Season 12 (2031) - General Discussion

[Westheim]

Same same over here. Neither team is doing well at their pedestrian levels.

Except, there is the curious case of Al Leiter to report. He's pitched two full seasons on the Metsies, going 28-24 with a 4.70 ERA. He made them ZERO ... ZERO! ... PP in those two seasons (except for partaking in the odd team achievement, preferrably comebacks )

On April 7, Al Leiter tossed a no-hitter against the Portland Bridges for a total of 1,600 PP! Surely things are pointing upwards with him now!

Al, are they? Al?

No, he's 1-2 with a 5.06 ERA...

[Marleigh]

Paragon City Heroes are never going to be big winners in Diamond so every season i experiment, this season we have an all righty lineup, its not going great 11-15 with the last game being a 10-0 crushing at the hands of the Black Sox. Pitching is improved over last year (couldn't get worse), and Maddux is back winning. the hitting is awful, SE Willie Mays is hitting .168

San Angeles 70s 14-12 but already 7 1/2 games back in their division

Lowdown Lugnuts 16-11 after a shaky start the pitching started to shine and we went 8-2 to end the sim, no surprise that we lead the league in steals (63) but last in homers (14) Duffy and Speaker are the only OPS+ over 100 in the lineup but we are +23 in run diff

Bay City Boomers 16-10 carrying on as normal, two 4HR power innings in the sim, most of the bullpen had 8+era, a few guys in the lineup are underperforming at present but we are still 2nd in runs scored

[PocketsAintFull]

You wait a few Diamond seasons to get a 'Pounding' achievement, then two come along back-to-back games!

I think in this case one may have led to the other, position players ended up pitching for the opposition at the end of the first game

[neugey]

On a 12-game and counting losing streak in Diamond right now. Team can't hit themselves lately. Very much in danger of relegation. Ugh!

[Warhawk]

D.357 certainly ain't a cakewalk. I'm 41-16, leading the division by 7 games, and still 6.5 games back of the Miami Tamps in the conference. Tacos, Grays, and Braves in my conference too, and over in the other conference are the Whips and Sandvipers.

Starting pitching off to a pretty poor start, Gibson's ERA is over 2 points higher than last season, Guidry and Paige about 1.5, though Maddux is about the same and Verlander is half a point better. Bullpen is killing it though. Olsen, my 7th inning guy, has a 2.84 ERA, 3.16 FIP, 15.6 K/9. McDaniel, my 8th inning guy, hasn't allowed a single run in 21 innings, with a FIP of 2.50. Richard, my closer, has 20 saves, a 2.14 ERA, a 15.9 K/9, and his opposing batting average is a ridiculous .151 (both Olsen and McDaniel are also holding batters under .200).

My playoff addition last season, Rickey Henderson, is hitting .308/.399/.584, while George Sisler is hitting .326/.357/.619, both over 150 OPS+. Lajoie, Berra, and Pesky are all over 130 too.

[JasonC23]

Last week, the Huntley Red Raiders put together their best Diamond-level pre-All-Star break record of 54-44. This week, in D362, the Huntley Red Raiders reached the All-Star break at...54-44. Consistency FTW!

Of course, last week, the team stumbled through an awful second half of the season to finish 77-85, so here's hoping that whole consistency thing is just a first-half fluke!

[Marleigh]

Paragon City Heroes have been dreadful and are on the verge of relegation

Lowdown Lugnuts started slow but ripped through May with a 22-4 record. We lost all 6 games to the 2nd place team in July (they have much better hitting and pitching) to end up 69-35 with a 2 1/2 game lead. We lead the league in stolen bases with 281, but only Hugh Duffy has reached 10 homers. Tommy McCarthy has been the star man so far, .339/.413/.484 with 48 steals. I am probably not helping by giving everyone the green light all of the time, but it seems to be working for the most part

Bay City Boomers started the season fairly shakily but have pulled away to a 76-29 record leading the division by 18 1/2 games, 3 regulars over .400 OBP, and Trout batting 3rd has been better than him batting leadoff. Leading the conference in HR and RBI. Rickey is leading in runs and steals while hitting a ton of doubles. good times. leading to our inevitable 1st round exit again

San Angeles 70s could be facing my the worst possible scenario, after avoiding relegation last season they are in a weak league and leading the WC race, a promotion would be a bloodbath. SE Pete Vuckovich was my only all star he's put up good numbers as a mid relief/stopper

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

Paragon City Heroes have been dreadful and are on the verge of relegation

Looks like my Hamtramck Tigers are competing with you for the top relegation spot, (or the lowest non-relegation spot). Tim Hudson pitches reliably in diamond for the Magpies, so I picked him up for the Tigers. Only 30K seems like a steal. (I don't know how people can complete the collection for him so cheaply). I had to replace gold Mike Adams and his 8+ ERA, although this card was effective through gold level.

The Magpies are being consistent, for sure:

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by bailey

Looks like my Hamtramck Tigers are competing with you for the top relegation spot, (or the lowest non-relegation spot). Tim Hudson pitches reliably in diamond for the Magpies, so I picked him up for the Tigers. Only 30K seems like a steal. (I don't know how people can complete the collection for him so cheaply). I had to replace gold Mike Adams and his 8+ ERA, although this card was effective through gold level.

Currently on a 6 game losing streak and an eye watering 4-21 for the month, relegation would probably be for the best

[benderguy1]

Having a big week in Iron .157 with the Brick Green Dragons. Currently 78-29, top team in the league. We've opened up a 19 game lead in the division. I'm expecting the 10 game losing streak any time now. Full disclosure, I invested some $$ for packs into this team since I started about 7-8 weeks into the OOTP 21 season. I had opened my Starter packs, made a roster and let the team sit untouched for 8 weeks. When I returned to try and figure out what PT was all about, I had a ton of points accumulated and it was Diamond/Historical pack week. I invested those points in packs and players. Had decent luck with the packs and flipped some cards for more points on the AH. Invested in some packs when the points weren't accumulating and had some very good luck with Standard packs pulling a perfect Acuna, Jr and about 3 Diamonds. Over the last few weeks I've gradually upgraded my team from Silver/Gold to Gold/Silver and now to mostly Diamond/Gold with a couple of Perfects (deGrom and the Acuna card). So my team appears to be Bronze ready at this point.

I've been concentrating on moving on from the Live players, but when my Jeff McNeil (83) is leading the league in hitting at .351 -- it's hard not to ride that out for as long as it lets me. I have 5 Live hitters, 3 of which are playing regularly right now (McNeil, Acuna, Bregman), one is a defensive replacement (Andrelton Simmons) and one is in a platoon (J.T. Realmuto). Starting staff has three Live (deGrom, Strasburg, Syndergaard) with Leiter and Randy Johnson filling out the staff with some LHP. The bullpen has a lot o Live arms with Yates, Osuna, Rogers, Hendriks and Pressly. Much of my mop-up work seems to have been delegated to a couple of over-performing One Hit Wonders and a Juan Guzman SE for long relief.

Since I have this team on the right track, I just started a 2nd team last night which will be all FTP -- the DBT Heathens. We're in the Entry Pool right now awaiting assignment for next week, playing around .500 ball. My one Gold pull out of my Starter Packs was Harry Howell SS 1905 (89). A two-way player (SP & CF) who has been terrible at both so far. ERA 6.91 and a BA .200. I flipped a couple of players from the Starter Packs on AH for points since they were commons that were involved in the Name Game missions. Took those points and invested in three lower priced golds (Glasnow, Josh Bell and an SE Kinsler) to hopefully make our team a little competitive in Rookie.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by benderguy1

I've been concentrating on moving on from the Live players, but when my Jeff McNeil (83) is leading the league in hitting at .351 --

Since you like the live players, you would be killing it for sure, if you completed the live player card missions. Try doing that with the 2nd team. You can buy all 26 Baltimore players (right now, probably, whenever you read this) for about 500 points, sell the reward card for 1000 and finish Kansas City ditto. Then tackle Houston for Bagwell, that card is a beast in entry pool and playable in diamond.

[benderguy1]

Originally Posted by bailey

Since you like the live players, you would be killing it for sure, if you completed the live player card missions. Try doing that with the 2nd team. You can buy all 26 Baltimore players (right now, probably, whenever you read this) for about 500 points, sell the reward card for 1000 and finish Kansas City ditto. Then tackle Houston for Bagwell, that card is a beast in entry pool and playable in diamond.

I've completed 11 of the Live team missions including the ones you've mentioned. I'm close on the White Sox for the Ted Lyons card, but the four least inexpensive cards to buy that would complete the mission are way overpriced on the AH. I wouldn't even get my money back flipping the Lyons card.

Out of the missions I've completed, I'm using the Bagwell, Randy Johnson, Varitek and Juan Guzman cards on my roster. Bagwell started off great for me, had about two HOF-like months and has now gone pretty cold. Johnson -- pretty much the same. He started to fade right before the All Star Game, he was our conference starter for the All-Star game, had another rough outing afterwards, but he's gotten somewhat back to form. Varitek hasn't been great, but he's been decent -- a little below the Snapshot year of 2007 he is portraying. Guzman is just serving as long relief.

[JasonC23]

Not so far!

[Will_L]

Chico Escuela say, "Perfect League in August been berry berry good to me."
21 game winning streak.
A no-hitter by Mike Mussina.
A 24.5 game division lead, 2nd best record in NC.

[Westheim]

Raccoons won a 32-team tournament overnight and thus four packs, instantly doubling the amount of packs my teams had won so far, combined. That good a season I am having in OOTP 21.

They even popped 1935 Cy Blanton, who to my dismay seems to hold no value. Oh well, into the rotation with the sucker.

Critters are 5 1/2 out in the division, which a September rally would solve, but that won't ever take place.

Metsies by contrast are 5 1/2 *ahead* in their division, so I have zero doubt a September collapse can solve their situation, and such things DO take place...

[Tinkerman]

My Tinners would take Blanton over every card they've pulled, apart from the gold Negro League player I sold for 50k .

[Marleigh]

This game for Lowdown Lugnuts was crazy, blowing 3 saves in 1 game is pretty unusual




We still managed to finish the sim 87-45 but we are 2 1/2 games back (15 1/s back in the WC) we play Wichita Tumbleweeds 7 times this sim so are likely to end up in the WC spot and if we win that face them in the 1st round. so unlikely to be promoted this year which is looking like a second straight 100+ win season to finish 2nd in the division.

Currently at 357 steals so within the goal i set of 400 for the season. Every starter has double figures with 4 in the 40s and McCarthy leading with 59. Biggest disappointment has been 96 Tris Speaker, done very little offensively and his glove doesn't justify his place at CF, but finding decent CFs in early 1900s players is pretty hard, more likely i shift Duffy to CF and bring in a platoon to play LF

[Tinkerman]

Originally Posted by JasonC23

Not so far!

Good luck with your run in, Jason. Looks like that trip to the mechanic did the job!

I've had a bit of a rubbish week. IRL I've had a pulled muscle in my back and a bathroom conversion with a deadline to finish. In PT, my teams have played like a bunch of drunks!

I'm also a bit fed up with pythags that look like this:

[benderguy1]

The August Swoon continues...

From a 19 game lead in the division and a team playing nearly .750 ball, down to an 11.5 game lead and playing at a .669 clip. Still the best season that I've had so far -- but something tells me the PT/OOTP gods are going to make me sweat this division out until the very late evening.

Reviewing a couple of box scores from last night, this one ticked me off. We all know that any pitcher on any given day can implode but Al Leiter circa 1998 would have had this lineup with 5 lefty batters for lunch. He gave up only 2 HR to left-handed batters in all of 1998. Here, he gives up two HR to left-handed batters in 1.2 innings of work en-route to a 1.2 inning / 7 ER performance.

Well, back at it -- let's go get 'em today Dragons and get on a roll heading into Playoff Sunday!

[JasonC23]

Originally Posted by Tinkerman

Good luck with your run in, Jason. Looks like that trip to the mechanic did the job!

I've had a bit of a rubbish week. IRL I've had a pulled muscle in my back and a bathroom conversion with a deadline to finish. In PT, my teams have played like a bunch of drunks!

I'm also a bit fed up with pythags that look like this:

You too, Tinkerman! -11...not even my team, and that's got me feeling

In the final series of the day yesterday, the Reno Buzz shut out the Huntley Red Raiders twice (in Huntley) to pull within a game of first, but the boys rallied...well, the bats rallied, at least, to pull out a 9-8 barnburner and leave things as shown below going into the final simulation day of the season. Huntley could win the division, grab a Wild Card spot, or finish out of the running. No matter how it turns out, it's nice to have a Saturday in Diamond that matters!