From Milwaukee to....A GM gets his stripes - Page 2

darkcloud4579 · 12-25-2014, 10:56 PM

I decided that in addition to the 4 off-season moves and 2 in-season moves, I needed a series of "free" moves that I could use anywhere during a season.

We'll settle on 3.

darkcloud4579 · 12-26-2014, 09:38 PM

My problem with dynasties is not slowing down so much that it gets boring to me since the story is really only interesting to me anyway.

So I'm going to try to get through these five seasons with this club and see what happens. Basically I'll report back after making my moves to discuss if anything interesting happens rather than doing to recaps in-time because again..it's a lot of front end work without much reward.

I'm not going to try to blow things up too much this off-season, my goal is to stabilize things a bit, try to maintain the core and if we can improve the club do so.

When I'm done, I'll recap what I did each year and whether it worked or not.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 04:44 AM

Meanwhile I am going to use iOOTP to generate players that I'll recreate in the desktop game. The idea is to stay invested in guys I create or get created.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 03:12 PM

I used my moves this off-season to make a few trades that I think will put us in good shape or at least, it's a team I'm a lot happier with than last year's club.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 06:13 PM

We lost a lot of talent in the off-season including a great deal of our rotation and so, I don't think this team is as poised to do what we did the past two years with deep playoff runs. In a way, this frees me up to make some moves to get this team in a better position depthwise, but I'm not sure what moves to make to get us there.

Payrollwise, we're at $45.6 million and I'd prefer to operate with some constraints, rather than just spending to the cap and seeing if that'll get us a title. On the flip side, this team needs to be successful, we're two years out and this is a franchise that's spent in the past in a market that needs a winner if we're going to be useful.

So I'll set this year's budget at $70 million or five million under the cap. That gives us about 25 million or so to spend this off-season.

In dropping those deals though, we only need a 1B, RF and bullpen help to get this thing righted, so the moves I made last year actually helped us quite a bit.

I wrote that before the off-season began. I'm pretty happy with the deals I made this off-season. Here are the predictions for this year:

Code:

CANADIAN LEAGUE PREDICTED STANDINGS EASTERN DIVISION
Team			W	L	PCT	GB	Runs	AVG	HR	SB	RA	ERA	K	BB
Gatineau Hull Volant	102	60	.630	-	812	.267	187	92	563	3.10	1422	440
Atlantic Armada		82	80	.506	20	732	.270	125	119	669	3.83	1294	497
Quebec Hiboux		74	88	.457	28	679	.255	149	97	761	4.35	1257	557
Sherbrooke Expos	71	91	.438	31	646	.267	117	63	741	4.28	1158	506
Ottawa Red Blacks	64	98	.395	38	573	.248	99	56	754	4.26	1187	603
Hamilton Tiger-Cats	54	108	.333	48	562	.246	90	80	822	4.62	1117	612
CANADIAN LEAGUE PREDICTED STANDINGS WESTERN DIVISION
Team			W	L	PCT	GB	Runs	AVG	HR	SB	RA	ERA	K	BB
Windsor Warriors	100	62	.617	-	815	.272	162	91	604	3.43	1315	447
Saskatchewan Roughriders96	66	.593	4	733	.258	169	59	676	3.92	1366	508
Vancouver Whitecaps	87	75	.537	13	651	.242	137	85	597	3.47	1183	482
Edmonton Eskimos	87	75	.537	13	688	.248	152	126	683	3.77	1163	502
Calgary Stampeders	83	79	.512	17	739	.256	165	54	711	4.09	1211	611
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	74	88	.457	26	704	.252	148	79	753	4.30	1118	532

TOP 10 HITTERS
Player	Team	G	AB	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
J. Harper, C	SAS	156	583	49	131	0	.292	.402	.585
T. Rainey, 3B	CLG	162	611	36	102	14	.280	.399	.509
S. Robinson, RF	GAT	162	657	35	122	12	.293	.360	.524
Z. Lozano, 2B	QUE	162	626	23	95	14	.308	.371	.480
T. Stinnett, 1B	WND	162	690	27	125	4	.291	.326	.482
R. Ward, RF	WND	162	625	27	95	10	.269	.365	.458
D. Carpenter, SSGAT	162	677	9	68	28	.314	.386	.407
M. Reif, RF	VAN	159	602	33	109	3	.273	.336	.501
D. Avendano, 1B	GAT	135	486	26	98	0	.306	.378	.524
V. Manjarrez, 3B WND	162	710	1	66	38	.326	.368	.385

TOP 10 PITCHERS
Player		Team	G	W	L	S	ERA	IP	HA	BB	K	K/9
C. Hall		SAS	27	17	6	0	2.58	193.0	177	34	196	9.12
P. Boggs	SAS	27	15	6	0	2.50	198.1	155	65	207	9.42
L. Lebas	GAT	27	15	7	0	2.97	201.0	172	47	222	9.94
N. Myles	GAT	27	12	6	0	2.26	171.0	141	38	189	9.95
J. Hodges	ATL	27	15	8	0	3.17	196.0	162	73	146	6.73
C. Estrada	VAN	27	14	6	0	2.97	187.2	155	77	135	6.47
J. Thornton	GAT	27	13	7	0	2.99	204.2	178	38	191	8.39
J. Wright	CLG	27	14	8	0	3.10	206.1	190	58	159	6.96
K. Yoshino	GAT	27	14	7	0	3.28	192.1	165	67	185	8.66
R. Rios		WND	27	14	6	0	3.40	197.1	198	58	160	7.30

UNITED STATES LEAGUE PREDICTED STANDINGS EASTERN DIVISION
Team			W	L	PCT	GB	Runs	AVG	HR	SB	RA	ERA	K	BB
Hartford Oaks		111	51	.685	-	1006	.286	238	109	669	3.86	1492	485
Baltimore Atlantics	86	76	.531	25	820	.276	160	60	697	4.04	1200	513
Illinois Nationals	79	83	.488	32	697	.262	155	60	788	4.54	1232	562
Nashville Athletics	78	84	.481	33	682	.259	137	60	761	4.37	1188	532
Harlem Rens		77	85	.475	34	742	.254	162	81	753	4.47	1276	612

UNITED STATES LEAGUE PREDICTED STANDINGS WESTERN DIVISION
Team			W	L	PCT	GB	Runs	AVG	HR	SB	RA	ERA	K	BB
Tacoma Thrashers	92	70	.568	-	863	.285	195	67	730	4.26	1346	547
Sacramento Solons	83	79	.512	9	692	.263	144	122	671	3.89	1403	570
Nevada Silverhawks	81	81	.500	11	704	.247	178	47	713	4.12	1388	524
Kansas Grays		66	96	.407	26	630	.252	131	49	794	4.57	1281	575
Minnesota North Stars	59	103	.364	33	628	.242	123	93	887	5.15	1065	583

TOP 10 HITTERS
Player	Team		G	AB	HR	RBI	SB	AVG	OBP	SLG
J. Johns, RF	TAC	162	631	41	130	20	.346	.439	.610
R. Porter, 1B	HFD	162	665	36	154	0	.339	.414	.558
F. Ramirez, 3B	HFD	162	602	37	132	19	.305	.423	.549
P. Cox, RF	BAL	162	628	31	117	0	.302	.401	.496
H. Nakamura, 1B	HAR	162	656	32	102	0	.308	.379	.523
R. Monterroso, CFHFD	162	616	33	112	21	.260	.382	.470
L. Conyers, RF	BAL	162	713	10	78	11	.348	.397	.461
C. Burkholder, CFHAR	162	609	31	103	28	.263	.368	.481
J. Bauer, CF	TAC	162	631	30	114	4	.286	.368	.496
J. Donovan Jr., RFHFD	162	668	26	97	3	.287	.380	.456

TOP 10 PITCHERS
Player		Team	G	W	L	S	ERA	IP	HA	BB	K	K/9
T. Nelson	HFD	33	20	5	0	2.94	248.2	224	52	295	10.69
I. Phillips	HFD	32	19	5	0	4.31	219.0	221	55	209	8.57
K. Yamada	HFD	31	18	8	0	3.82	230.1	247	47	180	7.02
J. Bowen	NEV	27	13	8	0	2.94	197.1	164	62	243	11.06
B. Day		ILL	27	12	11	0	2.91	216.1	201	47	199	8.29
H. Torres	HFD	70	7	4	38	2.39	67.1	47	22	92	12.24
A. Santana	NEV	27	11	8	0	3.25	196.0	173	54	257	11.77
D. Cooper	SAC	27	12	7	0	3.43	178.2	154	71	178	9.01
W. Roerich	BAL	27	13	10	0	3.62	198.1	185	52	140	6.36
B. Satyavolu	TAC	27	12	9	0	3.75	178.1	160	70	196	9.87

We were the only NABL team to gain WAR this off-season and we'd lost 3rd most of any team this year. So looking forward to seeing what we can do.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 06:22 PM

Went 18-5 in spring training. I have a free move left plus my two in-season moves, so if we need to do some tinkering. I can.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 06:38 PM

I like this story because it got me to focus on just one team and to play for a bit, but I think they're super hard to get immersed into and even harder to write for that reason because there's not a compelling reason to care about a fictional team in a league that doesn't matter.

And I've been writing variations of these for years.

I think instead, I'm going to focus more on an approach where I still keep a team like this one -- I'm going to finish out my five years with the Oaks because that's the story.

But I'm basically going to "collect" fake player baseball cards through a series of achievements and follow their careers. It's a better story because we can all get immersed and learn about the various players the game generates, watch their careers evolve and develop fan-favorites who maybe aren't Hall of Fame calibre guys but who do something interesting or whatever.

So that's gonna be my gameplan to develop a "baseball card" dynasty going forward, while I monitor the performance of the Oaks with the core I've built over the next few years. I'll still be managing the club, I just won't be doing more than season recaps if that.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:07 PM

2016 REGULAR SEASON FOR THE NABL is over.

We win another division title in Hartford, but that's not pleasing anyone as the real season now begins.

Code:

CANADIAN LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Gatineau Hull Volant	97	65	.599	-
Sherbrooke Expos	80	82	.494	17.0
Atlantic Armada		77	85	.475	20.0
Quebec Hiboux		72	90	.444	25.0
Hamilton Tiger-Cats	68	94	.420	29.0
Ottawa Red Blacks	64	98	.395	33.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Saskatchewan Roughriders96	66	.593	-
Windsor Warriors	93	69	.574	3.0
Calgary Stampeders	84	78	.519	12.0
Winnipeg Blue Bombers	82	80	.506	14.0
Vancouver Whitecaps	80	82	.494	16.0
Edmonton Eskimos	79	83	.488	17.0

UNITED STATES LEAGUE STANDINGS
Eastern Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Hartford Oaks		112	50	.691	-
Harlem Rens		95	67	.586	17.0
Baltimore Atlantics	89	73	.549	23.0
Illinois Nationals	81	81	.500	31.0
Nashville Athletics	68	94	.420	44.0

Western Division	W	L	PCT	GB
Tacoma Thrashers	97	65	.599	-
Nevada Silverhawks	83	79	.512	14.0
Sacramento Solons	70	92	.432	27.0
Kansas Grays		60	102	.370	37.0
Minnesota North Stars	55	107	.340	42.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:09 PM

Our Division Series matchup is against Baltimore. We went 9-9 against them in the regular season. Best of five games in this one. I expect we'll prevail, but anything can happen in the playoffs.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:13 PM

One series down. Two to go.

Now we get the team I wasn't wanting to play, but maybe it's for the best. Tacoma is the best team not named Hartford and last year were upset in the Division Series after sporting the best record in the league. Now the two best teams in the USL are pitted for a chance at an elusive Series title and a berth to the World Baseball Classic.

We went 10-8 against Tacoma in the regular season, which means little, but at least we know we can take them.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:18 PM

Sadly, it was not to be.

We end the year again in the LCS, but I'll go back to the drawing board and basically keeping this team intact short of a few minor adjustments and see if we can't get the gold next year.

We're only two years into this experiment and have three more to go. We're close, the playoffs are just notoriously fickle.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:35 PM

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 08:49 PM

I made a few shifts just after the season ended, but that's it for my tinkering all off-season. No FA signings forthcoming, we're gonna rock with what we have. I dealt some of my last season acquisitions like Robby Porter in a three-team trade with Louisville and Portland to shed most of the deal. We also picked up future hall of famer and 45-year old geezer Gaston Grey from California of the D2D. He had an off-year, but I was afraid he'd go retire, when I think he could still be very effective in our league for at least another year. He's expensive, but I structured a backloaded deal that'll keep him fat and happy in a virtual world, while it was worth the risk for us to get him here.

But that deal and my other trade nuked whatever financial flexibility we have. If I find that the regular season isn't going as planned, we'll make some moves, but Year 3 is probably gonna be largely a "stand pat" year beyond what we've done and I hope that it works for us, because after two years of advanced tinkering, I'm kind of over it.

If it works, it works and if not, oh well. A 4th place team won the Canadian League this year before falling to Tacoma, so all of this extra hand wringing when it's not doing us a ton of good isn't really worth the stress.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 09:17 PM

Predicted to win 109 games this year. But none of that matters if we fail to finish the job.

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 10:37 PM

We ended up knocking off an overmatched Calgary team to claim the franchise's first title in Hartford, after Calgary upset Gaitineau, the best team in the Canadian league over the past few years.

I'll go deeper into our team's contents later, but ultimately, the job was done in Year 3. The team didn't get tinkered with much at all, this year and I didn't make any transactions once the season began. In the end, guys I'd been acquiring -- younger dudes -- all started producing and that coupled with the vets we had on the team managed to get the job done in Year 3.

2107 NABL MONTROSE CUP SERIES CHAMPIONS

darkcloud4579 · 12-27-2014, 10:52 PM

With this out of the way, I'm going to do some thinking about a baseball card-like trading card dynasty where I can just do fly bys around the league, pick maybe some favorite teams and then follow the careers of the players who signed up and go from there. I like running a team, but...I prefer being more invested in the league as a whole.

12-27-2014, 04:44 AM	#23
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Meanwhile I am going to use iOOTP to generate players that I'll recreate in the desktop game. The idea is to stay invested in guys I create or get created. __________________ ------ My Mods OOTP Advanced Stats & DFS Suite Managerial Strategy Pack Competitive Balance Tax Calculator Major League Women's Baseball (OOTP24) quickstart Indian Premier League \| 300+ years of baseball quickstart \| Expatriate League quickstart \| Off-Field Injuries Update \| Women's Name File for OOTP \| ---- Dynasty classics: Centurion comes to OOTP5 \| DC Moneyball Dynasty (2004)

12-25-2014, 10:56 PM	#21
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I decided that in addition to the 4 off-season moves and 2 in-season moves, I needed a series of "free" moves that I could use anywhere during a season. We'll settle on 3.

12-26-2014, 09:38 PM	#22
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	My problem with dynasties is not slowing down so much that it gets boring to me since the story is really only interesting to me anyway. So I'm going to try to get through these five seasons with this club and see what happens. Basically I'll report back after making my moves to discuss if anything interesting happens rather than doing to recaps in-time because again..it's a lot of front end work without much reward. I'm not going to try to blow things up too much this off-season, my goal is to stabilize things a bit, try to maintain the core and if we can improve the club do so. When I'm done, I'll recap what I did each year and whether it worked or not.

12-27-2014, 03:12 PM	#24
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I used my moves this off-season to make a few trades that I think will put us in good shape or at least, it's a team I'm a lot happier with than last year's club.

12-27-2014, 06:22 PM	#26
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Went 18-5 in spring training. I have a free move left plus my two in-season moves, so if we need to do some tinkering. I can.

12-27-2014, 06:38 PM	#27
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I like this story because it got me to focus on just one team and to play for a bit, but I think they're super hard to get immersed into and even harder to write for that reason because there's not a compelling reason to care about a fictional team in a league that doesn't matter. And I've been writing variations of these for years. I think instead, I'm going to focus more on an approach where I still keep a team like this one -- I'm going to finish out my five years with the Oaks because that's the story. But I'm basically going to "collect" fake player baseball cards through a series of achievements and follow their careers. It's a better story because we can all get immersed and learn about the various players the game generates, watch their careers evolve and develop fan-favorites who maybe aren't Hall of Fame calibre guys but who do something interesting or whatever. So that's gonna be my gameplan to develop a "baseball card" dynasty going forward, while I monitor the performance of the Oaks with the core I've built over the next few years. I'll still be managing the club, I just won't be doing more than season recaps if that.

12-27-2014, 08:09 PM	#29
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Our Division Series matchup is against Baltimore. We went 9-9 against them in the regular season. Best of five games in this one. I expect we'll prevail, but anything can happen in the playoffs.

12-27-2014, 08:13 PM	#30
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	One series down. Two to go. Now we get the team I wasn't wanting to play, but maybe it's for the best. Tacoma is the best team not named Hartford and last year were upset in the Division Series after sporting the best record in the league. Now the two best teams in the USL are pitted for a chance at an elusive Series title and a berth to the World Baseball Classic. We went 10-8 against Tacoma in the regular season, which means little, but at least we know we can take them.

12-27-2014, 08:18 PM	#31
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Sadly, it was not to be. We end the year again in the LCS, but I'll go back to the drawing board and basically keeping this team intact short of a few minor adjustments and see if we can't get the gold next year. We're only two years into this experiment and have three more to go. We're close, the playoffs are just notoriously fickle.

12-27-2014, 08:35 PM	#32
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712

12-27-2014, 08:49 PM	#33
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	I made a few shifts just after the season ended, but that's it for my tinkering all off-season. No FA signings forthcoming, we're gonna rock with what we have. I dealt some of my last season acquisitions like Robby Porter in a three-team trade with Louisville and Portland to shed most of the deal. We also picked up future hall of famer and 45-year old geezer Gaston Grey from California of the D2D. He had an off-year, but I was afraid he'd go retire, when I think he could still be very effective in our league for at least another year. He's expensive, but I structured a backloaded deal that'll keep him fat and happy in a virtual world, while it was worth the risk for us to get him here. But that deal and my other trade nuked whatever financial flexibility we have. If I find that the regular season isn't going as planned, we'll make some moves, but Year 3 is probably gonna be largely a "stand pat" year beyond what we've done and I hope that it works for us, because after two years of advanced tinkering, I'm kind of over it. If it works, it works and if not, oh well. A 4th place team won the Canadian League this year before falling to Tacoma, so all of this extra hand wringing when it's not doing us a ton of good isn't really worth the stress.

12-27-2014, 09:17 PM	#34
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	Predicted to win 109 games this year. But none of that matters if we fail to finish the job.

12-27-2014, 10:37 PM	#35
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	We ended up knocking off an overmatched Calgary team to claim the franchise's first title in Hartford, after Calgary upset Gaitineau, the best team in the Canadian league over the past few years. I'll go deeper into our team's contents later, but ultimately, the job was done in Year 3. The team didn't get tinkered with much at all, this year and I didn't make any transactions once the season began. In the end, guys I'd been acquiring -- younger dudes -- all started producing and that coupled with the vets we had on the team managed to get the job done in Year 3. 2107 NABL MONTROSE CUP SERIES CHAMPIONS

12-27-2014, 10:52 PM	#36
darkcloud4579 Hall Of Famer Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 8,712	With this out of the way, I'm going to do some thinking about a baseball card-like trading card dynasty where I can just do fly bys around the league, pick maybe some favorite teams and then follow the careers of the players who signed up and go from there. I like running a team, but...I prefer being more invested in the league as a whole.