CFBL 1995, Year #6

Cactus Scouts Again Frustrate Rats; Renew FBL Dominance

The continuation of the 1994 lock-out postponed the CFBL draft and season, forcing the adoption of the league's first doubleheaders and a change in the post-season format -- and both rule changes proved popular enough to continue.

The CACTUS SCOUTS and Casuals put themselves in an early hole by spending big for their bonus picks at the draft: The SCOUTS were able to recover; The Casuals never did.  The River Rats set a CFBL record for most regular season wins but were denied a title once again by their arch-rivals, the CACTUS SCOUTS, who firmly established themselves as the dominant CFBL team. 


team (owners) bonus pick

     Young Guns:  Bonds

     Homeboys:  Lofton (Belle)

     Black Sox (Rick Best, Patrick Barnhart, Sean Perkey):  Baerga

     Casuals:  Griffey ($45)

     Clubbers:  Piazza ($28)

     Pomegranates (Bruce Pomer, Jim Ray):  Thomas (Piazza)

     River Rats:  Canseco (Griffey)

     CACTUS SCOUTS:  Belle ($50)

New Rules: Bonus round draftees became subject to open bids.  The top 4 teams plus ties qualified for the playoffs; all playoff teams would play each other in a 3-week playoff system.  No tie-breakers used except for individual games (ties allowed in playoffs).  Because of the spring strike, double-headers were instituted: each team would play 21 games in 18 weeks.

Season: The River Rats rode an outstanding draft and dominated the regular season wire-to-wire, never losing more than 2 games in any 3rd and finishing 3 games ahead of the field.  The expansion Black Sox also got off to fast start and played well the whole season, finishing in a 2nd place tie with the other expansion team, the Pomegranates, who also played consistently well throughout the season.  The CACTUS SCOUTS rebounded from a horrendous middle 3rd (1-6) with a fast finish (6-1) to finish two games ahead of the 5th place Casuals and Clubbers.

FBL Final Standings:

     River Rats:  16-5

     Black Sox:  13-8

     Pomegranates:  13-8

     Cactus Scouts:  11-10

     Casuals:  9-12

     Clubbers:  9-12

     Young Guns:  8-13

     Homeboys:  6-15

Playoffs:  The new playoff format had but one flaw (from the Rats' standpoint: It required a tiebreaker system to determine the champion), but it was far fairer than any previous system.  The favored Rats and the hot CACTUS SCOUTS dominated the two expansion teams in the round robin-style playoffs.  After two weeks, the Rats and SCOUTS had split their two games and had 5-1 and 4-2 records respectively.  The Rats got off to a big lead against the SCOUTS midway through the final week, but then crashed, losing to the CACTUS SCOUTS by 4 points.  Both teams finished with 7-2 playoff records, but the SCOUTS' two wins over the Rats were enough to take the tiebreaker and the championship.

Playoff Standings:

     Cactus Scouts:  7-2 (won tie-breaker by beating Rats, two games to one)

     River Rats:  7-2

     Black Sox:  3-6

     Pomegranates:  1-8

The CACTUS SCOUTS came back strong from a 5-9 record to win 6 of their last 7 regular season games; including the playoffs, 13 of their last 16.  The SCOUTS also recovered from the draft in more ways than one: Besides spending big for their bonus pick, they did the best job of rebuilding through trades and pick-ups.  They drafted key players in OF Belle (#1), SS John Valentin (#9), 1B Conine (#10), 3B Thome (#11) & OF Gant (#15), but it was trades (2B Alomar & C Daulton) and pick-ups during the season -- 3B Castilla (week #4, $2), 1B TMartinez (#5, $2), SP Schourek (#7, $15 & #12, $2), RP Hoffman (#11, $2 & #13, $2), C Santiago (#12, $18), OF GAnderson (#13, $2),  RP Nen (#16, $2), SP Ashby (#18, $2), SP AFernandez (draft # 4, week #19, $2), SP Hamilton (#19, $2) & RP Hernandez (#19, $2) -- that solidified the SCOUT team.

Original Forbes Field outfield wall and flagpole; University of Pittsburgh campus