getting along but knowing how Resmondo played the season with only one regular season tournament victory and Dan Smith and Resmondo were upset by non major teams at the Smoky it is likely that Thunder would have remained in 2nd in the point standings and earned the 2 seed for the USSSA Major World Series.  After the team folded the players scattered to Resmondo, MPT, Bad Draw, Pure Sports, and Bay Area Legends and most of their players played in the Major World Series where #1 Dan Smith was upset by MPT and Resmondo played poorly in their first 4 games so the door would have been open for a Thunder run.

Below is the Thunder record for the 4 events they played and the stats of all the teams in the Major World Series and finally the last spreadsheet shows the stats of the players that were on Thunder and what they did at the Major World Series playing for other teams.

 

 

 

2020 USSSA Major World Series stats by team

 

 

What former Thunder players did at the Major

As you can see Thunder may very well of had a better team onbase percentage (.676) than Resmondo (.672) at the Major and a Runs Per 7 inning (RP7) value of 35.9 would have been 2nd best in the tournament.  Kyle Pearson was Offensive MVP and tied for the tournament lead in homers.  Colin Baartman, Tyler Wilson, Josh Riley, and John Williams were on the Major World Series All Tournament Team.  Would Thunder have won the Major?  We will never know but it would have been fun to find out and it fun to think about…

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