Quito Mosquitos -- A packs plus team

[bailey]

I changed my team name to better reflect my lowered expectations: the Quito Mosquitos. Instead of a high flying Magpie with a great theme song, I will just buzz around and be a pest.

Packs Plus (trademark) means I will improve the main team through Twitch drops and tournament packs and not buy packs with my points**. Daily Perfect Draft will also be tried to bring in better cards. My points will be spent on first building my bronze team then tackling the live collections. Once those objectives are realized, I may buy cards for the main team as I am able to afford them.

I was lucky on opening day to draw 4 historical diamond cards. Last year, it took me almost 3 months to draw 4 historical diamonds from packs! I thought I was doing well enough in Entry Pool to be slotted into Stone, but I guess not as the team debuts in Rookie, which is fine with me.

Lefty O'Doul (95) is my DH so he can get his swings every game.
Pie Traynor (96) will be a fixture at 3B for a long time to come.
Doc Ayers (96) is the ace of the staff
George Kahler (90) is another SP. He'll get the ball every 5th day, despite his outrageously low control.

For the rest, there is 1 gold, 3 silver, 15 bronze, and 3 iron who shall remain nameless unless they do something spectacular. All are historical, of course, since I sold everything living within a few hours of starting the team.

**I did violate principle and bought 7 regular packs which is why I have 4 diamonds instead of 2.

[neugey]

What do you do with the PP you accrue? Spend on auction house players?

[bailey]

Originally Posted by neugey

What do you do with the PP you accrue? Spend on auction house players?

So far, I'm just saving it. A priority is to build the bronze team, but right now I'm working on iron. It's disappointing there are no Bo7 iron quick tournaments. I'm picking up live irons for collections, but am still selling every live bronze as long as I can get at least 120 for it. Maybe, if you follow real baseball, speculating in high live gold and diamond cards is a good move.

[bailey]

The bugs won their first five games and never looked back, cruising to a division championship with 93 wins. First in hitting, last in pitching.



My most famous division opponent was the Jersey Devils who I believe is Rich Grisham's team.

Notable arrivals:
Ronald Acuna Jr. (100 live) – My first perfect card and I used him in CF improving defense there from 36 to 78.
Nick Anderson (90 live) – My first live diamond was slotted in as the closer. Sets the team record for consecutive saves at nineteen. (Game likes to end streaks just before they payoff).

Both of these players will have to be sold before the next update. I don't want to take a chance on a downgrade. RP's like Anderson are especially volatile.

Individual accomplishments:

Dick Howser had the honor of recording the team's first hit as well as hitting for the first cycle. He had a splendid season at the plate batting .326 and leading the league in triples and OBP, .420. However, his 46 defense at SS portends replacement as soon as possible.

Pie Traynor led the league in batting average with .342. and 9.4 WAR.

Sean Burroughs, understudy at 3B to Pie Traynor, is the first (and only, so far) bug to get 4 hits in a game.

Jose Tartabull led the league in stolen bases with 81.

Tournament news:

So far, no luck in Perfect Draft, except for a fluke win in a DoD.
I waited until Tuesday before fielding an iron team and I won a few packs, but overall this team is struggling to stay above .500. A particularly disastrous Saturday (28-47, .373) forced me to stop and download iron data, 42 tournaments, and the team was revamped from top to bottom.


Playoff news:

An uphill struggle awaits us in the first round. The opponent is the St. Louis Battlehawks who completed 41 missions and therefore filled their roster with gold cards.

[bailey]

Game 1 – Doc Ayers (13-10, 4.45), ace of the staff, pitched 8 strong innings yielding 1 run and striking out 8 and left the game leading 7-1. The AI used my closer, Nick Anderson (22 saves, 1.60) to finish it; not a smart move given the score.

Game 2 – Ed Summers (12-12, 5.08) labored for 7 innings giving up 4 runs, but the AI kept him in for one more inning and he did not record an out and 3 more runs scored making it 8-7. Once again, Nick saved the day.

Game 3 – The team banged out 13 hits, but failed to get the one hit at just the right time leaving 12 men on base and succumbed 5-3 in 14 innings. Giancarlo Stanton with the walk off HR. 2 more scoreless innings for Nick in the defeat.

Game 4 – Quito rallies for 3 in the 9th to tie, but we lose 7-6 on a sacrifice fly by Giancarlo Stanton in the bottom of the 9th.

Game 5 – 7 more stong innings from Doc Ayers sees the bugs up 5-2, but the shaky bullpen give up 2 in the 8th and a tired Nick Anderson coughs up 2 more in the 9th, on a HR not by Giancarlo Stanton and the reverse sweep was complete.

Shortly, after the series concluded, a duplicate Nick Anderson was popped from a pack.

Awards:

Pie Traynor wins great bat and great glove at 3B plus the MVP.

Notable Departures:

Ronald Acuna was sold high for a nice premium over quicksell value, but that leaves a gaping hole in center field.

Tournament news:

The iron team improved slightly after the revamp, but I'm switching to bronze next week regardless.

[bailey]

Over 100 packs opened so far and I have over 100K in the kitty. I even quit selling live bronze a few days ago. A few "15"'s are approaching completion just from pack pulls; no need to buy any.

My Stone League division didn't look too tough. One team managed 93 wins in rookie just like I did, but unlike me, they finished 4th and did not make the playoffs. Anyway, by the end of April I had set the pace with a blistering winning streak and no one could keep up.


Speaking of streaks, Walt Dropo (85), hit in 26 consecutive games.

Down on the Farm: (formerly "Tournament News")

I had spent so much time downloading data for iron I kept going with that team on Monday and many records were set!

Most packs won in a day: 10
Most consecutive wins in a row: 3
Most wins in a day: 4
Most consecutive tournaments without 1st round elimination: 8
Most consecutive tournaments without being swept in any one series: 27
Highest winning percentage over 10 tournaments: .681

I even placed in a daily iron tournament winning a gold pack that brought Walt Dropo to the team.

and then, it turned out to be fool's gold; it turned on a dime.

Most consecutive 1st round eliminations: 8
and 15 of the next 20 were 1st round eliminations.

[bailey]

Quito in the summer is HOT.

At the All-Star break, Quito is in first place by 9 games with a league-wide best 66-31 record. Among the many mid-season replacements obtained through a steady supply of free packs, was Al Dark (82) who took over at SS. In his first week of play he set the bug record for consecutive base hits with nine. Alan Wiggins (65) took over in RF and seems likely to break the club record for stolen bases. He has 76 already, but his weak defense of 39 puts his starting role on life support. Mike Kreevich (82) is the new CF who brings sterling defense with a decent, if unspectacular bat. Josh Hader (92 – live) is the lone diamond recruit so far this week.

Among returnees, most improved goes to George Kahler whose 5-15, 5.89 in Rookie has become 14-2, 2.71 in Stone.


Smoky up in smoke.

A major attempt was made to acquire Smoky Burgess, (L10 - 213K) but the slot machine ended up 7 – 7 – BAR for 750 points instead.

[bailey]

Quito won 108 games to finish with the best record in the conference. The pitching did a 180. The Bugs are now 1st in hitting AND 1st in pitching.


12 different cards got starts and a total of 30 pitcher cards were used. Pitching now features 8 diamonds and 4 golds. There was more stability with the position players, just 21 cards used, but 5 bronze cards remain to be upgraded.

Missions report:

16 gold packs and 17 regular packs were claimed out of the 71 currently available. (Edit: 101 available)

Down on the Farm:

I wisely stayed in the safe harbor of iron and avoided the tumultuous meta shift in bronze. There may be no Bo7, but those take 6 hours to win vs. about 3 for a Bo5. We won our share and even finished 2nd in a Daily for 3 diamond packs. Made the semi-final again in PD for a whopping 750 points.

Notable arrivals:

3 new historical diamonds were obtained via packs:

Ken Giles (95) -- 3.45 ERA, 10K/9, projects as a future closer. (An oddball: historical current player).

Jack Pfiester – (91) 6-0 2.45 ERA a solid choice for #3 starter

Melido Perez (90) – 2-3 4.04 ERA #4 starter

Jeff Tesreau (90) – Just acquired with points because too cheap to pass up. #5 starter, but Long Relief for the post season.


Individual accomplishments:

Nick Anderson set the team consecutive saves mark with exactly 20 and streaked for nine consecutive strikeouts. Plus, a hi-def inning to top it all off.

George Kahler flirted with a triple crown achievement, but fell just 3 K's short, but claimed most wins (20) and lowest ERA (2.48).

Left O'Doul topped the league in batting average with .324.

Alan Wiggins led the league in SB with 128 and Runs with 126, but loses his RF job to Red Murray (80) who is practically the same card except more power and substantially better defense.

Strategy
I'm pre-collecting cheap historical cards. It just so happened that Red Murray and Jeff Tesreau were good enough to make the team, but most aren't even good enough even for tournaments. Will see if the gamble pays off. I'm trying to avoid the mistake I made last year of not speculating, but maybe I'm just fighting the last war? I think completing all collections will be easier this year.

[bailey]

2022 – Quito – Postseason Report

Division Series

The wild card winner was the Black Donovans who Quito edged 4 games to 3 during the regular season. It was deja-vu in Quito as the Bugs open with two victories at home, but lose the next two on the road. Fortunately, George Kahler was sharp for game 5 and the bats came alive treating the home crowd to a 10-2 victory. Walt Dropo slugged .857 to earn series MVP honors.

League Championship Series

East Division champs, the Mushroom Kingdom were the next contenders. We split the season series 3 games apiece and we split the first two series games in Quito. The Bugs dropped game 3, but finally won a playoff game on the road; in fact they won two. Jack Pfiester wrapped things up nicely in Game 6, 5-2. Mike Kreevich slugged .826 for his MVP award.

Finals

For the first time, the Bugs open a series on the road facing the Wrightstown Ravens who won 113 games. Their roster of mostly golds didn't seem too overwhelming, but they scored more runs and allowed fewer than the Bugs in the regular season. On closer inspection, it was studded with special edition cards and future legends. These mosquitoes flew into a windshield at 65 mph losing all 4 games. They never held the lead except for three early innings in game 4.


Awards

George Kahler – pitcher of the year

Pie Traynor – great glove at 3B

Lefty O'Doul – great bat at LF

Nick Anderson had a second save streak of 23 games, and a shutdown streak of 17 games.

[bailey]

It was inevitable that avoiding the live missions would put me in a league where I was overmatched. That league is this week, in iron league. I know I'm in trouble when the league's sole Cy Young is in my division. Even so, I was hopeful of a wild card spot after going 30-30 to start the season, but another team in my division is more than half way to Cy Young as well. Against these two teams, I'm a combined 5-21 which is the exact amount of games I'm below .500 at this moment. Only 4 teams get relegated and Quito might be one of them.

The only outstanding arrival was live Mookie Betts who was immediately sold on the AH. I've converted the whole team to non-live cards: 8 diamonds, 1 silver, 1 bronze and the rest are gold.

[bailey]

It's all over, but the crying in Quito. Left for dead in late July, 17 games under .500, the team mounted a furious rally to get within 1 game of 2nd wild card, but then in the final crucial series lost 2 out of 3 and then faded away. The team earns the booby prize of catching the last bus up to bronze league.



Re-arranging the deck chairs

The final two cards below gold were replaced.

Garth Iorg (1985 Toronto Blue Jays) takes over backup chores at 2B and 3B, eliminating the need to train anyone else there.

Francisco Lindor (historical 2016 Cleveland Indians) replaces Al Dark as the starting SS because of better defense and bat (at least better vR).

The sole diamond card packed during the week was historical starting pitcher Hank Borowy. A forgotten star from the WWII era.

Tournament Report

The more data I download the worse the team gets. Barely finishing over .500 for the week and a scanty 44 packs earned. Scanty compared to the previous week which saw me open 53 packs with rewards less than half as generous! Downloading a boatload more data sees me swap out just 4 players. I think maybe iron is a 50-50 proposition no matter what cards are used.

Mission Report

Mission completion was way down as well as I await cheaper cards next month. Why pay 100K to complete the live missions just to get Cy Young 4 weeks sooner? The Negro collection looks doable, too, roundabout November.

[bailey]

I haven't been doing pre-season reports and I'm not sure this one is the start of a trend. Things happen can happen overnight, though, y'know? But, let's get the basics out of the way first. My team is in bronze and there are 3 Cy Young's lurking in the league: 2 in the other conference and 1 in my division as per usual. The Bugs would need to make the playoffs for further advancement, so it's possible bronze is going to be our home for awhile.

The thrice revamped iron team managed a few more packs and what the team fails to earn in quantity, it makes up with quality. Introducing the new RF – Cool Papa Bell . This is a L10 355K card and my best pull ever, but, sadly it can't be sold at this price. Too many sellers of Cool Papa at this time. So, I'm going to play it just to see if it can set a club record for stolen bases. Alan Wiggins set the bar at 128 back in 2022. Red Murray, who was the team's lone All-Star in 2023, loses his job to make room, although he remains as the backup corner OF. Future Legend, Michael Toglia, is sent packing to make his legendary future somewhere other than Quito.



BREAKING NEWS – Cool Papa Steals Two As Mosquitoes Win Opening Game, 6-2.

A word about that other pick-up: Jacob Stallings (OVR 69)

This live bronze card has already crashed through the 50 point sell price, so what should I do with this duplicate? This blurb from RumBunter suggests hanging on to it for a bump up to silver and potentially gain a princely 75+ points over quick selling now.

[bailey]

It's hard to believe, but for two months your favorite insects have been leading the way, by as much as 5 games! I thought I should post the screenshot before reality finally sets in.



Red Murray has regained his starting role in RF and Cool Papa moves to CF. Red Murray knows how to steal: 22 out of 23 attempts. I've had to cool off Cool Papa's enthusiasm on the bases, (set stealing slider to midpoint), to match Red's success rate.

Another roster move went awry. I found Johnny Edwards (86) sitting in my reserves, who has better catcher ability than either of my two catchers. So, I planned to make him the new back up, but I accidentally moved my starter to reserves. No undo in PT. No choice, but to make him the starter and was rewarded with 10 hits in 22 AB's in the first 5 games.

The iron team continues to flounder playing below .500 this week. I'm sitting on 20 regular packs mostly from twitch drops and collections.

[bailey]

The dream-like start to the 2024 season never ended. Although a tepid July (13-12) saw Quito fall out of 1st place, a 12-game winning streak propelled the Bugs back into first place for good. 104 wins in total! They were #1 in most offensive categories, missing just HR (8th), walks (dead last), K's (2nd) and base running (3rd). The pitching was pretty good, too (4th ERA overall). The only changes from 2023's sub-.500 performance were Cool Papa Bell and Hank Borowy. I also micro'ed the bullpen a fair bit, swapping numerous historical golds in and out to keep the bullpen at or near 100% as much as possible. Not sure how a gain of 25 wins was possible, especially since both wild card teams came from my division, too! One, of them, the Christie Pits Maple Leafs, had all the live mission rewards, so I must be overestimating their worth.

Sadly, for the Pits, Cy Young was not the answer for their wild card game, so my division series opponent was San Dimas Wild Stallions who swatted the Bugs twice in our very own Equator Park! Jack Pfiester kept us alive with a complete game shutout in game 3 and we survived a 9th inning rally in game 4 to win 7-6 in 10. Hank Borowy blew the save in game 5, but got the win instead.

Spirits soared higher as we slugged our way to a 2-0 LCS lead against the Amesbury Settlers. Unfortunately, the Settlers superior pitching held sway over the next 3 games and suddenly elation had turned to desperation. Returning home for Game 6 saw our Bugs score 10 runs and turn 4 double plays, but it was not enough. An 8-run 6th inning put us down 11-4 and the ensuing rally was snuffed out in the bottom of the 9th with the winning runs on base.

For the season Walt Dropo led the league in HR with 31 therefore earned great bat at DH. Cool Papa Bell led in stolen bases with 92 and great bat at CF. Teammate Red Murray had 69 stolen bases and the higher success rate of 86%, but a great bat not. Pie Traynor managed great bat at 3B. Johnny Lindell ended the season on a streak of 5 consecutive pinch hits for a silver achievement worth 100 points.

I attempted to move Cool Papa as his stock is steadily falling and just moments after the debacle in game 6 a deal was made. Converting that value into raw PP, I think is the smart move if not too much fun to write about. The strategy of buying random historical silvers was successful as 28 “hit” on the new missions enabling me to sell those 28 for 3 times what I paid for the whole lot. But, I didn't sell any silvers, because they'll be needed for other missions down the road. I opened about 60 packs on Thursday night hoping for a big payday by catching a limited edition card, but caught two NL silvers instead which I did sell for a nice price! (And the big payday for LE cards was a mirage). I also sold off all of my live diamonds and most of my golds to avoid risking a downgrade. I did keep a few 88's and 89's and even bought one just moments ago for the princely sum of 1001 points! For the record, I invested in Salvador Perez (3), Trea Turner (2), Tim Anderson (2) and Xander Bogaerts (1).

[bailey]

Surprisingly the Bugs are going to be competitive in Silver. They are luckily placed in the weakest division in the conference. Early returns suggest 85 wins will capture the division flag. The other two conferences have one stacked team each who are winning 75%+ of their games. The only new face is historical diamond, Frank DiPino, 1983 Houston OVR 95. He's been a disaster so far, blowing at least 4 games. I also packed my 4th live perfect card, Max Scherzer who has been optioned to another team.



The update went badly for the iron team who played in 27 tournaments and earned zero packs. They reached the semi-finals 6 times losing all 6 and adding to the losing effort in semi-finals to 13 out of the last 14. The iron team is officially retired and I'm taking the day off to compose my bronze team.

Bronze offers 2 packs if you make it to the 4th round with a chance 4 or 8 more in the “bonus” 5th round. Compare to iron Bo5 which only offers 2 packs in the 4th round (or 5 if you win). Plus the extra randomness of the pitchers batting and AI pinch-hitting logic and not being REAL baseball makes me truly dislike the iron tournaments. (REAL baseball uses the DH). To sum up my efforts in iron: nearly 5000 games and .531 winning percentage earning 3 diamond packs 7 gold packs and 216 regular packs, or about 7 packs per day.

While the update did not go well for the iron bugs, it was a boon for the bottom line. I had saved 47 packs for Update Monday and beside the aforementioned DiPino and Scherzer, I was able to sell numerous new iron and bronze cards for over 10K points total. The classic was selling the first Matt Peacock card (OVR 64) for 999 points, while buying the first Chris Devenski for 66 points and flipping it for 300. People are slaves to the L10. Compare these two cards right now which shows the importance of the first sale. If you are a Peacock seller you can thank me now.

[bailey]

It's been a dreadful week for the Mosquitoes. After flirting with .500 during April and May, the summer doldrums set in and the team collapsed to last place, 12 games under .500 at the break. They cut the deficit in half since then, but are still 6.5 back in the division, 8 back in the wild card and 4.5 back from mere promotion.

The tournament team has suffered badly, earning ZERO packs since the update. A winning team is not built by twitch drops alone! I tossed my hat into the ring called the "Master Series", but you can already see where that project is going to lead.

The windfall from selling Cool Papa will keep this team afloat for a week or two, but I better figure out tournaments soon or this dynasty will end badly.

[bailey]

Not much to add to yesterday's grim report. We climbed out of the basement on the last day to finish 4th with 77 wins. That's about middle of the pack for those remaining in silver. I predicted 85 wins for the division champion--they had 89, but two teams tied for 2nd wild card with 85 wins and the winner of game 163 went on to win it all.

I did finally break through with some tournament wins and a few packs, but very far short of the goal of 70 per week. In a desperate move, I actually earned 3 challenge mode packs this week. All packs are being saved until Thursday night when 100+ new cards are released.

Nobody earned any awards. Perhaps, the highlight of the year was Jack Pfiester's one-hitter. No big changes to the team are planned, although I may swap some deck chairs (gold cards) in the bullpen and maybe a new (gold) catcher.

[bailey]

The problem with writing about a team being slow played is there is not much to write about. A franchise record 13 game losing streak around the All-Star break dashed all hopes and put the team on the precipice of relegation. 4th place and 75 wins was the result this week with no one winning any awards. Hank Borowy had a disastrous 3-18, 7.12 campaign. I have completed the AL West so Mark Langston should be an improvement. All the successful silver teams have completed the live missions, so the way forward for this team is clear.

[bailey]

I'm trying a new strategy this week. I've abandoned the max hitter park in favor of a max pitcher park. The PP earned from max hitting was negligible; 88% of my points come from packs. I've also abandoned the historical card “theme” to bring in Aroldis Chapman (stuff 177) to be the new closer and Cleveland catchers Austin Hedges and Roberto Perez to further bolster pitching with their 100 catcher ability. I chuckle that I was able to repurchase these two for less than 200 apiece after selling them previously for 3550 and 1500! (And being 78's may upgrade to gold for more profit). Pitchers will feature a high movement rating, so Mark Langston, Gio Gonzalez, and George Baumgardner join old hands Doc Ayers and George Kahler in the rotation. I'm going with just 11 pitchers, figuring to swap bullpen arms as they get gassed. This makes room for a DH platoon of Ty Cobb (vR) and Moises Alou (vL), two players picked up by completing the AL West mission. Frank McCormick is the new 1B emphasizing defense. Slugger Walt Dropo is dropped. None of this is likely to matter because two teams in my division are live mission “complete”.

[bailey]

The experiment of pitching and defense was a resounding success as the team climbs above .500 with 83 wins. The home field advantage was real with 48-33 record at home, but gave most of it back on the road. They were miles behind the division leader, but 2nd wild card was always a possibility. At the very end the Oracle gave us less than a 1% chance to make the playoffs.



Still, it all came down to the final series with the Led City Swans. A sweep of the 3 game set on the road would have resulted in a 3 way tie, but it was not to be as the Bugs could win only two.

Pie Traynor won his third Great Bat award at 3B and Red Murray earned a Great Glove for RF. Aroldis Chapman ended the season on a 24-game save streak.

Desiring to build on this success, tight wad GM Bailey threw his checkbook wide open and completed the live missions. (Figuratively speaking, no real money will ever be spent on this team). "This team will be great in 2028!" is the new slogan for ticket sales.