Season 1 (2019) Discussion: 3/25 - 3/31

[joehart]

Our Redmond team ended up in Bronze (we hoped to get a bit higher) but too many good players that we could not activate and a constraint stream of players in and out of the AH made the roster a bit of a mess.

Kids pulled some crazy good players (Gehrig, Wagner) so a lot of players have been brought in and are currently trained at new positions.

It is a beauty to see how the game punishes better teams (like ours) for too many players with poor defensive ratings.
So we are getting our share of losses now but that should change as players learn to play in their new long term positions.

Apologies to teams that run into us. Hopefully we move up quickly to not ruin the season for others.

[mcdog512]

My Saints are in Bronze and have lots of good upgrades so I'm kind of bigger than almost all the teams in my league and feel kind of bad but I get carried away pretty fast.....

[joehart]

Yeah. I almost wish there was a selection to allow me to jump some levels.
It is not easy to solve and often a single card (sold on AH) can vault you to a Diamond or Perfect league roster.

I am sure I will regret rushing it since I always try to retrain a few favorites from various levels (bronze, silver, gold) before moving up.

I really hope the benefit of taking things slow will reward the „no cash“ players with better trained lower level players that will win some competitions once they become available in a few weeks.

It would be great to see some full trained LF Ichiro help a „no cash“ player win a prize over some whale that just purchased his cards on the AH and did not have time to train them to new positions.

[old timer]

I'm doing an experiment with my team at the moment. I'm trying to get as much PP as possible and also avoid giving away much PP to opponents while at the same time avoiding promotion. It's proving to be quite the challenge to stay in the bottom 14. The Raccoons are playing well at the moment and are now 1 game back of 16th place.

So to get PP I'm building a team that should be strong offensively, though that's only now starting to happen (plus I'm wanting high stuff pitchers). I'm totally neglecting defense (we're 15th in ZR at -15.3) and have made only 1 pitching improvement (Jeff Russell vs RH is 117,61, 60 and was relatively cheap so I couldn't resist) and so our pitching is also the worst in the conference.

And yet in spite of the atrocious defense and sub-par pitching (it looks worse than it is because of the bad D), I've had to sit some of the better hitters to keep from winning too much. But I'm also doing this just so I can try out different players. Just to be clear, I'm not tanking. My team is not giving away very much PP (you can now see this by looking at the bottom of the box scores - nice!) so that's why I don't consider it tanking. But some still might.

I just want to have fun at the lower levels for a while this time, not only to make more PP, but also because in the rush to the top, you have to neglect so many players. So now I can have players on my team that I would never have considered in PT 1 since my goal was to keep advancing. So far, I am having more fun playing this way. In fact, I'm finding that I'm not even that concerned about earning a lot of PP.

Maybe when tournaments come along, I'll be more motivated to get this team moving up faster since the tournaments will give us more ways to play.

p.s. - I just noticed that the team right above me in the promotion/relegation standings is also named after an animated show (my team is named after an animated show from the '90s called "The Raccoons"). I really like seeing the great variety in team names and logos.

[dkgo]

I mean, trying not to win in order to avoid promotion is still obviously tanking no matter how you do it. you intentionally bench better hitters because you were "winning too much"

not that I care or blame anyone for wanting to stay down for a few seasons to build up points or just have a more fun experience. the way I see it people can manage their teams how they want and it's up to the developers to align incentives so that people naturally play the "right" way

[Warhawk]

Fortunately my team is apparently perfectly capable of tanking without any help from me in the matter.

I was 23-18 at one point, leading my division. Now I'm 29-39. Mitch Haniger is batting .179. Carlos Carrasco has a 4.61 ERA.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by dkgo

I mean, trying not to win in order to avoid promotion is still obviously tanking no matter how you do it. you intentionally bench better hitters because you were "winning too much"

not that I care or blame anyone for wanting to stay down for a few seasons to build up points or just have a more fun experience. the way I see it people can manage their teams how they want and it's up to the developers to align incentives so that people naturally play the "right" way

Well, it wasn't obvious to me that what I'm doing is what people mean when they say someone is tanking. I only remember seeing it used to refer to people who were losing in ways that were disruptive to others, by giving away too much PP.

Also, one of the developers (Matt) gave his tacit approval for playing this way in a thread a while back.

As to incentives to play the "right" way, it's probably the tournaments that will provide that. Hopefully.

Edit: Regarding benching some of the better hitters... The replacement players were still respectable (like Sam Horn, vs RH 54, 45, 82, 56, 8). So it's not like I was fielding a bad team, but I do realize it can still give an advantage to some random team that plays mine at this time. So on the one hand, I don't want to give an unfair advantage to someone else, but on the other hand, I also want to have fun. At this point in time, I've decided to play this way, but I may change my mind later.

p.s. - By the way, your post was very well expressed and not at all objectionable. I simply wanted to reply with my thinking at the moment.

[neugey]

Originally Posted by old timer

...
So to get PP I'm building a team that should be strong offensively, though that's only now starting to happen (plus I'm wanting high stuff pitchers). I'm totally neglecting defense (we're 15th in ZR at -15.3) and have made only 1 pitching improvement (Jeff Russell vs RH is 117,61, 60 and was relatively cheap so I couldn't resist) and so our pitching is also the worst in the conference.

So effectively you're playing slow pitch softball in a baseball league


Myself, I am trying to win but being frugal about the PP spending this early on. But I don't look down on you for your approach. I mean, I'm sure there's a percentage of ghost teams out there in the Irons with no one actively managing them. So it's never gonna be like an online OOTP league with a commish and a group of competitive, active owners anyway.


Perhaps there's other players who want to effectively play as a star like Sandy Koufax and want to rack up huge stats vs iron and bronze league competition and in order to stay down the rest of their team is minor league quality. Can't disrespect someone if that's the way they want to play, sounds like a bit of fun actually.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by neugey

So effectively you're playing slow pitch softball in a baseball league


Myself, I am trying to win but being frugal about the PP spending this early on. But I don't look down on you for your approach. I mean, I'm sure there's a percentage of ghost teams out there in the Irons with no one actively managing them. So it's never gonna be like an online OOTP league with a commish and a group of competitive, active owners anyway.


Perhaps there's other players who want to effectively play as a star like Sandy Koufax and want to rack up huge stats vs iron and bronze league competition and in order to stay down the rest of their team is minor league quality. Can't disrespect someone if that's the way they want to play, sounds like a bit of fun actually.

I played PT 1 to win and as quickly as possible and it was fun for quite a while. But I also enjoy watching different players perform and disliked that I felt I had so few choices since I wanted to win. Well, I'd still like to win, but I also just like following things.

For example, in some of my solo leagues, the fun for me is just in watching things evolve. Seeing amazing individual performances, regardless of whose team they played for, is fun for me. So winning isn't my only motivation (and I'm not faulting those for which it is their main or only motivation) and that's why I'm trying things differently this time, though I do want to be careful not to mess things up too much for others, hence my trying not to give away too much PP.

But there are other complications here. For example, what if I'm close to being promoted and I'm playing in a series with a team competing for the playoffs? If I put in my B team to try to avoid promotion, then they're now getting an advantage over their competitor(s).

[Izz]

Heheh - my poor pitchers

[OMGPuppies]

Originally Posted by Izz

Heheh - my poor pitchers

Dude your team is the exact opposite of mine.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by Izz

Heheh - my poor pitchers

Yeah, quite the contrast to your PT 1 team. But look at that offense! How's your team doing in the standings?

[Izz]

Originally Posted by OMGPuppies

Dude your team is the exact opposite of mine.

Have bought Killebrew (84OVR), Stanton (live 89OVR), Thome (silver card), and Huggins (bronze, great eye). The rest are from starter or challenge mode packs. Oh yeah, also bought David Eckstein to be utility infielder.

EDIT: This is an FTP team, just like the one in PT 1.0.

Originally Posted by old timer

Yeah, quite the contrast to your PT 1 team. But look at that offense! How's your team doing in the standings?

37-34, tied for 1st in my div. Pythag says I should be 39-32. Fun times.

[Westheim]

My cheap Chattanooga team got a 6-hit performance form 1950 Sam Jethroe for good bushel o' PP... which they can need. Only two teams go down from Bronze, and at 31-42, they are well in the mix...!

The Raccoons might win a wild card or they might not, but should go up to Silver one way or another. Not much panic there right now...

[old timer]

So my Raccoons are 13-8 for the month and are now 1/2 game from the promotion group so it might not be possible to avoid promotion while also fielding a decent team. And since I wouldn't enjoy putting in iron players, I guess I might just have to accept going on to silver. Oh well, maybe I can stop at the silver level for a while. Or maybe the tournaments will distract me and I won't care as much about what level my team is at.

[Mormo]

Originally Posted by Morug

Building back my Expos in Iron league. More cheap expos card in this vrsion of PT.

Hello from the Flatbush Fiends!

[Westheim]

Chattanooga can't pull any sort of usable starting pitcher… I still have Alex Reyes (59) in the rotation, who is held together by a stingy defense and lots and lots of duct tape. Team remains under .500 and a relegation candidate to iron. GEE. I WONDER WHY.

Raccoons at 47-34 and playing perfectly dull promotion ball.

[Warhawk]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

Boy am I streaky. Since the start of the season here are the runs I've gone on: 4-0, 2-6, 12-3, 0-6, 6-3. 0-6.

That last 0-6 turned into ultimately a 7-22 run. Since them I'm 12-1.



At least we're entertainingly inconsistent.

[Morug]

My F2P Angels will be better next season...opened 3 packs, 1 gold and two diamonds cards(Puig, Judge and Strasburg). Crazy they will be better of my Expos team who I put $5 in packs on this team.

[sharknut]

One of my three teams is in a ridiculous division. All 5 of us are over .500 and have 4 of the 6 best records in the league

56-34
54-36
52-37 me
52-38
46-45