Time to Catch 'Em All

Galeg · 12-03-2018, 07:43 AM

Armed with the news that learned position experience will stick to cards and a catchy team name, it is time to experiment! I will be embarking on a journey to find out what a team of all catchers (and pitchers) can do (besides sucks at middle infield and center field

).

I used my time during the entry pool to collect as many catchers as possible. I did not spend any cash, but was lucky enough to pack 1 diamond, 2 golds, and a few silvers that I sold to fund my catcher pool or buy more packs. I opened 15-20. This netted me 112 catchers and I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out which ones could passably play at what positions. 2B, SS, and CF are real problems--surprise, surprise. A big downside to buying so many catchers is that I had very little PP to spend on pitchers, but needs must.

I will keep this updated with my teams "progress".

Galeg's Catch 'Em All - Rho Phi

f_monster · 12-03-2018, 07:52 AM

LOL! This should be fun! Good Luck!

Galeg · 12-03-2018, 02:56 PM

We've started off 3-3. Ignore the defensive efficiency, it's all good.

Galeg · 12-04-2018, 06:47 AM

First day ends 8-19. Pitchers doing well for their ability, in 10th. Batters letting us down and are last in almost every category. People who started off with no positions rating now generally have a 30 rating, unless they've been platooned a lot. I'm guessing 45 will be the max most of these guys can achieve.

CrazyWR · 12-04-2018, 03:56 PM

This is great, I'm a huge fan already.

Galeg · 12-04-2018, 06:56 PM

We've improved to 14-28. Dropped Cervelli and Garver as they were both hitting ~.180 through 100 or so AB while also failing miserably at 1B and LF, respectively.

Brought in 58 Tomas Tellis to play some occasional 1B and because his batting attributes interested me. Also wanted to bring in another bullpen arm so I added 68 Bill Campbell, who has been excellent in two outings. I have very few decent pitchers to rotate right now and I keep wasted all of my PP on things I don't need--like more catchers--or completing my 2018 Live DET collection.

Galeg · 12-05-2018, 07:40 AM

18-36. Seems we are consistently a .333 team. We're getting better slowly. Pitching is holding it's own around 10th, but batting is creeping up from 15th. Looks like I don't have enough bats that can hit lefties. Maybe I can find a good lefty smashing C to be my new DH. Oh, and C Bob Boone (on pace for 5.2 WAR season) is 2nd in All-Star fan voting.

Also, I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I woke up!

CrazyWR · 12-05-2018, 12:55 PM

6 for 8? How many innings was that game

Galeg · 12-06-2018, 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrazyWR

6 for 8? How many innings was that game

Galeg · 12-06-2018, 06:22 AM

We've slowly improved to .354 at 29-53. Our pitching stats look bad, but are actually still around 10th with terrible BAPIP and DEff. Batting has improved as a few extra guys heat up. We're only 15th in SB (unsurprisingly). Still can't hit LHP. Some guys are up to 40 position rating now, but harder positions like CF and SS and lagging behind. I wonder what determines how fast they learn?

The only roster move I made was dropping Tellis and acquiring 81 Francisco Mejia. He will be my main DH moving forward, but so far batting .171 in 82 AB.

Bob Boone (on pace for 5.4 WAR) is a fan favorite.

1B Yasmani Grandal's recent form has been a big part of our team improvement.

The team is better than it's record suggests...

Galeg · 12-07-2018, 06:44 AM

Looks like our new found form is sustainable. We're 39-70, .358--amazingly just 4 games back of 3rd place in the division. Made a few changes on the pitching side. Dropped Matt Grce and Artie Lewicki, and moved Ervin Santana to the bullpen. Added 56 Daniel Stumpf as my specialist because he was the best I had available and didn't have time to search the auction house. Also bought and added 75 Franklin Perez to the staff. He's been not very good in two outings, but I wanted to have the card so I might as well play him. I'll post player stats tonight.

Galeg · 12-08-2018, 11:07 PM

Well there are a 5 games left in the season, but I'm going to do my season review now because I have time. We finished the season very poorly and dropped to 53-104, .338. How did we get here and can we expect better next season? Let's see some details...

Starting Pitching

I only made one change to the pitching staff all season. Mostly because I didn't have the PP to buy upgrades. Or if I did, I had other priorities. Ervin Santana was very bad for us. I moved him to the bullpen for a while, but he continued to under perform and eventually lost his spot on the team. His replacement was Franklin Perez. Perez is a very inconsistent performer, but what can I say--after playing a lot of DET in this version of OOTP I have a soft spot. I had him in the beta and he did quite well for me. I'm surprised that Stripling did so well considering his low stamina. Oh, and the last bit of interesting news is that Matt Shoemaker pitched a Maddox!

Relief Pitching

I like to play with 8 men in my bullpen so I only make two changes all season. Matt Grace was an absolute disaster. Even against LHB he was not good. I also dropped Lewicki. He was alright, but I only had him pitching in low leverage long relief because he isn't good. Stumpf was brought in late tp face lefties and his stats are inflated because the game likes to keep him in to face RHB. I have limited his pitch count in an effort to combat this and it seems to be working. Joe Jimenez was my other late addition and he's been great in limited action. I stubbornly stuck with Melancon as my CL because I'm a fan of him, but he was real bad. I don't know how he walked so many batters because nothing in his attributes suggest these numbers. Bill Campbell acted as SU and was just brilliant all season. I will have to try to get him more innings next season.

Batting

Garver, Tellis, and Cervelli were dropped fairly quickly. Not at once. I was cycling through trying to find someone who could bring some hitting to DH and fill in a little somewhere else. Eventually bought Francisco Mejia and I've been extremely disappointed in what he's brought to the plate so far. Not even a good split. Boone has been phenomenal behind the dish all season and was hot at the plate for the first half. He was on pace for 5.5 WAR at one point so he did slow down. Grandal started off very slow, but has came good in the end. I got unexpected production out of Austin Barnes and Chris Hermann. I was playing them because they were the best defenders I could find, but Barnes his LHP well and Hermann hit LHP around replacement level and RHP a little better. The biggest disappointments were Munson at DH and C, and Contreras in RF. I expected Contreras to be a platoon player, but he never even amounted to that. Munson I actually expected to be one of my better batters, but he struggled a lot.

Fielding

We had some good news and some bad news. Grandal and Posey began the season with 0 in their respective positions and they progressed a lot. That's the good news. Barnes, Wockenfuss, and Contreras all started with a decent amount of position experience and didn't grow so they are probably at their max. Chris Herrmann had some growth at CF, but not as much as I had hoped for. His OF attributes still suggest to me that he should be able to grow more so I'm not sure if his mistakes hamper growth or if it just takes longer to learn CF. Kelly was a huge disappointment at SS. I had very low expectations, but he probably played 95% of games an only learned 17 points. When I was makes my player selections I wasn't using exact numbers, just the 5 scale, so I think I thought he looked better than he is. I might try Farmer there next season or see if I can find anything remotely better as he also didn't hit a lick. I will stick with mostly this team and make just a few changes for next season so the experiment will continue!

Galeg · 12-10-2018, 06:17 PM

SEASON 2
We finished Season 1 with a 57-105, .358, 38 GB record. This season we have (some) position experience under our belts, some fresh faces coming in, and of course we're in a new (Bronze) league--Omega Gamma! Sadly, I don't recognize any of these teams. The division looks interesting, with one team half Gold, one all Silver, one all Bronze, a weak team, and my own all catcher team. Let's meet the team...

BATTERS

Changed Farmer to primary SS and made Kelly the utility. Alfaro, Hicks, Diaz, and Marjama are all new additions. I'm hoping to get some really good offensive splits out of a few of them. As you can see, very few people know how to competently play their position. I think Barnes is maxed out. Posey and Grandal continue to grow.

STARTERS

This is an area I will try to improve if I ever get the PP needed. The only change made was bringing in Alex Wood and dropping Niese to the bullpen.

BULLPEN

The only change here was changing Niese from SP to LR. Some of these guys did not perform last year and are on a tight leash.

Galeg · 12-12-2018, 09:32 PM

We had a great month and are 33-41, .446. C Bob Boone is leading the vote to be an All-Star for the second year running. DH Francisco Mejia and SU Bill Campbell are on track to join him. The bats have been pretty hot this season. We are ranked 6-10th on those categories, but the pitching has not been wonderful and we are only ranked 12-15th in those.

I've made no changes to th batters so far other than lineups. Grandal is still learning 1B quickly and is up to 58 now. Posey has slowed at 3B and is at 47. SS gets almost no movement. CF is a very long grind. Herrmann has played every inning at CF for a season and a half unless he was tired and he's only up to 28.

On the pitching side of things I have made several changes. Dropped Shoemaker, Stumpf, and Melancon. Brought in Price, Loup, and Walker. SP being so expensive, I think I may try to build a really good bullpen instead.

Galeg · 12-16-2018, 12:48 PM

We finished Season 2 66-96, .407, 20 games out of the playoffs.

Boone and Grandal were great again. John Hicks was surprisingly good all season long. Alfaro dropped off at the end, but was really good for most of the season. Posey had a down year. As you compare fielding to last season, there is slow and steady growth. Hermann only gained 2 points in CF for some reason. I'm not sure what is holding him back so much.

I'm not going to keep up with pitching here. This is a story about Catchers, after all. Outside of a couple of pitchers individual numbers look alright, but compared to the league we were ~13th in most categories.

Galeg · 12-23-2018, 05:52 PM

Finished 63-99. It wasn't a good season. My batting took a step back for some reason. Didn't see much improvement in position ratings. I've been slowly upgrading pitching and I'm still buying some catchers, but haven't found any recently that I would want to stick in the field.

12-03-2018, 07:43 AM	#1
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	Time to Catch 'Em All Armed with the news that learned position experience will stick to cards and a catchy team name, it is time to experiment! I will be embarking on a journey to find out what a team of all catchers (and pitchers) can do (besides sucks at middle infield and center field ). I used my time during the entry pool to collect as many catchers as possible. I did not spend any cash, but was lucky enough to pack 1 diamond, 2 golds, and a few silvers that I sold to fund my catcher pool or buy more packs. I opened 15-20. This netted me 112 catchers and I spent a LOT of time trying to figure out which ones could passably play at what positions. 2B, SS, and CF are real problems--surprise, surprise. A big downside to buying so many catchers is that I had very little PP to spend on pitchers, but needs must. I will keep this updated with my teams "progress". Galeg's Catch 'Em All - Rho Phi

12-05-2018, 07:40 AM	#7
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	18-36. Seems we are consistently a .333 team. We're getting better slowly. Pitching is holding it's own around 10th, but batting is creeping up from 15th. Looks like I don't have enough bats that can hit lefties. Maybe I can find a good lefty smashing C to be my new DH. Oh, and C Bob Boone (on pace for 5.2 WAR season) is 2nd in All-Star fan voting. Also, I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I woke up! Last edited by Galeg; 12-05-2018 at 07:44 AM.

12-03-2018, 07:52 AM	#2
f_monster Minors (Rookie Ball) Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Cartersville, Georgia Posts: 26	LOL! This should be fun! Good Luck!

12-03-2018, 02:56 PM	#3
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	We've started off 3-3. Ignore the defensive efficiency, it's all good.

12-04-2018, 06:47 AM	#4
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	First day ends 8-19. Pitchers doing well for their ability, in 10th. Batters letting us down and are last in almost every category. People who started off with no positions rating now generally have a 30 rating, unless they've been platooned a lot. I'm guessing 45 will be the max most of these guys can achieve.

12-04-2018, 03:56 PM	#5
CrazyWR All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2018 Posts: 549	This is great, I'm a huge fan already.

12-04-2018, 06:56 PM	#6
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	We've improved to 14-28. Dropped Cervelli and Garver as they were both hitting ~.180 through 100 or so AB while also failing miserably at 1B and LF, respectively. Brought in 58 Tomas Tellis to play some occasional 1B and because his batting attributes interested me. Also wanted to bring in another bullpen arm so I added 68 Bill Campbell, who has been excellent in two outings. I have very few decent pitchers to rotate right now and I keep wasted all of my PP on things I don't need--like more catchers--or completing my 2018 Live DET collection.

12-05-2018, 12:55 PM	#8
CrazyWR All Star Reserve Join Date: Nov 2018 Posts: 549	6 for 8? How many innings was that game

12-06-2018, 06:22 AM	#10
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	We've slowly improved to .354 at 29-53. Our pitching stats look bad, but are actually still around 10th with terrible BAPIP and DEff. Batting has improved as a few extra guys heat up. We're only 15th in SB (unsurprisingly). Still can't hit LHP. Some guys are up to 40 position rating now, but harder positions like CF and SS and lagging behind. I wonder what determines how fast they learn? The only roster move I made was dropping Tellis and acquiring 81 Francisco Mejia. He will be my main DH moving forward, but so far batting .171 in 82 AB. Bob Boone (on pace for 5.4 WAR) is a fan favorite. 1B Yasmani Grandal's recent form has been a big part of our team improvement. The team is better than it's record suggests...

12-07-2018, 06:44 AM	#11
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	Looks like our new found form is sustainable. We're 39-70, .358--amazingly just 4 games back of 3rd place in the division. Made a few changes on the pitching side. Dropped Matt Grce and Artie Lewicki, and moved Ervin Santana to the bullpen. Added 56 Daniel Stumpf as my specialist because he was the best I had available and didn't have time to search the auction house. Also bought and added 75 Franklin Perez to the staff. He's been not very good in two outings, but I wanted to have the card so I might as well play him. I'll post player stats tonight.

12-08-2018, 11:07 PM	#12
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	Well there are a 5 games left in the season, but I'm going to do my season review now because I have time. We finished the season very poorly and dropped to 53-104, .338. How did we get here and can we expect better next season? Let's see some details... Starting Pitching I only made one change to the pitching staff all season. Mostly because I didn't have the PP to buy upgrades. Or if I did, I had other priorities. Ervin Santana was very bad for us. I moved him to the bullpen for a while, but he continued to under perform and eventually lost his spot on the team. His replacement was Franklin Perez. Perez is a very inconsistent performer, but what can I say--after playing a lot of DET in this version of OOTP I have a soft spot. I had him in the beta and he did quite well for me. I'm surprised that Stripling did so well considering his low stamina. Oh, and the last bit of interesting news is that Matt Shoemaker pitched a Maddox! Relief Pitching I like to play with 8 men in my bullpen so I only make two changes all season. Matt Grace was an absolute disaster. Even against LHB he was not good. I also dropped Lewicki. He was alright, but I only had him pitching in low leverage long relief because he isn't good. Stumpf was brought in late tp face lefties and his stats are inflated because the game likes to keep him in to face RHB. I have limited his pitch count in an effort to combat this and it seems to be working. Joe Jimenez was my other late addition and he's been great in limited action. I stubbornly stuck with Melancon as my CL because I'm a fan of him, but he was real bad. I don't know how he walked so many batters because nothing in his attributes suggest these numbers. Bill Campbell acted as SU and was just brilliant all season. I will have to try to get him more innings next season. Batting Garver, Tellis, and Cervelli were dropped fairly quickly. Not at once. I was cycling through trying to find someone who could bring some hitting to DH and fill in a little somewhere else. Eventually bought Francisco Mejia and I've been extremely disappointed in what he's brought to the plate so far. Not even a good split. Boone has been phenomenal behind the dish all season and was hot at the plate for the first half. He was on pace for 5.5 WAR at one point so he did slow down. Grandal started off very slow, but has came good in the end. I got unexpected production out of Austin Barnes and Chris Hermann. I was playing them because they were the best defenders I could find, but Barnes his LHP well and Hermann hit LHP around replacement level and RHP a little better. The biggest disappointments were Munson at DH and C, and Contreras in RF. I expected Contreras to be a platoon player, but he never even amounted to that. Munson I actually expected to be one of my better batters, but he struggled a lot. Fielding We had some good news and some bad news. Grandal and Posey began the season with 0 in their respective positions and they progressed a lot. That's the good news. Barnes, Wockenfuss, and Contreras all started with a decent amount of position experience and didn't grow so they are probably at their max. Chris Herrmann had some growth at CF, but not as much as I had hoped for. His OF attributes still suggest to me that he should be able to grow more so I'm not sure if his mistakes hamper growth or if it just takes longer to learn CF. Kelly was a huge disappointment at SS. I had very low expectations, but he probably played 95% of games an only learned 17 points. When I was makes my player selections I wasn't using exact numbers, just the 5 scale, so I think I thought he looked better than he is. I might try Farmer there next season or see if I can find anything remotely better as he also didn't hit a lick. I will stick with mostly this team and make just a few changes for next season so the experiment will continue!

12-10-2018, 06:17 PM	#13
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	SEASON 2 We finished Season 1 with a 57-105, .358, 38 GB record. This season we have (some) position experience under our belts, some fresh faces coming in, and of course we're in a new (Bronze) league--Omega Gamma! Sadly, I don't recognize any of these teams. The division looks interesting, with one team half Gold, one all Silver, one all Bronze, a weak team, and my own all catcher team. Let's meet the team... BATTERS Changed Farmer to primary SS and made Kelly the utility. Alfaro, Hicks, Diaz, and Marjama are all new additions. I'm hoping to get some really good offensive splits out of a few of them. As you can see, very few people know how to competently play their position. I think Barnes is maxed out. Posey and Grandal continue to grow. STARTERS This is an area I will try to improve if I ever get the PP needed. The only change made was bringing in Alex Wood and dropping Niese to the bullpen. BULLPEN The only change here was changing Niese from SP to LR. Some of these guys did not perform last year and are on a tight leash.

12-12-2018, 09:32 PM	#14
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	We had a great month and are 33-41, .446. C Bob Boone is leading the vote to be an All-Star for the second year running. DH Francisco Mejia and SU Bill Campbell are on track to join him. The bats have been pretty hot this season. We are ranked 6-10th on those categories, but the pitching has not been wonderful and we are only ranked 12-15th in those. I've made no changes to th batters so far other than lineups. Grandal is still learning 1B quickly and is up to 58 now. Posey has slowed at 3B and is at 47. SS gets almost no movement. CF is a very long grind. Herrmann has played every inning at CF for a season and a half unless he was tired and he's only up to 28. On the pitching side of things I have made several changes. Dropped Shoemaker, Stumpf, and Melancon. Brought in Price, Loup, and Walker. SP being so expensive, I think I may try to build a really good bullpen instead.

12-16-2018, 12:48 PM	#15
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	We finished Season 2 66-96, .407, 20 games out of the playoffs. Boone and Grandal were great again. John Hicks was surprisingly good all season long. Alfaro dropped off at the end, but was really good for most of the season. Posey had a down year. As you compare fielding to last season, there is slow and steady growth. Hermann only gained 2 points in CF for some reason. I'm not sure what is holding him back so much. I'm not going to keep up with pitching here. This is a story about Catchers, after all. Outside of a couple of pitchers individual numbers look alright, but compared to the league we were ~13th in most categories.

12-23-2018, 05:52 PM	#16
Galeg Major Leagues Join Date: May 2012 Posts: 405	Finished 63-99. It wasn't a good season. My batting took a step back for some reason. Didn't see much improvement in position ratings. I've been slowly upgrading pitching and I'm still buying some catchers, but haven't found any recently that I would want to stick in the field.