BUILD-A-LEGEND
The Perfect Build-a-Legend card missions dropped last week Thursday and I sold off some cards including George Watkins, Mike Mitchell, Joe McGinnity, and Richie Hebner. The last two had been on the active roster. I ended that night with about 200k, a sum I out PT22 Hosts have not seen before.
I used some of that money to work on some BaL Gold Missions. Specifically, I finished the Tim Raines Gold Missions, unlocking the Diamond version. In a corresponding move, I deactivated Corbin Carroll. While he remained solid on defense, his offensive numbers took a big dip from the .321 / .386 / .492 slash line he posted two seasons ago.
I also had enough cards to unlock Perfect Heilmann. I debated for a few minutes if I should sell those cards but ended up completing the mission and, after a few more moments of debate, punted Perfect Heimann to the AH for 500k BIN in a two hour auction. Those two hours came and went. Within that time, another Perfect Heilmann sold for about 250k and by then there one or two on the market. So I've decided to keep him.
At the end of the night, my record stood at 54-50 and 2 1/2 games from the wild card.
And by the next day, when my Melido Perez didn't sell, I decided to unlock Perfect Jake Peavy because why not?
Peavy's first 4 starts were incredible: 27.1 IP, 12 hits, 0 ER, 31 Ks, 8 walks. He went 3-2 the rest of the way but it was good enough to help us lock Wild Card 1 with a 92-70 record.
PLAYOFFS
I lost the Wild Card game. I mismanaged Peavy's starts in the last week so he was not available. Still, I was somewhat confident at starting Bob Groom (94 SS), who won 12 of his first 14 games. Had I looked at his record against my opponent, the Broomfeld BoSox, maybe I would've made the push to unlock the next closest Perfect BaL on my list: Charles Nagy. But I rolled the dice on Groom and we lost 4-6. Broom gave up 2 home runs, the first to 100 SE Alan Trammell and the other to 99 SE Nomar Garciaparra and was chased after 2 innings. The two home runs were an anomaly. In the regular season, he gave up only 10 home runs over 187 IP. Losing the Wild Card meant another season, my fourth, in Bronze.
SEASON SUMMATION
Before the BaL Perfects became available, we were struggling to keep pace with the other Wild Card teams, but afterwards, with the addition of 100 Jack Peavy, we took a solid hold of a WC slot. I'm sure other teams made Thursday improvements, but Peavy made an immediate impact.
Here are the stats for both Diamond Heilmann and Perfect Heilmann.
Perfect Heilmann is only so because of the generous bump to his fielding ratings. Even with that bump, his performance as a right fielder is meh. Definitely better than when I had Bobby Abreu manning right field, but a downgrade defensively from Danny Green.
And so, remembering the comparison between the Diamond and the Perfect, I can understand the argument to sell Perfect Heilmann. The problem is I'm just so curious about the next level of missions which purportedly require Perfect BaLs. It's that curiosity and the prospect of a monster card against a potential 150-200k sale.
Lost in the hoopla of the two Perfect BaLs was unlocking Diamond Tim Raines. In 49 games, he slashed .315 / .408 / .459 and stole 48 bases out of 52 attempts, including a 3-game stretch where he stole 9 bases. Raines amassed 3 WAR. That's kind of insane.
If anything, it was the additions of Diamond Raines, Perfect Peavy, and Diamond Nathan at the beginning of the year that got us to the post-season.
Diamond Joe Nathan won Reliever of the Year, as a Setup guy to SE Trevor Hoffman. The duo lead the bullpen to a league-leading 2.97 bullpen ERA.
We started 11 pitchers over the course of the season. Only FL Luis Patino and SS Bob Groom made starts all the way through, each with at least 30.
Defensively, we took a dip as our Zone Rating veered back to the negatives to a -13 for the year. This is partly attributable to our right field situation, where FL Riley Greene posted a -4.2 ZR and then Perfect Heilmann posted a -1.4. Dykstra, of course continued to shine at CF. In the infield, Rico Petrocelli posted a -3.9 ZR. Rafael Furcal was his stellar defensive replacement, but he only batted .216 / .313 / .339 over 281 PA. Still, I'm considering a changing my Global Strategies to put in defensive subs earlier or with any lead.