Joe 'furious and completely livid' at Yahoo!

In case you missed it Sunday night/Monday morning, allow me to set the scene for you: Joe and Bob are tied 9-9 late in the day with runs all squared. Joe has a couple guys left in the final innings, Bob has none.

Bob thinks if it ends tied 9-9 he will win because of his tiebreaker interpretation. Joe thinks if it ends tied 9-9 he will win because of his interpretation. Yahoo's rules state the first tiebreaker as being: "Winning percentage against this opponent during the regular season. The winning percentage is based on individual stat category wins and losses, not match up wins and losses."


Based on this wording, I (and others) believe this to mean that you add up the scores of the matchups in the regular season. In this case, Joe won 14-5 and Bob won 11-9, so clearly Joe has a higher margin.

I did not like this, as we are a one-win league and at no point should margin of victory come into play. This is not college football. Remember, in the regular-season tiebreakers, "Winning percentage of Week 22" counts as 1-0 and not, say, 14-5. However, Yahoo! makes that clear, whereas here it did not. In fact, Yahoo! goes out of its way to say match up wins and losses don't count.

Joe clearly felt as I did, and he went to bed excited over a big first-round upset. He woke up Monday morning to see Bob advanced via the tiebreaker.

"Obviously I am furious and completely livid," Joe said in an exclusive interview with the MTL blog tonight, his first public comments. "At the same time, I am simply in shock. I couldn't believe my eyes. The rules blatantly state I have the tie breaker, beating Bob 14-5 and losing 9-11. Giving us the combined head to head stats of 23-16 me."

Joe says he has filed an official protest with Yahoo! but has yet to hear back. Yahoo! has yet to return an e-mail asking for comment.

"We will probably get a response from someone with an accent in New Dehli that knows more about cricket than baseball," Joe said. "They claim they have an abnormally large amount if messages at this time and it may take longer than 24 hours to get a response."

Bob, on the other hand, was clearly pumped up. After thinking he had won, he was informed that he had lost - via the tiebreaker rules - by the commish. Then he woke up Monday to see a victory.

"I do think that Joe has a right to be angry, but at the same time I think the rules were interpreted correctly," Bob said. "It sounds like stats would play a factor in the tiebreaker, but what I got out of it was Yahoo interpreted one week as 1-0 or 0-1 and not 14-5 or 5-14 for example.

"I see both sides of it and I would not be upset if it were overturned, so to speak, since I really think it could be interpreted either way."

Joe says he is considering petitioning the league to move to ESPN or CBS Sports next season.

"Yahoo has been terrible this year, including whole days of site maintenance and a ton of wrong scores and stat corrections," Joe said. "CBS Sportsline and ESPN have proven to be better. Yahoo! recently fired their CEO. The company's stock remains in the toilet and they are struggling to find someone to buy the company piece by piece."

I happen to agree that Yahoo! has had a rough year. I even got screwed by a stat correction. But this idea is preposterous. I am nixing it in the butt before it even gains legs. ESPN and CBS have not proven to be better.

Joe even went as far to say he is considering appealing the result to the league itself if his protest is denied.

"I may call in legal counsel, AKA my roommate Chris, in order to legally define these rules and my rights as a manager in this league," Joe said. "I may seek an arbitration hearing. However, I do think our commissioner cares more about blog hits and drama than actually doing what is right and determining how the rules should have been interpreted."

Right, Joe, because we all know the commissioner is the one who determines that. Seems like Joe has some major sour grapes.

We'll update this if and when we hear back from Yahoo! Until then, feel free to leave your condolences for Joe or thoughts in the comments section.