Season 12 (2030) General Discussion

[old timer]

Originally Posted by joehart

Yeah...it feels like the league selection went a bit sideways.
It looks like several different friends lists pulled all these teams together.

OL pulled themselves in as a group, the mid-level whales pulled themselves in together, …..
All it takes is a few stronger teams on the same friends list and you can end up with a bunch of strong teams.

Good luck for the rest of the week...hopefully you can make the playoffs and upset some teams.

We split a 4 game series with the Ahabs so I'm happy about that. We now have a 1 game lead for the #2 WC. Our schedule for June and July has half of our games being against those powerhouses. But August and September are much easier, so if we're still in contention by then, we might just make it. But the Ahabs appear to have an easier schedule the rest of the way and it looks like we might be battling it out to the end for that last WC spot. At least, I hope we'll still be in it!

Just curious... You mentioned before you were tired of seeing all the same perfect cards (I think that was you?) and that you wanted to change to more diamonds instead. Is this something you've been working on? You've got a really nice looking team there and I noticed you don't have as many perfects as some of those other teams with comparable records.

[joehart]

Yes my plan was always to replace them but the fun parts of life keep getting in the way. The team is essentially on cruise control with the kids doing lineups, capturing data, and messing with the park. Last I checked it was totally opposite of what I usually do. I believe they completely change it every week.

It is ok....I enjoy playing my OL team and let the kids do whatever they want to do.
I enjoy watching them argue about what the best lineup and park should look like.

Strangely, they did not want to build and own whale teams of their own but they enjoy messing around with this team. They have permission to sell any of the cards and get new ones but the number of transactions has not been that high yet.

[SpacePope]

My team went from 24-17 to 49-17 on a 25 game win streak.

I'm on vacation so didn't even notice until after it was over. 1 game away from the mlb record (held by Giants) with my (mostly) Giants team. The streak was snapped when Ohtani came in on long relief in a close game and predictably gave up 3 runs in less than 2 innings. I keep him around to pinch hit and soak up innings in blowouts but he's not always used that way. Definitely would have kept him out of that game if I'd noticed how close we were to 26.

[X3NEIZE]

Originally Posted by SpacePope

My team went from 24-17 to 49-17 on a 25 game win streak.

I'm on vacation so didn't even notice until after it was over. 1 game away from the mlb record (held by Giants) with my (mostly) Giants team. The streak was snapped when Ohtani came in on long relief in a close game and predictably gave up 3 runs in less than 2 innings. I keep him around to pinch hit and soak up innings in blowouts but he's not always used that way. Definitely would have kept him out of that game if I'd noticed how close we were to 26.

There's a team that went on a 40 game streak today....amazing.

[bonalditaylor]

That 40 game streak was in .415 and its a tough league atm too. 4 game series vs your Raccoons incoming too Old Timer, good luck, Play Ball!

[OMGPuppies]

5 games away from relegation. Thank goodness for home games.

[waittilnextyear]

Anyone know what kind of PP we'd be talking about for a combined no-hitter? Anyone get that achievement before? Asking because I was 1 out away and my opponent's 91 Mike Piazza hit a 2-out double in the 9th inning.

I'm strategizing once again this week with a rotation of 4 lefties on 15-pitch limits, but in this particular game the AI just said the heck with pitch limits and "starter" Tanner Scott went 6.1 IP and 90 pitches (5 BBs, 3 Ks). Sometimes the AI will do that and I'm not totally sure why, but maybe when it thinks the bullpen is tired or something.

It has been a good day for the Frogs who--after acquiring "bullpen aces" 97 Bob Gibson, 94 Rick Reuschel, 93 Adam Wainwright, and 92 Steve Rogers this week--are sitting at 44-34. Starting to notice that it looks like I'm in a division that'll produce both wild card teams for the 3rd consecutive week. Maybe only 1 or 2 teams in P404 qualify as whales (more like mini-whales actually) so it's shaping up to be a pretty competitive week.

[OMGPuppies]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

Anyone know what kind of PP we'd be talking about for a combined no-hitter? Anyone get that achievement before? Asking because I was 1 out away and my opponent's 91 Mike Piazza hit a 2-out double in the 9th inning.

I'm strategizing once again this week with a rotation of 4 lefties on 15-pitch limits, but in this particular game the AI just said the heck with pitch limits and "starter" Tanner Scott went 6.1 IP and 90 pitches (5 BBs, 3 Ks). Sometimes the AI will do that and I'm not totally sure why, but maybe when it thinks the bullpen is tired or something.

It has been a good day for the Frogs who--after acquiring "bullpen aces" 97 Bob Gibson, 94 Rick Reuschel, 93 Adam Wainwright, and 92 Steve Rogers this week--are sitting at 44-34. Starting to notice that it looks like I'm in a division that'll produce both wild card teams for the 3rd consecutive week. Maybe only 1 or 2 teams in P404 qualify as whales (more like mini-whales actually) so it's shaping up to be a pretty competitive week.

how is the strategy working? does it wear your bullpen out? Are four starters enough?

[waittilnextyear]

Originally Posted by OMGPuppies

how is the strategy working? does it wear your bullpen out? Are four starters enough?

I'm not sure exactly how effective it is and I'm still tinkering. But, it's all I can do to try and steal some sort of advantage against some of these loaded teams at the Perfect level. I am keeping 9 guys in the bullpen (1 closer, 1 setup, 6 long relievers, 1 lefty specialist) with 4 "starters" and it seems to be working pretty well. The starters don't make their starts at full stamina unless there's an off day, but they're only used for a couple of batters anyhow. Fatigue can be tricky and this makes you carry 13 pitchers so short bench/less platooning.

Let's put it this way...this is my team's 4th week in Perfect. In season 1, I played it orthodox with a normal rotation of the best starters I had and gave up 789 runs to the tune of a 4.68 ERA. Upon noticing that my pitching wasn't really cutting it, I decided on this "strategizing" with a rotation of all lefty relievers and a bullpen of all righty starters. With this setup my second week in Perfect, my team gave up only 689 runs for a 4.06 ERA and got the #2 wild card spot. That week was a lot of work so I went back to a normal starting rotation last week, my 3rd week at Perfect, and my pitching got crushed for 887 runs and a 5.24 ERA. Not wanting to get beaten to a pulp again this week, I decided to go back to the "strategizing" and so far, the team has a 3.53 ERA which would be my best by a good margin.

So it would seem that, yes, this is effective in that every time I've tried to do it, the team has given up substantially fewer runs. It hasn't been a controlled experiment though because: (1) I've added some really good pitchers into the "bullpen" recently and; (2) the league I played in last week (and gave up the most runs) was also the strongest league I've been in.

[old timer]

The Raccoons are hanging in there. We went 7-7 against top level teams and 11-3 against the rest. At the moment, the Ahabs have a 1/2 game lead for WC #2. We have another tough schedule for July, but August and September don't look bad at all so if we're still close come August, I think we have a good shot at making the playoffs.

[Thornbreaker]

So the Totallers, along with my other 3 teams are hitting well. Most hitters are about .270 w/ multiple in the PL hitting above .290. Ichiro and Rice are hitting above .330

Yet, my pitching is horrid and I'm almost 20 games below .500. Even Liriano this week is 2 and 11 with a 6.5+ ERA...worst ever after never cracking above a 3.5 ERA.

My home field has returned to a .500 win % at least, after being .33 last week. I honestly can't make heads or tails w/ any consistency the last 2 weeks.

[sharknut]

Just had the weirdest game.

Scored 10 runs on 8 hits and 2 walks. Zero LOB

Miguel Tejada batted 9th and went 3-3 with 3 home runs and 9 RBI. But he only had 3 plate appearances. Because I was the home team, we only came to bat 8 times and despite scoring 10 runs, we didn't even go through the line up 4 times.
He never had a chance at a 4th plate appearance to hit a 4th HR.

ETA: Next game out, Vida Blue struck out 16. 1750 pts in 2 games.

[Westheim]

All my teams have losing records, some more so (Rebels, Raccoons) than others (Accountants).

My only success just now has been selling a 1969 Pete Rose for 1,051 PP of profit, a new record for the Accountants.

[Matt Arnold]

Originally Posted by sharknut

Just had the weirdest game.

Scored 10 runs on 8 hits and 2 walks. Zero LOB

Miguel Tejada batted 9th and went 3-3 with 3 home runs and 9 RBI. But he only had 3 plate appearances. Because I was the home team, we only came to bat 8 times and despite scoring 10 runs, we didn't even go through the line up 4 times.
He never had a chance at a 4th plate appearance to hit a 4th HR.

ETA: Next game out, Vida Blue struck out 16. 1750 pts in 2 games.

Lol that's hilarious.

[waittilnextyear]

The Frogs turned another triple play earlier today. A garden variety 5-4-3 from Andrelton Simmons-Jose Oquendo-Josh Bell. Second one in team history.

Come to papa, 2000 PP.

[Westheim]

First time out for the Accountants, 1971 Jim Kaat throws a 4-hitter and whiffs 10, with the team putting up 11 against Cleveland for the rare "score 10+ runs in a shutout" achievement on top of everything Kaat did for a total of 380 PP.

Not bad for a first start, Jim. Now let's ramp it up a little!

[old timer]

Weird month. We swept a 3 game series with one of the top teams, the SLP Fighting Apes and took 2 of 3 from another top team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks. We're 11-3 for the month and 2 of those 3 losses came against "Our League" teams, not the super teams.

Frank Robinson continues to lead the league in HRs which is a bit of a surprise (he's on pace for 41) and Willie Keeler is as great as I'd hoped he be. He's on pace for 239 H and 142 R. The surprise is his power. He's got a 64 POW rating, but he's on pace for 29 HRs (he hit for power last season too).

[joehart]

Originally Posted by old timer

Weird month. We swept a 3 game series with one of the top teams, the SLP Fighting Apes and took 2 of 3 from another top team, the Wilmington Blue Rocks. We're 11-3 for the month and 2 of those 3 losses came against "Our League" teams, not the super teams.

Very cool that you were able to beat the Apes. Our Explorer team was able to beat the Stone Island team 3-0 at home but lost 1-3 at their place.
But we don't match up well with the Fighting Apes (0-3).

Keep up the winning....

[Orcin]

The Colonels have a comfortable division lead heading into August. The pitching has been superb, even though Curt Schilling is having an "off-year" at 14-5, 2.23. However, the offense is "struggling" again.

I put "struggling" in quotes because my offense probably looks pretty good to most people, scoring 4.71 runs per game in a neutral park. The conference leader, and the team that I must get past to win a championship, is scoring 6.6 runs per game. His park has all factors set to 1.10. Is his park factor setting worth 40% more runs? I doubt it. He is allowing 3.7 runs per game, which is 28% worse than mine, but his FIP is 3.04 to my 2.98. I am going to make a huge leap into the pool of unsound conclusions and say that his pitching is probably equal to mine and the park is therefore worth about a run per game (difference is runs allowed). Since he is outscoring me by almost two runs per game, I still have work to do on offense.

I know there are tons of variables that I am ignoring here and all of this is based on a ridiculously small sample in an uncontrolled environment. But my conclusion matches what I see watching the team every day, and it is further supported by my consistently mediocre record in one-run games. A few more runs here or there could be worth 5-6 wins per year, and that might be enough to give me home field in a playoff series. If one of those wins comes at the right time, it might give me that elusive PL championship.

So where to get more offense? Third base is still a hole. It wasn't like Rendon was tearing up the league, but at least his OPS+ was above 100. Frank Baker has done nothing for me, and neither have the defensive options of Scott Rolen and Jim Gilliam. I became so desperate that I threw defensive caution to the wind, moving Wade Boggs over there and putting my old friend Pete Rose at first base. Since the move, my offense is worse but my defense is better????? Ok, it's a really small sample size. I will be giving this a long look today. If the run prevention holds with this alignment, then maybe Boggs could stay at third and first base could be upgraded with a slugger.

Question of the day for anyone that wants to weigh in... if I have a positive run differential (+1.8 rpg), wouldn't I be better off to make my park an extreme offensive park? Wouldn't that just widen my run differential? I am no math whiz so please feel free to point out the fallacy here.

[Findest2001]

Originally Posted by Orcin

The Colonels have a comfortable division lead heading into August. The pitching has been superb, even though Curt Schilling is having an "off-year" at 14-5, 2.23. However, the offense is "struggling" again.

I put "struggling" in quotes because my offense probably looks pretty good to most people, scoring 4.71 runs per game in a neutral park. The conference leader, and the team that I must get past to win a championship, is scoring 6.6 runs per game. His park has all factors set to 1.10. Is his park factor setting worth 40% more runs? I doubt it. He is allowing 3.7 runs per game, which is 28% worse than mine, but his FIP is 3.04 to my 2.98. I am going to make a huge leap into the pool of unsound conclusions and say that his pitching is probably equal to mine and the park is therefore worth about a run per game (difference is runs allowed). Since he is outscoring me by almost two runs per game, I still have work to do on offense.

I know there are tons of variables that I am ignoring here and all of this is based on a ridiculously small sample in an uncontrolled environment. But my conclusion matches what I see watching the team every day, and it is further supported by my consistently mediocre record in one-run games. A few more runs here or there could be worth 5-6 wins per year, and that might be enough to give me home field in a playoff series. If one of those wins comes at the right time, it might give me that elusive PL championship.

So where to get more offense? Third base is still a hole. It wasn't like Rendon was tearing up the league, but at least his OPS+ was above 100. Frank Baker has done nothing for me, and neither have the defensive options of Scott Rolen and Jim Gilliam. I became so desperate that I threw defensive caution to the wind, moving Wade Boggs over there and putting my old friend Pete Rose at first base. Since the move, my offense is worse but my defense is better????? Ok, it's a really small sample size. I will be giving this a long look today. If the run prevention holds with this alignment, then maybe Boggs could stay at third and first base could be upgraded with a slugger.

Question of the day for anyone that wants to weigh in... if I have a positive run differential (+1.8 rpg), wouldn't I be better off to make my park an extreme offensive park? Wouldn't that just widen my run differential? I am no math whiz so please feel free to point out the fallacy here.

I believe it would depend on the type of pitching you have. If your run differential is because of power hitters with low CON, and your pitchers have high MOV but lower STU compared to other teams, then if you jack up your HR totals I believe you would be covering your variables.
If, in the same scenario, you also jack up your ballpark factor for AVG, you might actually be offsetting any gain you get from power because your pitchers wouldn't be striking as many out so the improved average would help other teams more.

In simpler terms, as my first boss told me (in sales), a 10% increase to a .200 hitter is 20 points, but a 10% increase to a .300 hitter is 30 points. Same ballpark increase, but the team with better CON gets the higher boost in this scenario.


That's my 2 cents, and I'm sure I'm wrong, but you did say anyone that wants to weigh in.