Season 3 (2022) - This Time, It Definitely Counts

[BigRed75]

As the calendar flips to August, the Secret Harbour Pirates find themselves in first place, although their six-game lead has shrunk to 2 1/2 games in the past week. We made some hard decisions and cut our ties with a couple of players, including Turk Farrell who was a key member of our pitching staff in the first two seasons, but struggled making the step up to Iron and was sent down.

The Pirates are making good enough progress on collections, we have completed 11 so far (and our target was 12 by the end of the season). I'm sure we would have closer to 20 if I wasn't so stingy with my PP, but then again, I wouldn't have 35K in reserve if that was the case. The big collection reward pickups this season have been 95 OVR Randy Johnson, 91 OVR Jason Kendall and 93 OVR Chuck Klein. I've shifted gears from focusing on particular divisions to picking up reward cards that fill specific positions of need.

The Arequipa Alpacas have been opening packs two at a time without waiting until the end of the season to open a bunch. It seems to be working, as there always seems to be a gold card in one of those two packs. This has been the case the last three days - one pack had a double gold.

The Bibra Lake Quendas continue to accumulate Future Legend cards now that the prices are coming down. We are up to seven cards on the roster, all Gold. Ian Anderson, who was the staff ace last season, is absolutely sticking it up this year. Hopefully he can turn things around. Just as hopefully, we won't get relegate. But if it is to be, it is to be. Last year, when I made the switch to a Future Legends team, there were relegations and growing pains. But it was all worth it in the end as the team ended up going to Perfect with 100 Junior Griffey leading the way.

And the San Antonio Missions have acquired all the non-gold cards for the Year of the Pitcher mission. So now the real fun begins. Prices do seem to be trending downwards, thankfully.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

You are using players that are carrying teams in silver , of course they are going to dominate in lower tiers

and while they dominate, I can get back all the points I invested to complete those missions.

Bagwell fighting for triple crown; his own teammate is an obstacle!



While Maddux and R. Johnson duke it out for pitching triple crown.

[Snowball]

15-0 Post AS break.
20 game winning streak
83-30 record
Still 1.5 games behind division leader luckily or not we have 7 H2H games this month

[Morug]

Pretty to close to have a roster full of Expos players...Its easier this year to build a decent Expos team...but some card are very rare and hard to find. 71-42 in rookie league.

[Warhawk]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

What I DID get was a few good gold players, and I've compiled statistics to optimize my rosters for that too. Also did that for Silver but I'm not doing as well in those.

Hah, I said that, and then I entered the currently running Daily Gold and Daily Early Silver tourneys; got dumped in the first round of the Gold but just advanced to the finals of the Silver.

Meanwhile the Sun Kings won their second 16-team Bronze tournament in 4 attempts (although they've gone out early of a pair of 32-teamers), and the Black Knights won another 16-teamer to make it 3 wins in their last 10; we've made it to the finals in 8 of our last 16 16-team Bronze tournaments.

Oh, and if anyone wants to buy a 97 OVR Deacon Phillippe, there's one on the auction house for a cool 90k buyout... bit of a premium price because it's a wrench letting him go but I want to do the live missions for the Sun Kings...

[macacks]

The Warbirds sit on top of I186, the AC and their division with a 99-20 record (106-13 Pyt) and a +689.
The Bellview Killer Whales are 7GB (+4 Pyt +334) and are having a great second half.

The top 6 teams in the league al reside in the AC.

Highlights:
41,540 PP generated already
Sisler cooled off but still on pace for 63 HR / 218 RBI
Ozzie and King Kelly have 8.5 & 8.3 WAR already
Pedro chasing the Triple crown
It twas nice to wake up to several missions already completed including Perfect Appling who will train at 3B for a while.

The Warbirds decided to move on from their SE cards in order to build some PP.

Erie Live Ghosts - 88-30 in 1st WC position This league is a 3 team race but the Ghosts division mates are one of them.
Trout and Scherzer are having great years.
The Ghosts have picked up 3 historic perfects that have allowed them to collect all Live players and have nearly 700K PP in the bank. What to do??? The Ghosts did make a 'scary' purchase on the AH today in order to take advantage of a certain mission's rare card.


Rockport Rumblefish - S257 is a who's who from PT20. There are several 10+ PL Champs.
Currently in the weaker conference and sitting in the 1st Wildcard spot and probably promoting a bit too fast for the calibre of this team.
They continue to rake packs from tourneys.

This team sure could use the pack luck the Ghosts have had...well any team would be happy with that.

Overall the 3 teams have won 184 tourneys which has led to several packs.

[Marleigh]

Paragon City Heroes 80-56 3 1/2 game lead, a tougher month, the Black Sox hammered us. Made a few purchases on the AH, DeGrom (historic 95) replaces Plank in the rotation, Eric Davis comes in as platoon CF (his ratings vs lefties are pretty good, 107 def helps) with the expectation of training him in all OF positions (but not at the moment as i'm in a pennat race) and Brad Lesley comes in to replace a live gold reliever i was using. Huge month as we face the teams 3 1/2 and 4 games behind us a total of 13 times, plus face the Red Devils and Long Beach.

San Angeles 70s 70-64 1/2 game back. the turnaround continues with a 18-9 month. Some dilemmas though, I decided to keep Campy and Singleton despite them quadrupling in value with the new collections, sold Rudi who was a backup LF, and bought the SE Rollie Fingers for less than Rudi fetched. Also moved on Dave Winfield as he wasn't cutting it and bought the SE Frank Robinson

Lowdown Lugnuts 72-60 5 1/2 game lead, the offence is down to 4 players, Frank Baker, Frank Robinson, Merv Rettenmund and oddly Buck Herzog. the pitching is functional but not amazing, helped out by the infield defence

[daves]

Seawolves are doing very well in the regular season Stone league as we are 1st in about every category.

Watch them lose to the wildcard?

[Warhawk]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

Hah, I said that, and then I entered the currently running Daily Gold and Daily Early Silver tourneys; got dumped in the first round of the Gold but just advanced to the finals of the Silver.

I managed to also make it to the finals of the subsequent Daily Silver yesterday too (lost both finals ), and yet I haven't placed in the money in any of my last nineteen quick silver tourneys. Bizarre.

Anyway, Sun Kings won their first 32-team bronze tourney the other day and only dropped 2 games along the way, so I'm pretty happy with that roster so far.

In league play the White Tigers are holding onto a 2 1/2 game lead in the wild card. Bad news is we still have 5 games to go against Flagstaff and 3 against Charlotte (Knights, not Cougars). Good news is that somehow that's still an easier schedule, at .542, than the Cardinals who are trailing us have to play. Their finishing schedule is .587, with 5 games against Sacramento, 4 against Charlotte, and 3 against Somerset.

EDIT: So I just spent 7000 PP on two silver starting pitchers , hopefully they're actually as good for me as the numbers indicate.

[bailey]

I swore I would play only 1 team in PT21, but you know how that goes. The Hamtramck Tigers has always been neglected, but plugs away anyway. So, on Monday after release two teams were created and one became Collingwood, the other Hamtramck. Since I was only playing one team, the Tigers were left to fester under AI control until the following Monday when I came up with a new theme for it. That is: no money AND no time. Well, just 30 minutes a week, enough to logon a 2-3 times and buy a player on the AH with accumulated PP. So, therefore, 1) no challenge mode 2) no collections 3) no tournaments 4) no AH flipping of cards and 5) no buying of packs. The first 4 obviously because there is no time for that and the 5th because there is no time to list for sale the cards I would get.

So, to recap what has happened already:

Entry Pool week: no logons after creation, the team setup under AI control scores 21,600 PP. For comparison, the heavily managed Collingwood squad makes 19K.

Rookie League week: Conceived the above plan on Monday and buy Kiner and Klein. On Wednesday, buy Snider. I should mention here that the Tigers drew 5 gold cards: 4 starters and a closer. Pretty strong for Rookie League: Jim Maloney, Luis Tiant, Charlie Morton, Trevor Bauer and closer Mike Adams. They go on to win 108 games, but lose 3-2 in the division series.

Stone League week: Forgot all about the team until yesterday, when I logged in to see what I could buy. Jeff Bagwell was the obvious choice, but I could not buy one outright. There was an auction with 6 hours to go, so I set my alarm. 6 hours later I returned to see the bid up to 17.5K and at the last second, I go all-in with 19,220 and win Mr. Bagwell for 18K.

At this time, the team is 3.5 games out of first, but one half game behind first wild-card and one half game ahead of the next contender. Bagwell is placed in the DH spot, since Len Matuszek at 1B was better than the DH I replaced. I also made an internal move, moving the AI choice for 5th starter to the bullpen and making Pete Alexander (66) the 5th starter.

Today, I logon to see Hamtramck on a 16-game winning streak (14-0 since these moves) and in first place by 2 games.

[mcdog512]

Bailey, I only do collections and tournaments on my main team. No way I have enough time to micro all that on multiple teams.

[Warhawk]

So in the annals of "how the hell does that happen?" I just lost in the second round of a gold tournament 4 games to 3 where my run differential in the series was +36. The team ended the tournament with an OPS of - no joke - .960.

[skep]

I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it anymore. So I renamed my team Johnny And The Dickshots. Maybe we'll look at one of my other 8 teams sometime, but Johnny is King.

[sam10gle]

Division winner in Bronze 213! Got a decent upgrade to one of SPs right before playoffs. The AC looks pretty even (I'm AC West). Two teams in the NC look stacked.

[Marleigh]

Paragon City Heroes 95-68 lost a one game playoff 4-3 to end their season after a horrible 12-12 month in which they lost 9 out of the last 10. Bagwell led the team in most offensive categories, Honus Wagner (96) led the team in WAR (5.0) Maddux notched 19 wins, Johnson and Carlton shared the stopper role with 16 saves apiece

Lowdown Lugnuts 82-80 managed to have an 8-20 month including a 12 game losing streak to drop from 1st to 3rd, they had a pythag of 85-77 which would have seen them tied for the division lead. Frank Baker had 32HR 35SB. Tim Raines (50) and Buck Herzog (54) led the team in steals. Frank Robinson hit 39 HR to lead the team, and Merv Rettenmund led the team with 5.6 WAR (falling 1 steal short of a 20/20 season). In light of the collapse we are moving Herzog back to SS and bought Snuffy Stirnweiss for 2B

San Angeles 70s 91-71 despite horrible decisions by me (including deciding on a theme 45 mins before the season start) this is my only playoff team after entering July 34-47. Bert Blyleven anchored teh team with 20 wins, Leron Lee hit 46 2B and 21HR, and thats about all of our offence. Its not a team that excels in any way but they just managed to win. We are facing a 109 win team in the first round, and the 141 win Herbie Hancocks are lurking beyond that in whale infested waters

[Westheim]

I have Sunday off. Coons won all of 71 games with horrendous offense (and it was mostly down to BABIP - some *awful* values there for an entire season...), and the Mets were 35-20 at the end of May and then went 47-60 the rest of the way to piss it away in late September.

And I just won an auction for a pretty-pretty 1920 Burleigh Grimes and now I can't use him in the playoffs.

[Warhawk]

White Tigers finish in the second wild card spot at 84-78. One interesting recent pull, Ewell Blackwell, 96 OVR starter. So far he's 4-3 with a 4.76 ERA (meh) and a 3.59 FIP (quite good). Finally dropped Cole to the pen when I got him, next stop for Cole is the reserve roster if he doesn't improve with relief work. Might have to reconsider my starting rotation next season, Mickey Lolich has been phenomenal in the bullpen. Not sure whether to move Blyleven or Carlton down for him, Carlton was great the first two seasons, much better than Blyleven, but he's been pretty poor this season while Blyleven has been solid. Moved Mays over to full time starter for the playoffs, he's been outperforming Snider even against righties, and dropped Snider down, so against righties I'll have Mays in center and Bellinger in left, and against lefties I'll have Kemp in center and Mays in left. Lindy McDaniel had another good season, coming in second in the conference in saved with 37 and putting up at 3.00 ERA.

Black Knights will be dropping back down to Stone. Just before the end of the season I pulled a 91 OVR Ron Reed, he's played 3 games, good FIP, mediocre ERA but I've been position training. Got Chirinos trained to backup first as well as catcher. Machado at second, Semien at third, and a bit of short for Runnels.

Sun Kings unfortunately ended up one spot out of relegation. Got some training done there too, Arenado at second and Tulo at 3rd in case I get someone good and need to shift them over, and Will Smith at first so I don't need to carry a backup first baseman if I don't want to. Also got Guerrero a little bit of left field. Pulled an 89 OVR Torii Hunter not long before the end of the season, who's solid in center.

[bailey]

Hamtramck lost 1-0, ending their winning streak at 17, but they go on to win 94 games securing first place by 5 games. For the playoffs, I added Jason Kendall and a couple of bronze pitchers to replace the irons on the squad. While this team has a chance to win the division series, I doubt they get past Windy City who is stacked like Collingwood, except more so.

As expected Collingwood wins 140 and tops 75K in PP, but I was afraid to post this at the beginning of the week because it sounds like so much bragging. I splurge in the AH for Gene Garber to replace Kolarek and Yasmani Grandal is put on the playoff team for late inning defensive catching while Hader goes to the reserves.

[Marleigh]

Silver 255 was pretty brutal, we needed to win 2 of our last 9 games and couldn't manage it, i'm still going to watch the playoffs as it should be a ride

[lightningbolts35]

Second week in a row in a division with 3 100+ game winning teams. The Hounds are hosting the wild card against a great Calgary team.