1B Decision

[professor ape]

With Musial, Helton, and Bagwell available; what should be my 1B duo? I like Raines in LF at this point so Musial is only a spot starter out there. I’m leaning towards Musial/Bagwell.

Thoughts?

[trainwreck]

Looks potent to me. Wish I had that many PP to spend.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by trainwreck

Looks potent to me. Wish I had that many PP to spend.

As a F2P it has been a grind working the tournaments for packs and progressing through the missions. It paid off being able to complete 22 of the 30 FH2 missions last night and then completing the Negro League missions this morning with points collected through the Diamond Packs received. With a bit of luck and an auction sale or two, I may be able to get the Pedro card today.

[chazzycat]

I'm letting Musial hit both ways, but I'm in a lefty park with maxed gaps.

[Madmarcus]

Since I have no top flight RF I'm teaching Musial RF. Raines is in left. I punted Bagwell so it is Sisler at 1b and Thomas at dh.

[daves]

There was a lot of buzz last night on twitch about Musial.

There are too many 1b's to keep Bagwell. He starting to strikeout too much the higher you go. Sisler, Molitor and Rose make decent 1b's.

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by daves

There was a lot of buzz last night on twitch about Musial.

There are too many 1b's to keep Bagwell. He starting to strikeout too much the higher you go. Sisler, Molitor and Rose make decent 1b's.

Mattingly can hold his own too. I agree about Bagwell you start to see way too many strikeouts for him to hold a BA above about .230 consistently. It is really tough to play any cards right now without a avoid K below 90 with all the pitching that has been added.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by ncap99

Mattingly can hold his own too. I agree about Bagwell you start to see way too many strikeouts for him to hold a BA above about .230 consistently. It is really tough to play any cards right now without a avoid K below 90 with all the pitching that has been added.

I finally got Rose and have him primarily as DH and backing up Raines in LF. I could drop Bags and slip Yaz in as a vL assassin. 🤔

[Warfsu]

Frank Thomas has been good for me, but a liability in the field. Have been rolling Bagwell at first and Thomas at DH.I have had no success with Mattingly. Looking to upgrade here myself.

[professor ape]

I’ve gone with a Rose/Yaz platoon at first. Rose is DH when Yaz has the field. Yaz is also there to spell Raines in left when he needs a break.

[ncap99]

Yaz has been such a massive disappointment. I just looked in my current league and 4 people have tried to use him and not a single one of them has seen him hit over above .180 - a total of about 300 at bats. Not sure why he is so bad, but he is.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by ncap99

Yaz has been such a massive disappointment. I just looked in my current league and 4 people have tried to use him and not a single one of them has seen him hit over above .180 - a total of about 300 at bats. Not sure why he is so bad, but he is.

Key is being able to platoon him. He’ll get crushed against lefties at higher levels. So far this week he is running a .282/.371/.628 line with 7HR for me in a strict platoon. He has less than 10 PA against lefties.

[ChessSafari]

Is McGwire going to be a reasonable option at 1B? Seems he hits HRs but BA under .200. This will be my first season with him. I really had good luck with Norm Cash at 1B. He has a WAR of 2.82 per 600 PA for 1565 plate appearances and plays good defense. Musial, Rose both usable at 1B but better in the OF. Musial trains at RF. Then there's Heilmann, if all else fails. Thomas with defense would be wonderful, but I don't trust him inn the field. Had no luck at all with Bagwell or Mattingly. Long ago sat them both down. Olerud is hot and cold, but really useful when hot. However, he won't get hot too often at Diamond level. Nope on Helton and Goldschmidt above Silver. Those are my observations, for what they are worth.

[Warfsu]

Had this dilemma a two seasons ago. I was getting tired of having to platoon that position, especially as most of the good 1B are lefties. After seeing struggling a year with Giambi, I just decided to spend the 115k on Pujols. He’s really the only upper tier card I’ve spent on, but I liked the idea of playing him vs both righties and lefties.

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by ChessSafari

Is McGwire going to be a reasonable option at 1B? Seems he hits HRs but BA under .200. This will be my first season with him.

I decided to try an experiment this season with power hitters. It will probably end in my first sub .500 diamond season but at least it is something different then lefty cheese. McGwire will be a big park of it, in a HR suppressed home park he still managed to hit 14 HRs for me in about 200 ABs, with a sub .200 average.

So far not so good, through 6 games I have a grand total of 2 HRs and I'm 2-4. I've had two tough former PeL teams right out of the gate so hopefully it'll improve. I had to punt a lot of solid pitching to reserves to put an emphasis on groundballers so that may end up backfiring too, although after last weeks drops adding several quality extreme groundballers like Rixey and Kevin Brown I'm hoping it won't be a huge drop off.

[professor ape]

I’m on a McGwire/Yaz platoon now. Stay tuned.

[ncap99]

After a 6 and 4 run I'm all the way up to 13-19 now. Power hitting myself all the way to the gold league playoffs next week it looks like! It is all in good fun though, averaging 90+ wins for 15 seasons at diamond with a one season pit stop in PeL was getting old.

So if you want to tank without tanking, run this lineup:
DH: Pete Rose/Hank Greenberg
2B: Joe Morgan/Jackie Robinson
CF: Joe DiMaggio
SS: Arky Vaughan/Jack Glasscock
LF: Carl Yastrzemski/Pete Rose
1B: Mark McGwire
RF: Bryce Harper (mission reward)/Al Kaline
3B: Mike Schmidt
C: Josh Gibson/Del Crandall

HRs cranked up to 1.100, wind blowing out to center. Doubles/triples at .925.

If I don't lead the league in HRs I will be very disappointed. Strangely enough my road pitching has been the biggest factor in my woes to start the season. I'm 10-8 at home and 3-11 on the road, 7th in runs scored but 11th in runs against. Starters are Rixey, Smoltz, Felix Hernandez, Matt Harvey and Gaylord Perry (groundballer emphasis for obvious reasons).

Probably a one season experiment but it's fun to try something new.

[Vapier]

Originally Posted by ncap99

After a 6 and 4 run I'm all the way up to 13-19 now. Power hitting myself all the way to the gold league playoffs next week it looks like! It is all in good fun though, averaging 90+ wins for 15 seasons at diamond with a one season pit stop in PeL was getting old.

So if you want to tank without tanking, run this lineup:
DH: Pete Rose/Hank Greenberg
2B: Joe Morgan/Jackie Robinson
CF: Joe DiMaggio
SS: Arky Vaughan/Jack Glasscock
LF: Carl Yastrzemski/Pete Rose
1B: Mark McGwire
RF: Bryce Harper (mission reward)/Al Kaline
3B: Mike Schmidt
C: Josh Gibson/Del Crandall

HRs cranked up to 1.100, wind blowing out to center. Doubles/triples at .925.

If I don't lead the league in HRs I will be very disappointed. Strangely enough my road pitching has been the biggest factor in my woes to start the season. I'm 10-8 at home and 3-11 on the road, 7th in runs scored but 11th in runs against. Starters are Rixey, Smoltz, Felix Hernandez, Matt Harvey and Gaylord Perry (groundballer emphasis for obvious reasons).

Probably a one season experiment but it's fun to try something new.

you probably will lead the league in home runs, however will probably lead the league in Strike outs too, 3k's is an inning, so yeah in the long run a few home runs but if you have all HR hitters, how much ERA does single HR's get ya, you have to mix up, if you have bases loaded and smack one then thats 4 runs... but if your striking out 3 out of 4 at bats, with 1 home run a game if thats all your scoring isn't better just to get guys hitting and rounding the bases? Home Runs are always better with others already on base, All home run guys will rarely get you high scoring games unless you have some OBP guys ahead of them...

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by Vapier

you probably will lead the league in home runs, however will probably lead the league in Strike outs too, 3k's is an inning, so yeah in the long run a few home runs but if you have all HR hitters, how much ERA does single HR's get ya, you have to mix up, if you have bases loaded and smack one then thats 4 runs... but if your striking out 3 out of 4 at bats, with 1 home run a game if thats all your scoring isn't better just to get guys hitting and rounding the bases? Home Runs are always better with others already on base, All home run guys will rarely get you high scoring games unless you have some OBP guys ahead of them...

The team ended up going 85-77 at diamond and did indeed lead the league in HRs by a large margin. I think I finished 2nd in runs scored but did fairly poorly on pitching despite running groundballers/extreme groundballers to try and counter the HR factors of my own park.

I moved away from it this season and did better, back into the 90+ wins territory. I kept the groundballer approach and went with a more balanced lineup, but still kept some boppers. I lead the league in HRs again but not by nearly the gap I did running the HR or bust team last week.

I will say it was fun seeing an occasional 6 or 7 HR game from my team but they had long stretches of suck that ultimately tanked the season. Unfortunately just like last year, the best offense is stacking the crap out of contact and avoidK. If a guy like McGwire with 180 power and ok contact can't hit cleanup in PeL you know power is not the way to go.