In 2014, the Millers reached seventh place in the World Series, ranking better than we’d ever ranked before in team history. 2015’s tenth place ranking may at first seem like a setback, but let’s look at some math and some history to be sure.

In 2014, 19 teams attended the World Series. 24 teams attended in 2015. Doing some simple math, we find that seventh place put us in the top 36 percent, while 10th place puts us in the top 41 percent. However, in 2014 we won five out of nine, or 55 percent, of our games. In 2015, we won four out of seven, or 57 percent of our games. Statistically, then, our record is virtually unchanged.

Individual standings haven’t been officially released yet, but we’ve done some calculations ourselves, and we believe that every player made a marked improvement from 2014 to 2015. For example, Evan Van Duyne had a batting average of around 668, which is higher than it’s ever been before, and he continued to be one of the team’s strongest fielders. Meanwhile, Chris Peterson scored six runs, obliterating his previous personal best.

One of our newest players, Josh Xiong, is proving to be an amazing offensive and defensive asset because of his incredible speed and powerful swing. We also continued to see strong performances from our veterans, Ben Goodrich, Stephen Guerra, and Matt Mccoy.

Dan Eliason and Kelly Peterson’s pitching/catching combination gets better every year, and even our relief pitcher/catcher, Zak and Nate Kanouski, put several runs on the table during their appearances. We think this puts us in a position to return on an even stronger footing next year.

That has happened before. The Millers were in tenth place coming out of the 2012 world series in Aims Iowa. The following year, we were only able to take twelfth, but in 2014 we fought our way all the way to seventh. With all this in mind, we’re confident that we’ll fight our way past seventh in 2016.