Ranger Picks

Ok, so I’m partly still in denial that the MLR 2024 season is over, partly still hungover from the celebration of the final, and partly went into vacation brain mode. All this to say, apologies for the almost 2 week delay on getting this final update out!

First things first, with 5 points up for grabs in the championship match, 61% picked NEFJ, with only 6.5% picking Seattle. The collapse of Houston in the first round continued to propagate through, diminishing the hopes of 29% of picks.

So congratulations to the Free Jacks and the 19 Rangers who correctly picked them!

Bringing this post season to a close, Sabercat Diehard managed to pull off a task almost as difficult as correctly predicting all matches - missing every single round!

Talking of perfect results… with no need for a tie breaker, picking up the maximum 19 points, Ranger Picks Rookie Ranger Frank wins the 2024 Ranger Picks Post Season presented by TJRS! Congrats Frank!

I’m now going to take a break and recharge ready for MLR 2025! Despite the many requests (all inside my head), I will not be running Ranger Picks for the draft… so see you next year! Thank you all for an amazing MLR 2024 season. I had a lot of fun, and hope we can make it better next year.

It’s Championship week! So it’s time to review Ranger Picks for the semi finals (aka Conference championships). With 6 points on offer (3 for each), we already knew most 2/3rds would max out at 3 points due to Houston getting knocked out early. So congratulations to Freejack fitzy, Beaver Paw, Ranger Frank, Ranger Tim, and Ranger Kathy for beating the odds!

Full results for the semi finals:

Current standings:

Rather than risk potential spoilers, I’ll share the predictions for the championship alongside the results ;)

It’s MLR 2024 Post Season Week 2! The Conference Finals - or Championship Semi Finals. Before we go there tho, we have to address the pickocalypse. Houston had a 93% pick rate last week, meaning only 2 pickers predicted a Dallas upset. And 2/3rds of those picking Houston also picked NOLA… yikes!

Amazingly(?) the 2 Dallas picks also picked Chicago, so we have Ranger Frank and Ranger Lil Payne with a Quarter Final clean sweep! 6 more players got 3 picks right (all failed by Houston). So our table has a fresh look.

All is not lost! The first round was 2 points per correct pick. We now move to round 2 which has 3 points per correct pick which means a possible 6 points. Unfortunately for 71% of the pickers, their WCF prediction is already blown (64.5% for Houston, 6.5% for San Diego), as well as 16% of ECF picks (13% for NOLA and 3% for OGDC). Will this mean a strategy shift for next years picks?

The regular season leaders picked the following for the semi finals, all but Beaver Paw losing out on a chance at maximum points:

Beaver Paw:  NEFJ, SEA
Ranger Horkan: NEFJ, SD
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU
Dingo: NEFJ, HOU
MLR Stats: NEFJ, HOU

The 2023 OG pickers fell victim to the QFs in different ways, leaving only Freejack fitzy with a shot at 6 points. Ranger Bunny losing out with NOLA falling to Chicago and Rugby Morning let down by OGDC:

Bozo6:  NEFJ,  HOU
Freejack fitzy: NEFJ, SEA
Ranger John: NEFJ, HOU
Ranger Bunny: NOLA, SEA
Rugby Morning: OGDC, SEA
Ranger Payne: NEFJ, HOU

How about our new leaders? We should see some separation this week - Ranger Frank has Seattle winning at home, where as Lil Payne sees Dallas continuing to upset in the West.

Ranger Frank: NEFJ, SEA
Ranger Lil Payne: NEFJ, DAL

Its post season week people! Pretty psyched for this weekend. Ranger Picks continue to have a strong showing. Although we collected all the post season picks, I’m only going to cover the conference semi finals (or quarter finals as we call them here at ranger picks HQ). There’s definately some similarity in both 1v4 matches and both 2v3 matches. Roughly 90% of rangers picked the number 1 seed in both conferences to be successful in their quarter finals, compared to about 60% for the number 2 seed.

How did our regular season top pickers pick? There’s a pattern for sure with the 2 number 1 seeds being picked. Some disagreement over CHI/NOLA, but only Beaver Paw is backing Seattle from this crew.

Beaver Paw:  NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SEA
Ranger Horkan: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SD
Bozo6: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
Dingo: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SD
MLR Stats: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD

The 2023 OG pickers have a bit more confidence in Seattle with only Bozo6 and Ranger John going for SD. No surprise with Rugby Morning picking OGDC of course, but a continued clean sweep for Houston.

Bozo6:  NEFJ,  HOU, CHI, SD
Freejack fitzy: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SEA
Ranger John: NEFJ, HOU, CHI, SD
Ranger Bunny: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SEA
Rugby Morning: OGDC, HOU, NOLA, SEA
Ranger Payne: NEFJ, HOU, NOLA, SEA

Will a new leader emerge from the ranks? Will this come down to tie breakers? Anyone as excited as I am to find out?

I know I just wrapped up the MLR 2024 Ranger Picks presented by TJRS season, but we can’t stop, won’t stop.

Presenting the MLR 2024 Ranger Picks Post Season Presented by TJRS!

We’re changing up the format a little bit this year thanks to suggestions from Ranger Mark (FreeJacks Fitzy) and Ranger John. Let me know what you think of this format.

Everything you need to know is over at https://rangerpicks.rugby/postseason so head on over and join the fun!

With the conclusion of week 18, so comes the end of the regular season of Ranger Picks presented by TJRS.

In our first year growing from the original 6, we regularly had over 30 pickers, and a lot fewer “hiccups” than I expected with the hand crafted system I put in place with Google Forms, Sheets and some unofficial API usage.

For the overall picks, it seemed like a season long battle between Beaver Paw, Bozo6, Dingo, and MLR Stats, with Ranger Horkan silently sitting ready.

For the first 8 weeks, Beaver Paw had a lock on the number 1 spot even through week 8 which was our first pick-pocolypse until week 9 when Dingo, MLR Stats and Ranger Horkan shot past him, and Bozo6 drew level on points. Dingo then held the lead until week 11 when Bozo6 finally grabbed the top spot. That only lasted 1 week before Dingo reclaimed the top spot and Bozo6 dropped to 4th. Dingo held on to the lead with a lot of movement below him until week 15 when Bozo6 got his league leading 5th bonus point on the season and grabbed #1 again, which of course only lasted 1 week before Dingo shot back along with Ranger Horkan to pass Bozo6 one more time. Week 17 was another disaster for our pickers (though not quite as bad as week 8) but that allowed Beaver Paw to rise once more to grab the lead. Week 18 lead to what some might call a desperate final attempt to zig for Bozo6 and … it didn’t pay off.

Putting a pin in that for the moment. Week 18 had some exciting moments… for a moment Ranger X was the sole remaining ranger in contention for a bonus point. Right up until that heart breaking kick giving Houston the win. Congrats to Ranger John and UnforgivenPotato for managing 5 correct picks (the LA win in Utah robbing both of them of the bonus point).

As I mentioned a couple of times, my kids have been playing Ranger Picks this year. I’m relieved to say I won that pool but I’m proud of how well they picked each week. It was a lot closer than I thought it would be, especially with the littlest playing based purely on logo aesthetics!

I’ve had several “thank you"s this past week for Ranger Picks, but I’d like to thank all of those participating for making this a fun ride - and letting me promote it in odd places (for example the Fantasy Ruckers discord). Thank you to those who offered suggestions and offers for help to improve the pick analysis in the previews (especially Ranger X) - lets see what we can do for next year! I’d also like to thank Phil and The Jacks Rangers Show for letting me run with this, and I’d especially like to thank the “OG” 2023 squad for their support.

Talking of the OG squad, I kept track of their picks and results too. “Make sure to call me the bonus point king” Bozo6 dominated that table despite “Definitely Not a Ranger” Rugby Morning making an early run at it.

Now for the final standings. Most importantly I managed to squeak into the top 10 making sure that half of the OG squad represented along with Ranger John and Bozo6! MLR Stats hung with the table leaders the entire season. Uncle Phil and David Lawrence (from Scrum of the Earth podcast) cemented their positions in the top 10 despite Phil not watching any MLR matches that the FreeJacks weren’t playing. Despite holding the lead multiple weeks, Dingo finishes in 4th place thanks to the extra bonus point held by “remember I’m the bonus point king” Bozo6. Ranger Horkan, who was one of the most enthusiastic advocates for opening up ranger picks to the wider audience finishes in 2nd place based on the dumbest tie breaker (alphabetical) - which gives Beaver Paw, our original table leader the win! Congrats and welcome to the winners circle.

The full tables for week 18 and overall standings are, as always posted at https://rangerpicks.rugby/

It’s the final week of the MLR 2024 regular season! This Ranger Picks presented by TJRS is late again, but I was at the beach so please forgive me :)

With 2 points separating the top 5, who will secure the top spot this year? Beaver Paw, Dingo, Ranger Horkan, Bozo6 or MLR Stats?

The upsets have already started this week with LA securing the win at Utah. That leaves only 3 pickers in with a chance of a bonus point this week - and spoilers… none of the top 5. The most popular pick are the Free Jacks over Anthem. The most contested is Seattle @ San Diego.

There will be post season Ranger Picks… spread the word!

With Houston punching a ticket to post season and Anthem being mathematically eliminated last week, this week brings an opportunity for up to 4 more teams to secure their post season appearance. World famous MLR Stats posted all the scenarios more concisely than my rambling.

We have a unanimous pick of Houston over LA… which is a little surprising given that Anthem managed to grab 7% against SD. The closest matchup for our picks is Dallas edging out Chicago 55-45.

There could be some movement in the top 3 depending on that hotly contested Hounds @ Jackals matchup

With an upset in Miami in a unanimous FJ pick week, we knew there would not be any bonus points up for grabs. The upsets (for some) continued throughout the weekend, leaving the majority with only 2 correct picks, a couple of 1 picks and the monster zig attempted by Freejack Fitzy backfired with a “NIL POINT” result. 4 of you managed to somehow get 3 right - Dingo (no surprise), 2 Payne kids and… Beaver Paw perhaps making a comeback?

Week 14 form is open people: https://rangerpicks.rugby/

Congrats to the 4 BP awards for #RangerPicks week 1! Beaver Paw, MLRStats, RuckNRoll and SaberCat Diehard. For the 2023 crew, Bozo6 and RugbyMorning taking advantage of the alphabetical tiebreaker to sit atop the table, and yours truly taking up the bottom spot. There’s still 17 more weeks to go. Ranger Picks has the full standings, and Week 2 is now open!

What a response to Ranger Picks Week 1! Almost 40 participants. The most popular pick was our New England FreeJacks with 100% of the vote, followed by Chicago (90%) over Miami. The closest matchup is expected to be Utah and Houston with both roughly 50% of the picks. Who will emerge on top of the table following week 1? Will there be any bonus points awarded this week?

Welcome to Week 1 of #MLR2024 Rangers! The excitement is so intense that I’m opening the Ranger Picks form early. The form will close at some point on Friday evening (US East coast time). Check out Ranger Picks for more info!