[Renfro]

Before the season began, I sold off Cy Young and Lave Cross and welcomed a whole slew of Future Legends and other random Golds. This was my first time specc-ing and trying to guess what cards were going to become valuable as new missions became available. It's easy to target the Future Legends since they've had their own missions in every version of Perfect Team so far. While I wouldn't be surprised if there was a new twist for this year, I'd be very surprised if Future Legends were not involved at all.

So we entered Iron League with a ramshackle rotation filled with my only two Diamonds (Gio Gonzalez and Melido Perez, who didn't really acquit himself in Bronze), and a bunch of Future Legends. Oh, and Babe Ruth with his 80 MOV. With the FLs, I figured I'd cycle through them and see what sticks.

Well pretty much nothing stuck. We ended with a team ERA over 5. Our season's best pitcher was FL Jackson Rutledge, who started 27 games and finished 10-7 with a 4.91 ERA, 1.52 WHP. In all, 12 pitchers made starts for us this season. I experimented with 6-man rotations, 4-man rotations, fast hooks, and openers. I did learn that none of my pitchers would dominate, let alone do well, in the next highest level.

Improving my defense will help. We committed 102 errors (10th), amassed a combined -33.7 ZR (13th), and had a .658 Defensive Efficiency (13th).

Things were much better on the offensive side of the ball. As a team, we hit .273 with an OBP of .357 and a OPS of .790 (4th). We hit 160 homers and stole 231 bases. On Tuesday, I pulled All-Time Legend Richie Hebner (95). I thought for a second of throwing him on the AH, but the 3B options I had after selling Lave Cross were really on stop gap measures until I bought an 3B Future Legend like Jordan Groshans. So I slotted Hebner in at 3rd and batted him cleanup. Once I got Groshans, I limited Hebner to batting against righties. Overall, he slashed .309 / .392 / .509 with 13 HR, 72 RBI, and a 2.9 WAR over 97 games. Only FL Austin Martin had a better war, and Martin did it over the entire season.

We finished with a 71-91 record, happy to not get promoted. Despite the clear need for improvements pretty much everywhere, the off-season looks to be slow. The coffers are at 9K and earmarked for speculation purchases, improving my tourney teams, and FL. And as BaL Bronze players lower in price, I'll start buying those guys.