I’m Sorry, the Wild High Sucks

by: Gary

The following was written before the onset of Season 19. Also, this article could not be possible without the great work that the Society For Internet Blaseball Research does. All opinions are those of the author and do not fully reflect those of Blaseball News Network as a whole.

In the Season 5 Elections, the fans of Internet League Blaseball voted for the “High Filter” decree. Doing so changed the subleagues and divisions from Good & Evil and Lawful & Chaotic to subleagues and divisions based on the current Wild & Mild and High & Low.

Wild High included the best teams in the league based on the last season’s standings, while Wild Low included the worst teams in the league. The Mild divisions included the middle teams.

In Season 6, the Wild High against other divisions held a win percentage of .710, and every team possessed a winning record, and the season-winning Baltimore Crabs marked the record for the best season in ILB history with an 80-19 record. The Wild Low on the other hand held a win percentage of .322 against other divisions, and the only one team ended up with a winning record— the Boston Flowers with a record of 51-48. They were swept by the Crabs in Round One of the Postseason.

In the most recent in the ILB’s eighteenth season, the Wild Low held a win percentage against opposing divisions of .648, and every team but one held a winning record. The Wild High held a win percentage of .361 against opposing divisions, and only two teams held a winning record, the second place Atlantis Georgias only barely doing so, with a record of 50-49.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Since its inception, the Wild High has won four Internet League Championships, just behind the Mild Low which holds five. This is despite the Wild High not winning the postseason since Season 12 when the Hades Tigers triumphed. And the other three titles are disputed, since that team that won them, the Baltimore Crabs, are now in the Mild Low.

Another event that happened earlier in the season that the Tigers won their third championship was the descent of the Baltimore Crabs and the flood of immateria that also brought the Ohio Worms, the Core Mechanics, and the team that would end up in the Wild High, the Atlantis Georgias. This would usher in the second great era of the ILB. The Expansion Era.

This is how the Wild High has played in The Expansion Era.

Not once in The Expansion Era has the Wild High held a positive win percentage against opposing divisions.

But before this can go any further, I must digress for a brief moment. I am sure many are asking me, “Why are you using Win Percentage against Opposing Divisions so much? Why is that the arbiter of how good a division is? Huh?” Don’t worry, I have a good explanation. A division always will have a .500 win percentage against itself. A team in the division plays another team in the division, and one leaves with a win, and the other with a loss. Using those statistics would simply muddle the data looking at how good the division as a whole. Therefore, I must instead focus on how the Wild High did against opposing divisions. Using this data, we can see how good the division really is.

With that established, one can see that in The Expansion Era, the Wild High has never been good. Though none of this matters without a little bit of perspective. I can show anyone that graph and they can think it is a weird red worm. So this is that same graph, but with every other division in the ILB added in.

Only once in the past six seasons has the Wild High been able to say that they were not the worst division in Blaseball, that honor being instead bestowed upon the Mild High in Season 15.

The Expansion Era has lasted about a third of the ILB’s lifespan up to this point, and throughout it all, the Mild High has always been at the bottom. Their league-mates in the Wild Low, especially recently, have run circles around Wild High and dominated the Wild League. 

And there is no reason to think this will end anytime soon, as Season 18 was the worst season yet for Wild High, and inversely, the best season yet for Wild Low. So if anything can be gathered from this, it is that the disparity is only getting bigger as time goes on.

WHY DID THIS HAPPEN?

One could easily assume that the reason that Wild High has not been good in the Expansion Era is that their Expansion team, the Atlantis Georgias, is dragging them down. There is actually some truth to this. Of what is known as the “Breach Teams,” the Georgias have the worst win percentage of the four (as far as we have seen on our immaterial plane), holding a win percentage of .406. The Worms, Mechanics, and Crabs, however, have win percentages of .469, .448, and .515, respectively. All better than the Georgias.

But this reasoning is still flawed. The Georgias, despite having a poor win percentage over The Expansion Era, have placed in the top half of the Mild High in the past three seasons. This issue is not just with them, it is with the entire division. 

In The Expansion Era, seven teams have earned their way into the Playoffs from the Mild High (not counting Wild Cards like the Season 15 Mexico City Wild Wings, who despite making it to the Finals, did not actually earn their way into the Playoffs). This means that over six seasons, only once has the Wild High put multiple teams into the Playoffs.

And the worst part is that that one time was all the way back in Season 13, when the Mexico City Wild Wings got in with the 4th seed for the Wild League. Since then, the Wild Low has gotten three teams into the postseason for five seasons in a row.

So we know that the poor performance of Wild High is not solely the fault of the Georgias. So who’s fault is it? The answer is all of them, minus possibly one team.

Seven seasons lie under that .375 win percentage line in the graph above. Three seasons are from the Georgias, one by the Lift, one by the Jazz Hands, one by the Wild Wings, and one that actually goes below the chart by the Firefighters with Season 18.

Only two teams over this timespan hold a win percentage above .500, meaning they win more than they lose. These two teams are the Chicago Firefighters and the Hades Tigers. I think only one of these teams should not be blamed for the horrid performances of Wild High in the Expansion Era— the Hades Tigers.

Not only do the Tigers hold a superior win percentage in The Expansion Era than the Firefighters (.551 for the Tigers instead of the .501 for the Firefighters), but they also never made the division a laughingstock with a record of 25-74. The one season that the Tigers came in last, Season 17, was their only ever losing season. They are allowed to slack off once every 18 seasons. Tigers get a pass. Chicago, though, does not.

I do not care that the Chicago Firefighters, or the Mexico City Wild Wings for that matter, made the ILB Championships in Seasons 15 & 16 respectively. They are responsible, just like the Breckenridge Jazz Hands, Atlantis Georgias, and Tokyo Lift are responsible, for making the division that was created to house the best teams in the ILB, into the worst. They are all large contributors to this catastrophe of a division and deserve shame for it.

The Mild Low in recent seasons has been described by BNN as “Gay Baby Jail.” Three words that pack a whole lot of punch. Well, I think I can do the same for Wild High in one word. 

The Wild High is bad.