Season 5, 2024 thread

[RunninYakAngler]

The Marathoners win their division with 111 wins, 8 games ahead of the New Jersey Dawgs. The New New York BlernsBallers have the most wins in the conference with 117, and the other division winner, the Gunsan Wolfpack, won 74. Getting the 2nd best record actually helps avoid two very strong wildcard teams. This is a 28 team league.

The YakAnglers are currently 91-66 and have clinched the top wildcard spot. Due to someone paying a small ransom (22k) for Willie Horton, the YakAnglers added 84 Darin Erstad, SE Chuck Klein (who is severely disappointing),94 Max Lanier and SE Eddie Plank. I tried to avoid any SE Live Mission players but it's pretty tough going not adding them due to being so cheap. All 6 division winners are well above 100 wins and there is only 3 other teams in the entire league above .500.

The Battle Corgis, who were expected to be relegated again after a 3-15 start, have battled back and are tied for the final wildcard spot. It's been a crazy season as they have had the worse record in the league and have led there division at times, only to be back to last place in the division, then get hot again.

The roster has been completely rebuilt again, this time through the AH. It started with selling a few Live Golds and things just kept falling into place, as someone or several people kept listing players I could use well below averages.

[moalkha]

After a difficult season in Gold, when we didn't make the playoffs, Doha had a rebound season in Diamond .351 winning the NC West at 92-69 and securing the nr.2 seed. Too bad nobody will be promoted to Perfect this season because I fear this could have been our best chance to reach that level.

[JasonC23]

Well, Huntley finished out of the playoff race and in a 3-way tie for 16th-best overall record (ie, the lowest one can finish and get promoted to Diamond). From the looks of the Pro/Rel Standings screen, Huntley is the team of the 3 who will get promoted, but I'll believe that when I see it. In the meantime, good luck to everyone who made the G310 playoffs, especially the Las Vegas White Tigers!

[Marleigh]

A busier sunday than last week!

Paragon City Heroes 100-62 held on to win their division in Gold 303, but stumble into the playoffs on a 3 game skid and with Bagwell, Larkin and Lindor having ice cold bats. As a team we led the league in homers with 6 of the starters hitting 20+ (even though i platoon quite a lot). Its going to be a very tough playoffs, the best record Oaklan As (111-51) are in our conference, and even the wild card teams have 96 and 98 wins, However the dice roll in the playoffs its been a very enjoyable hard fought season



San Angeles 70s 96-66 managed to win the division by 2 games over CSKA Ludlow. At one point we were a couple of games down in the last 10 games but going 9-1 with a 8 game win streak sealed it. Pack luck and earned pp have changed this team massively but the chances of a playoff win are slim to none. We Face the 100 win Seattle Mariners and if we manage a win the likely opponents are either the 124 win Windy City Summoners or 121 win Great Lakes Squirrels, and that's just to get through our conference

Lowdown Lugnuts 97-65 second in division by 22 games, WC spot. I face a team with 14 less wins in the WC (we all know the likely outcome of that) if the dice rolls favour us we get to face the 131 win Lisboa Andorhinas who have beaten us up all year (we managed 17 runs in 8 games vs them) Frank Robinson (36 HR 125 RBI) not having a season long slump really helped this time around. We were 4rd in runs against in the league despite the whales having far superior pitchers, mainly due to our D, Vizquel (110 at 2b) Herzog (104 at SS) being key to my mostly groundballer staff, I wonder how many of his 20 wins Adam Wainwright owes them. Every one in my lineup apart from Herzog and Mookie Betts was over 100 OPS+, I'm hoping Mookie turns it around in time for the WC.

[Warhawk]

White Tigers, Black Knights, and Sun Kings all take the top seed in their conference, so I full expect all 3 to choke in the divisional round, as is tradition.

White Tigers finish 109-53 to fend off Old Town, the second best team in the conference, to win the division by 5 games. The 2 seed actually finished 10 games back of Old Town, who will be the top wild card. Carlton got 2 legs of the triple crown, leading the conference with wins (20-4) and ERA (2.36; runner up was 2.93). J.R. Richard led the conference in strikeouts and was second in wins; Mickey Lolich was tied for third in wins. Lindy McDaniel led the conference in saves with 42 but actually had a relatively pedestrian season with 2.87 ERA. On the hitting side of things Nap Lajoie led the conference in WAR at 8.8, finishing 4th in average, 2nd in RBIs, 2nd in OPS, and tied for 7th in home runs with 30. We had the lowest starter ERA and fewest runs allowed in the league by a pretty large margin, plus the best defensive efficiency, and were also first and second in the conference in FIP and bullpen ERA. Didn't really end up ranking very well in the hitting categories, outside of Lajoie and Berra on the good end and Harrah on the bad end our entire lineup was within spitting distance of a 100 OPS+ so at least we're deep. In addition to the Trout I picked up earlier I pulled a Yelich yesterday; ended up dropping Lindor and reshuffling the infield so now I'm using Yelich in a platoon at DH with Heilmann. Gerrit Cole in his second stint as a starter seems much improved for some reason; I benched him when he had a 5.70 ERA two seasons ago; since I added him back to the lineup this season he's 11-4 with a 2.90 ERA and a 3.75 FIP, which puts him ahead of Richard and Lolich in both respects (and ahead of Maddux in ERA). Thinking I'm going Carlton-Cole-Richard-Maddux for my playoff rotation. Dropping Randy for the playoffs so I can bring up Lindor again just as a backup.

Oh, and, well, as I'm writing this, I just ripped 2 packs I got in a tournament, and pulled a 97 George Sisler. He'd arguably be an upgrade over Bagwell, but he's a much BIGGER upgrade over either Yelich or Heilmann at DH, so I'm gonna give him the full time slot there and find somewhere else where I can set up a platoon. Not entirely sure what to do, think I might end up dropping Yelich and switching from my current Bellinger-Mays platoon in right field, to a Bellinger-Heilmann platoon in right and a Trout-Mays platoon in center.

Pretty sexy; he's also one of my favorites when I'm playing regular OOTP in historical mode:



Anyway, Black Knights finished at 107-55. Plank had the best ERA, Johnson had the most wins, strikeouts, and WAR, and was second in ERA. Ron Reed had a good season too and was 5th in ERA, and Maddux was 3rd in WAR. The team led the conference in runs scored and allowed, starter ERA, FIP, average, OBP, and home runs. Chuck Klein hit 38 home runs and racked up 110 RBIs, second and third in the conference. We won our division by 20 games and fended off the 101-61 Jobu's Minions for the top seed.

Sun Kings wrapped things up at 117-45. Like the White Tigers they were in the same division as the second best team in the conference, but we ended up handily winning the division anyway by 14 games over the Rustling Jimmies. Believe it or not that's only the third best record in the league, after 122-win Gotham and 118-win Nomadic in the other conference. Maddux had the best ERA and most wins, meaning all 3 of my teams had the top starter in ERA and in wins this season. Carlton was second in strikeouts, while Deacon Philippe (who I didn't end up selling after all, since nobody bit at a price I was comfortable with) had a decent season, 18 wins and 6th in WAR despite a fairly pedestrian ERA. Yasztremski led the conference in WAR by a fair margin, while the team led in runs scored and allowed, average, OBP, home runs, starter & bullpen ERA, and FIP. Ted Lyons was particularly outstanding as the long reliever, registering a 1.72 ERA in 43 appearances.

Daily and weekly tournaments still not being kind to me. Lost a 3-way tie for second place in the group stage of the early gold double RR, then lost in the second round of the early silver double RR 3-2 in extra innings. Been winning all kinds of crap in PT20 just hopping on once a day and signing up for whatever looks interesting, but in PT21 I'm on a bit of a dry spell outside of quick tourneys.

White Tigers in PT20 finished 2 games back in the division at 99-63 and will host Oakland in the wild card. Richard had his best season yet, going 23-7 with a 2.94 ERA. Feller, meanwhile, had his worst, 13-15 and 4.91. Black Panthers finished at 79-83 and well out of the wild card, they're not really good enough to compete in perfect but they're also not bad enough to get relegated. Golden Lions down in Gold win their division by 4 games and take the top seed at 100-62. Clemente finished first in average and 2nd in RBIs; Aaron was 2nd in home runs. deGrom was 2nd in wins and had a respectable 2.82 ERA. Greinke wasn't great but he did have a perfect game early in the season.

So that's 4 teams with the top seed in their conference plus a 99-win wild card, let's see if I can avoid totally choking for once.

[BigRed75]

Both the Secret Harbour Pirates and the Bibra Lake Quendas made the playoffs this season. The Pirates are guaranteed of promotion to Gold while the Quendas, as the wild card, will need to win a game to be promoted to Iron. We will play the No. 2 team in our division, the Buckeyes. It is a case of teams moving in different directions, as we took a 12-game difference between the two clubs and slashed it to three in just six in-game weeks. I like our chances, but I've liked them before.

The Pirates accomplished what I set out to do - win the division (nearly) wire-to-wire. Our focus on improving the pitching staff these past couple of weeks worked, as we now have a top-3 staff. The additions of Billy Williams and Ralph Kiner have also helped to pull our offensive ranking back toward the middle of the league.

In the end, the Trash Pandas, aka the whale I was worried about since the beginning of the season, faded down the stretch and missed out on a WC spot by one game. By winning the division, we avoid the two strongest teams in the conference until a potential semi-final matchup. We will take on the Gamehendge Lizards, who we split a four-game series with at their place in Williams and Kiner's first action with the club. It should be a competitive series.

It's been a barren tournament week for the Alpacas. I will need to spend some time and re-vamp the tournament roster as we have acquired a fair number of bronze cards since the last time I did that, and I have no doubt some of them can make the tournament roster better. In the league, the Alpacas barely survived what was honestly an unnecessary relegation battle. Our -8 Pythag differential was easily the worst in the league, and if not for all that bad luck, we would have had a comfortable mid-table finish.

[Morug]

No playoffs this sunday for all my teams. That was close for the Expos to make it finish at 1 game of a spot.

[Westheim]

Two playoff teams, two games, two losses, done for the day.

[RunninYakAngler]

The Battle Corgis lose a heart-breaker to the Bostin Kkronks 8-7 on a walkoff double, after scoring 3 in the 7th and 8th innings to tie it up.

And keeping the heart breaker theme going, the YakAnglers lose in 20 innings to the Pleasant View Beach Bums 5-2 on a 3-run HR by Jeff Kent.

[RunninYakAngler]

The Marathoners (111-51) go up 2-0 on the Gunsan Wolfpack (74-88) only to get shutdown by Live Syndergaard and blow the game in the 9th and the next game give up 4 runs in the bottom of the 9th to blow another game.

[sam10gle]

Wooo, staved off relegation. At the time of my last post, I was 1 game up from the relegation line. Finished at 6 games up, so that upgrade in CF seemed to have helped a bit.

[daves]

B218. Beware of the wild card. Top regular season record eliminated. Seawolves facing difficult task against 3-time champ Blues.

[Marleigh]

Lowdown Lugnuts won the WC but met a 131 win whale and lost 3-2, in the 5th game we outhit them but couldn't get the runs home

San Angeles won round 1 3-2 and are currently down 2-0 to a 124 win team

Paragon City swept the 1st round and are 2-0 down in round 2 after 2 1 run losses (the second in 15 innings)

not looking good at present

[RunninYakAngler]

The Marathoners advance to the Silver 261 Series by beating the Hudson Valley Onioneers 4 games to 1. CF Andrew McCutchen was named Series MVP as he went 9 for 16 with 1 HR and 7 RBIs. He platoons with Duke Snider and starts against LHP.

We're awaiting the winner of the Detroit Wolverines (128-34) vs. the 84-78 El Paso Otters. The Otters have shocked the Wolverines and are leading 3 games to 1. The Wolverines have immense talent and this could possibly be an upset for the ages. Getting that last win will be tough.

[mcdog512]

Saints are in the Bronze210 World Series. The Scottsville Outliers were tough all year and had home field advantage. Managed to get by them.

[Warhawk]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

White Tigers, Black Knights, and Sun Kings all take the top seed in their conference, so I full expect all 3 to choke in the divisional round, as is tradition.

. . .

So that's 4 teams with the top seed in their conference plus a 99-win wild card, let's see if I can avoid totally choking for once.

Welp, White Tigers as the 1 seed got swept in the divisional round. PT20 White Tigers won the wild card then lost in 5 games in the divisional round. PT20 Golden Lions as the 1 seed lost in 5 games in the divisional round. Black Knights as the 1 seed won the divisional round in a sweep then lost in 7 games in the sub-league series.

Sun Kings are in the championship though, so that's something, I guess. They'll probably lose.

[DrunkenSuperman]

The Slipnutz finish the Bronze League season at 89-73 and take the top wild card spot. Ralph Kiner takes the league home run crown with just 37 dingers.

A freshly acquired Steve Carlton pitches his first game for the team in the wild card game and leads the team to a 2-1 win.

Then the Slipnutz pull of the huge upset in the division series, taking down the 127-35 Mudville Nine in a 5-game set. Billy Williams is the series MVP.

Alas, the cinderella run ends in the LCS. Apart from their lone game 4 win, the Slipnutz are thoroughly shellacked, getting outscored 25-6 in the other 4 games.

The Nutz will be moving up to the Silver League next year and I expect it to be a stiff challenge. Considerable improvements will need to be made.

[mayday10]

Buffalo Blues of Stone 153 won the wc game and lost in 5 games in the divisional round to the Schenectady Turbines, who are now in the World Series against the Chernobyl Tigers

Only started paying attention in the stretch run. Improved my roster immensely in the past 3 days. I'm not getting promoted, so I hope for a stone championship run next year (tomorrow) followed by a promotion.
Edit: nevermind. Looks like my WC round win earned me a promotion now. Going to need to up my game

Also won a 32 team 1625 cap open live tourney yesterday for 4 packs. 15 inning Game 7.

[RunninYakAngler]

As expected the Detroit Wolverines come back from a 3 games to 1 deficit and take the series.

Not too big of a deal -- We just have to beat All-Time Legends Spahn, Kershaw, Gomez, and Valenzuela. 5th starter is some Koufax dude. Unfortunately, the offense is just as loaded.

[waittilnextyear]

The Frogs went 128-34 this week in S253, and couldn't help but feel it was a lackluster performance (-9 pythag). Won the division handily all the same.

We beat the Wisconsin Udder Tuggers (who had upset the Amberg Legends in the WC game) in 4 games, and then Halle FC in 5 games.

Now, the two best teams in S253, by almost any metric your care to name, are facing off. Frogs in one corner (+744 RDiff) and Herbie Hancocks (129-33, +729 RDiff) in the other. It would appear to be about as even as can be. Both teams have cards that probably make the other owner jealous.

The Herbie Hancocks are trying to win a 5th title in their 5 seasons in existence. The Frogs had a snafu when things went fubar in the Iron playoffs, so we're trying for a mere 4 titles in 5 seasons.

Game 1 went decisively to the Hancocks in a 14-7 shredding of my SE Greg Maddux. With the 15 min sims, this could be over rather quickly.