White Tigers, Black Knights, and Sun Kings all take the top seed in their conference, so I full expect all 3 to choke in the divisional round, as is tradition.
White Tigers finish 109-53 to fend off Old Town, the second best team in the conference, to win the division by 5 games. The 2 seed actually finished 10 games back of Old Town, who will be the top wild card. Carlton got 2 legs of the triple crown, leading the conference with wins (20-4) and ERA (2.36; runner up was 2.93). J.R. Richard led the conference in strikeouts and was second in wins; Mickey Lolich was tied for third in wins. Lindy McDaniel led the conference in saves with 42 but actually had a relatively pedestrian season with 2.87 ERA. On the hitting side of things Nap Lajoie led the conference in WAR at 8.8, finishing 4th in average, 2nd in RBIs, 2nd in OPS, and tied for 7th in home runs with 30. We had the lowest starter ERA and fewest runs allowed in the league by a pretty large margin, plus the best defensive efficiency, and were also first and second in the conference in FIP and bullpen ERA. Didn't really end up ranking very well in the hitting categories, outside of Lajoie and Berra on the good end and Harrah on the bad end our entire lineup was within spitting distance of a 100 OPS+ so at least we're deep. In addition to the Trout I picked up earlier I pulled a Yelich yesterday; ended up dropping Lindor and reshuffling the infield so now I'm using Yelich in a platoon at DH with Heilmann. Gerrit Cole in his second stint as a starter seems much improved for some reason; I benched him when he had a 5.70 ERA two seasons ago; since I added him back to the lineup this season he's 11-4 with a 2.90 ERA and a 3.75 FIP, which puts him ahead of Richard and Lolich in both respects (and ahead of Maddux in ERA). Thinking I'm going Carlton-Cole-Richard-Maddux for my playoff rotation. Dropping Randy for the playoffs so I can bring up Lindor again just as a backup.
Oh, and, well, as I'm writing this, I just ripped 2 packs I got in a tournament, and pulled a
97 George Sisler. He'd arguably be an upgrade over Bagwell, but he's a much BIGGER upgrade over either Yelich or Heilmann at DH, so I'm gonna give him the full time slot there and find somewhere else where I can set up a platoon.
Not entirely sure what to do, think I might end up dropping Yelich and switching from my current Bellinger-Mays platoon in right field, to a Bellinger-Heilmann platoon in right and a Trout-Mays platoon in center.
Pretty sexy; he's also one of my favorites when I'm playing regular OOTP in historical mode:
Anyway, Black Knights finished at 107-55. Plank had the best ERA, Johnson had the most wins, strikeouts, and WAR, and was second in ERA. Ron Reed had a good season too and was 5th in ERA, and Maddux was 3rd in WAR. The team led the conference in runs scored and allowed, starter ERA, FIP, average, OBP, and home runs. Chuck Klein hit 38 home runs and racked up 110 RBIs, second and third in the conference. We won our division by 20 games and fended off the 101-61 Jobu's Minions for the top seed.
Sun Kings wrapped things up at 117-45. Like the White Tigers they were in the same division as the second best team in the conference, but we ended up handily winning the division anyway by 14 games over the Rustling Jimmies. Believe it or not that's only the third best record in the league, after 122-win Gotham and 118-win Nomadic in the other conference. Maddux had the best ERA and most wins, meaning all 3 of my teams had the top starter in ERA and in wins this season. Carlton was second in strikeouts, while Deacon Philippe (who I didn't end up selling after all, since nobody bit at a price I was comfortable with) had a decent season, 18 wins and 6th in WAR despite a fairly pedestrian ERA. Yasztremski led the conference in WAR by a fair margin, while the team led in runs scored and allowed, average, OBP, home runs, starter & bullpen ERA, and FIP. Ted Lyons was particularly outstanding as the long reliever, registering a 1.72 ERA in 43 appearances.
Daily and weekly tournaments still not being kind to me. Lost a 3-way tie for second place in the group stage of the early gold double RR, then lost in the second round of the early silver double RR 3-2 in extra innings. Been winning all kinds of crap in PT20 just hopping on once a day and signing up for whatever looks interesting, but in PT21 I'm on a bit of a dry spell outside of quick tourneys.
White Tigers in PT20 finished 2 games back in the division at 99-63 and will host Oakland in the wild card. Richard had his best season yet, going 23-7 with a 2.94 ERA. Feller, meanwhile, had his worst, 13-15 and 4.91. Black Panthers finished at 79-83 and well out of the wild card, they're not really good enough to compete in perfect but they're also not bad enough to get relegated. Golden Lions down in Gold win their division by 4 games and take the top seed at 100-62. Clemente finished first in average and 2nd in RBIs; Aaron was 2nd in home runs. deGrom was 2nd in wins and had a respectable 2.82 ERA. Greinke wasn't great but he did have a perfect game early in the season.
So that's 4 teams with the top seed in their conference plus a 99-win wild card, let's see if I can avoid totally choking for once.