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Originally Posted by Tycobbler
Not necessarily. Some teams that dominate continue to do so through out. A few quick examples as to why not could easily be this. Your team may very well have dominated during the season, now you're playing only the best teams come playoff time. Your 5 star ace is on the mound, but only has a holding runners rating of C. Your 5 star catcher is behind the plate, but only has an arm rating of C. A lesser team with good speed on the base paths, and a decent pitcher, given the opportunity will put themsevles into scoring position swiping a few bases on you and leaving you scratching your head as to how it just happened that your far superior team just lost to the wild card team.
Certain keys are an A arm for your catcher, a SS and 2B rated A in range. Even if these three cannot hit there defensive purposes in my experience are a must. I try and build an offense around this defense and so far it's paying off. Like i said i have one ace and 4 avg-good starters, a good pen and a great closer.
Recipe for winning complete  |
Your point would be valid if one assumes that the AI team that beats mine had the ingredients you mentioned. In my case, they don't. They have just as many (or more often, MORE) holes than I do.
Using your example, I'll illustrate using last year's team that beat mine. They had one ace (which you mentioned is needed), but then 4 BELOW average pitchers, in that apart from their ace, none of their starters had an ERA under 5.11, and none won more than 11 games. Also, their catcher had a '6' for an arm (out of 10). My catcher has a '10' arm. They stole bases on me constantly, while I kept getting that stupid 'runner doesn't get a good jump' message. Additionally, my infield was rated '6' across the board (out of 10). Not outstanding, but also above average.
Meanwhile, their infield had a '8' at SS, but only a '2' at 2B (or it might have been 2 at SS and 8 at SS), plus their corner infielders were both '4'. In the OF, I had LF '7', CF '2' (yeah, that's low), and RF '9'. They had LF '4', CF '6' and RF '7'. I don't buy the theory that my CF's low range rating cost me the series, especially considering that I play out all the games and NEVER did any of the scoring plays happen based on shots to CF where he didn't have the range to get to them.
Couple that with the fact that his hitters were in the '50 to 60' range for contact, mine were in the '75 to 85' range. his discipline/eye ratings were pretty average at best, with only one of his batters having higher than '75', meanwhile I had 4 or 5 guys who walked more than they struck out.
Yes, it's been said it's not the case, but I swear if you went by my three past seasons, I'd be convinced there's some kind of 'boost' to the computer teams in the playoffs, and my team takes a 'hit' in performance. Because for the life of me, without resorting to changing my entire team to '10' rated defensively, I don't have a clue how I continually lose.
btw, it's not even a case of me being a 'bad manager'. I sim the first 5 innings and play out the rest. In about 50% of the loses, I was losing badly before I 'took over'. And in about the other 50%, I had a tie or a lead, and my starter/bullpen self-destructed for no reason.