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05-26-2019, 05:25 PM | #221 | |
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Meanwhile the SaberCats were themselves swept in the first round, despite really liking their matchup. Oh well...they probably are not ready for perfect anyway. So I am pretty happy with these results. |
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05-26-2019, 05:27 PM | #222 |
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chazzy, do you recommend pairing power with eye or avoid k?
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05-26-2019, 06:13 PM | #223 |
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My Sabercats team got to the sub-league series, so they'll be promoted to Perfect next year. I am sort of anticipating how horrible it'll be.
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05-26-2019, 06:23 PM | #224 |
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Definitely eye for me. The main idea is to increase the amount of runners on base, so when someone eventually pops a homer, it's worth a few runs. With minimum AVG ballpark factors, walks are even more valuable, because they now represent a larger portion of the OBP pie than usual.
Avoid K is more about moving runners over (making productive outs) which is much more important for a singles and doubles based team. Who cares if a runner is on 2nd or 3rd if someone hits a homer? So I care about avoid K a lot on the SmallBallers, but really don't much at all for the SaberCats. Last edited by chazzycat; 05-26-2019 at 06:24 PM. |
05-26-2019, 06:26 PM | #225 |
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05-28-2019, 03:04 PM | #226 |
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The jury is still out on how the SmallBallers will perform at perfect. They started quite well in the first couple weeks, but have been losing a lot since then, currently on a six game losing streak and overall a few games under .500.
Looking at the rosters in the league does not give me much hope. There are just sooooo many perfect and diamond cards compared to my cheap little $10 team. I have outperformed many more talented rosters in lower levels, but they were not stacked to this degree. It's still early but the SaberCats look like a playoff diamond team so far, while the Balancers look bad again. Not relegation bad, but bad. |
05-28-2019, 03:23 PM | #227 |
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I understand what you're saying about the level of competition in Perfect. I think at least two teams in my division have Perfect Ty Cobb cards! And all of them have multiple perfects.
My SaberCats started Perfect by losing the first game 15-6, but we then won 5 in a row. Finished the month 13-13 which I will gladly take. I ripped some packs yesterday and got a Perfect Yelich (my first perfect for this team), who I put in RF (ditched Jermaine Dye, who I was using vs LHP). I also got a couple of diamonds I couldn't use (Rizzo and a duplicate Vazquez) so I sold them on the AH. Which means I'm close to having enough PP to purchase Trout. BTW, Yelich had an OPS+ of 3 this morning when I went off to work. I know, small sample size and all that but still... Last edited by Charlatan; 05-28-2019 at 03:25 PM. |
05-28-2019, 04:09 PM | #228 |
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My Bees are off to a good start, first in division, second in whole league, 3rd runs, 1st AVG, 3rd ERA, 6th in DEFF. Thanks for the tips. High contact, gap, good defense and pitching approach is working.
Thieves are middling in their first year in diamond, after winning gold last year. Barnstormers are a bit better - better at scoring runs and better ERA - than last season - their first in Diamond. |
05-30-2019, 12:11 PM | #229 |
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The SmallBallers, halfway through the season, appear to be a roughly .500 perfect level team. They are a few games under, but with bad Pythag luck, and the run differential is +5. Doesn't get much closer to average than that. The offense is doing pretty well, but the pitching is giving up way too many homers. I kind of thought that might be a problem.
Still though, I honestly am fairly impressed with this performance. Looking at the other teams around .500 in this league, their rosters are much more talented in terms of OVR. Most of them have several perfect cards and/or double digit historical diamonds. So again I have to say, I'm fairly convinced this is a really strong strategy, value-wise. The SaberCats are playing pretty well again their 3rd week in diamond, and in a close race for the division. Aaron Judge is having a strong bounce-back year, leading the offense so far after a disappointing previous season (career low 1.8 WAR). I'd put money on Trout passing him in WAR during the second half of the year though. The pitching is still the strong point. I think it's time to move on from Kyle Schwarber though...that experiment did not really work out. Should have done it a long time ago TBH. The Balancers are still really bad, but not quite relegation bad. It kinda seems to me like the "no weaknesses" approach kind of hits a wall around diamond. Not that it's a bad strategy baseball-wise...the opposite really...but the value in the game is just not there. The cards with solid ratings across the board are just expensive, there's no way around it. So in the end I think they served as a valuable control group, to show how the other strategies can get a lot further on the same budget. But if they keep playing this badly, I might consider reshaping them into something more interesting. They are not super fun to follow right now. |
05-30-2019, 01:01 PM | #230 | |
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Quote:
All three of my teams are contending for their division, although the two diamond teams are pretty middling. The Bees went on a 1-9 skid last night after I tampered with their pitching staff. Hopefully I rectified things. I really want to contend for the Gold title this season, but there is a team in the League that has every meta card in the book, has insane run differential, and crazy good defense and starting pitching, including a Perfect Bob Gibson. I've never seen a starting rotation with such low ERA. So good luck with that. The Thieves and Barnstormers are a few games above .500. Not bad for an early foray into diamond I guess. Barnstormers are looking better in their second year, with high AVG again and they're actually creating runs this season. ERA is much better this season too. Pitching options are limited to Negro League card set, Negro League/MLB players, and any MLB pre-1947. I'm constantly experimenting with the bullpen. Starting staff isn't too bad. Last edited by Cheesehead1964; 05-30-2019 at 01:03 PM. |
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05-30-2019, 01:09 PM | #231 |
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My SaberCats in perfect went 5-23 in month 2 and 11-17 in month three, so we're sitting at 29-53 (.353). Funny thing is, I'm in *second* place in my division. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm 32.5 games out of first place? That's right, my division leader is playing around .750 ball... in Perfect. It's fascinating to watch, sort of the way watching a car crash is interesting.
Still saving up for that Mike Trout, though. But at the rate at which I'm accumulating PP it will probably be no sooner than this weekend (making the assumptoin one comes on the market for a relatively sane price). |
05-30-2019, 02:58 PM | #232 |
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So it is interesting how similar my (FTP) Energizer Bunnies are doing compared to your Smallballers. When you first posted about your "experiment" I decided to follow your model of getting high contact, high gap, low power players and setting ballpark factors the same way in my team. Just like your smallballers, my bunnies (named since they just keep on 'goin) are in their first season in perfect, after having 3 playoff seasons in diamond. Also like you, we are right around .500 at this point (actually 3 games over heading into the all-star break, but we have given up 6 more runs than he have brought in). Climbing through the levels, I am used to having, every year, the best team ba among all 30 teams. Surprisingly, by team BA is still over .300 (.302 to be exact) but is only second in the league. But my team ERA is horrible at just over 5.
Still, my team has no perfect players, 3 diamond level players(highest OVR is 93), and only 12 gold players, so I am frankly amazed that I am not being destroyed in this league. The fewest number of perfect/diamonds in all the other 29 teams is 9, so I really expected to be bottom fodder.
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Last edited by allenciox; 05-30-2019 at 03:00 PM. |
05-30-2019, 03:11 PM | #233 |
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05-30-2019, 03:22 PM | #234 |
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I also think that the smallballers strategy works better the higher you go. So my team BA has hovered around .300 at every level iron, bronze, silver, gold, diamond, and now perfect. Now I have upgraded players a bit as I have gone up the levels but not a huge amount. I think what happens is that even at low levels, people have learned to get good defenders. So the main things that improve as you go up levels is the pitching and the hitting. So how does pitching improve? STU increases strikeouts, MOV reduces home runs, and CON reduces walks. The pitching therefore has very little effect on high CON, GAP, AvoidK, low POW players. So my team scores almost as often in higher levels as at lower levels. It's just that I give up many more runs at the higher levels too.
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05-30-2019, 03:42 PM | #235 |
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I'm curious about Smoky Burgess, who I think you have on your Bunnies team. He's one of the best hitters in the game for the CON/GAP strategy, but he has woeful catcher defense. Do you find that makes a noticeable difference on your defense and pitching, or does it get lost in a sea of XBHs for Smoky?
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05-30-2019, 03:52 PM | #236 |
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re: Sonny Burgess
Yes, his defense is his Achilles heel. He only throws out about 25% of base stealers and he usually ends up with a ZR of between -2 and -5. My team is primarily focused on hitting, though, and there are very few catchers who can hit like him (and probably nobody available for less than 100k pp)... so for my team I think he is an important piece.
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Last edited by allenciox; 05-30-2019 at 03:53 PM. |
05-30-2019, 05:00 PM | #237 | |
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I saw his card a long time ago and considered picking him up. But I thought maybe the defense would end up hurting more than the offense added. I ended up cloning him and LaValliere and ran them both through the simulation module, using the SmallBaller park setup. He did improve the offense a bit, but not a huge amount. On the defensive side though the difference was huge. So overall LaValliere came out way on top. And I saved about 15k PP |
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05-30-2019, 05:19 PM | #238 |
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Defensive side... you mean CERA? Or throwing arm? Or a bit of both? I thought you ran some simulations that showed CERA was not necessarily tied to catcher rating (or maybe it was someone else.... but someone definitely looked into it and I coulda sworn the conclusion was that catcher defense wasn't terribly important).
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05-30-2019, 05:57 PM | #239 |
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Yeah...sorry about that. I think I messed up that earlier test. I was thinking about framing, so I was focusing on the BB/K ratios, not looking at the overall affects on runs allowed. (The simulation module doesn't provide CERA). The effects on BB/K ratios are indeed pretty small...but I realized recently that the "Catcher Ability" is not just framing...it also includes passed balls.
So for my more recent test I just looked at overall runs scored vs. runs allowed. With 20,000 game samples in each run, I think those numbers should be pretty meaningful. I also ran some tests on catcher ability vs. arm. Ability was clearly the winner. Something like each point of catcher ability is worth 4 points of arm. |
06-01-2019, 02:03 PM | #240 |
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Man, this catcher defense stuff is confusing. I just compared my Yasmani Grandal from OOTP19, who has been my catcher on my SabreCats-like team for dozens of seasons, with my Kyle Schwarber in OOTP20 and his horrible ratings. The number of passed balls per inning came out...completely identical. Like exactly the same. Who knows anymore...
Anyways, I swapped out both my catchers in one fell swoop. Goodbye Schwarber & Seminick...hello Grandal and Gary Carter. A drop off in power but huge improvements to defense. Both my catchers were struggling to even crack positive WAR consistently, so it can't get much worse... |
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