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

[old timer]

Well, now we're in playoff contention. We're 2 games out of the WC right now even though we're tied for 15th in the promotion standings. We have a +4 Pyt so that's not helping. Where is bad luck when you need it?

My long term goal is to have a team with lots of power that also draws walks a lot and with some high contact guys as well. Strikeouts should be prevalent on both sides of the ball as well. I'll adjust park factors next season to max out hitting and keep my defense awful. I'm curious about how well we can do with a team like this. Even in solo play, I've always had at least a decent defense so it's weird having a team with awful defense.

Right now, I have 7 guys on my roster that have power ratings (vs RH) in the range of 82-89 and I have 4 guys with contact ratings (vs RH) of 85-90 so I figure those ratings should do pretty well all the way up to diamond. So my main thing to work on now is pitching. But I'm not going to worry about getting mostly guys with high movement this time around so it will be interesting to see how that works out.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by 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

That's impressive, especially considering those teams have to play each other more. I've seen all .500 divisions before, but I don't remember one with 4 teams doing that well.

[gemini615]

The Fort Jefferson Turtles got an unlucky draw into the silver league after overachieving in the entry pool. I blame my 2 gold starters, Archer and Bieber, for the unfortunate promotion.
Luckily, we have a .308 winning percentage this season and are one of 3 teams vying to get relegated to bronze after week two. I'm not tanking, but I'm hoping. Shame on me for registering a team right off the bat.

[Izz]

B'sin'Glou has jumped out to an 8-game lead, their 56-42 record the only one in their division above .500.

Just pulled Curt Blefary from a challenge mode pack. He definitely fits our team mold but I've got nowhere to put him at the moment as I bought Frank Howard yesterday to DH against lefties, and while Stanton isn't that great against RHP, he's still slugging .502 against them so far this season. Blefary could replace Tony Gwynn in RF but Gwynn currently leads the conference in BA and is one of our few defensive bright spots. Don't worry, Curt, your time will come!

[waittilnextyear]

The La Crosse Fighting Frogs have hopped back into contention in the inaugural season of PT 2.0. These Frogs are sitting in 1st place at 54-45 after sweeping the previous top team in the NC East division in Iron .171.

Bolstered by some ridiculous pack luck, the club has turned around a shaky start. In the span of 4 regular packs, the Frogs were joined by tadpoles Jeurys Familia (diamond), Aaron Judge (diamond), Eddie Stanky (diamond), Dellin Betances (gold), Tom Burgmeier (gold), Edgar Renteria (gold), along with useful silver Sam Tuivailala. These reinforcements join Reggie Sanders (gold), David Price (gold), Jose Reyes (silver), and Ryan Zimmerman (silver) from the starter packs to form the nucleus of this club.

[Westheim]

Suddenly a completely underwhelming Chattanooga team is creeping closer to promotion to silver, despite being only two games over .500 in bronze. The other subleague has only five winning teams, so they are tied for 10th in terms of record with that 54-52 tally. … if they get promoted, it's gonna be hellishly ugly.

And my pack-only strategy does not really work here, because I still have three iron pitchers on that team, and whenever I pull a bronze pitcher it is guaranteed to be another turd with negative 11 movement…

Also, Kevin Plawecki must be the worst 71 card EVER. I mean, I saw him play for four years with the Mets... He is… He is not a 71. (shrugs)

The Raccoons on the other hand, for all the investment, are still routinely bland, except for the back-to-back games in July in which they saddled the Plainfield Twisters with a total of 37 runs. Michael ****ing Conforto had back-to-back 6 RBI games. That should count for something!

Those two games were worth a total of 1,910 PP. In the former of those two games, the bottom of the order even went 0-for-15 …! And they STILL mauled the Twisters for 19!

So I used the loot from those games to buy some packs… and... and I think I have to lie down now...

[mcdog512]

Man, Walter Johnson gets around these days....

[Kushiel]

Originally Posted by mcdog512

Man, Walter Johnson gets around these days....

It almost makes me want to buy a bunch of packs.

[neugey]

Originally Posted by mcdog512

Man, Walter Johnson gets around these days....

Cy Young has the pitching award name and I think Walter is pissed.

[Warhawk]

The Las Vegas Black Panthers are 70-60 in the entry pool.

That's not interesting.

What's interesting?

Well, in our last game, and say this five times fast, Harvey Haddix threw a Maddux against Greg Maddux; Greg Maddux came close to a Maddux, pitching a complete game, but allowed a run and just crept over the pitch limit with 102 - so, no Maddux for Maddux, just for Haddix.

Anyway, as for the Las Vegas White Tigers, we're 60-53, still hanging on a 1 game lead in the division as we have had for about half the season. I bit the bullet and just straight-up sold Haniger who was barely hitting 200, replaced him with rookie Kenny Lofton. He's only at .245 and has less power but he's a high-end defensive center fielder and he just got me 400 PP for stealing home which is more than Haniger ever did for me so I'm calling it an upgrade.

[waittilnextyear]

Originally Posted by Warhawk

The Las Vegas Black Panthers are 70-60 in the entry pool.

That's not interesting.

What's interesting?

Well, in our last game, and say this five times fast, Harvey Haddix threw a Maddux against Greg Maddux; Greg Maddux came close to a Maddux, pitching a complete game, but allowed a run and just crept over the pitch limit with 102 - so, no Maddux for Maddux, just for Haddix.

Hopefully Dr. Seuss (ghost of) was at the game.

[Morug]

My Expos, with a very bad pitching staff, have a chance to make the playoff, 66-70..first team in division is 69-67. I'm not very good at offense too but defensively the team is good and 3 guys have 20 hr already (Staub, Pederson and Escobar).

[neugey]

This morning I have been stressing making the playoffs ... I'm thinking it would really suck to get the promotion from Iron to Bronze league yet not make the playoffs.

Just found the League reports for pennant chase and it says I have a 99.3% chance - relieved because I was thinking it was more like 70-90% with the ground I've lost, offense got cold in August.

[UltimateAverageGuy]

107-35 and cruising in bronze, racking up the perfect points...

[mcdog512]

Gutter Cats are in the thick of the wildcard. They are a free to play team and I definitely didn't have as much luck as 19 with them. I pulled a perfect Eck and got an immediate 47k in that year.

My Saints are my money team and they are 99 wins with the division clinched.

[Warhawk]

So the Las Vegas White Tigers wrapped up the division with 5 games to play.

Now I need to have a good long talk with my lineup about how just because Syndergaard is pitching doesn't mean you get to take the day off. I got Thor pretty late in the season, he's started 7 games, he's pitched 9 innings in 4 of them, 8 innings in another, and 7 1/3 and 6 1/3 in the other 2. He's got a 2.50 ERA, a 0.82 WHIP, he's walked all of 7 guys in 7 games, he has more strikeouts than walks and hits combined, and he's 1-1. He's allowed a total of 7 runs over 33 1/3 innings in his last 4 games combined, and all 4 were no decisions; 3 went to extra innings. Our offense scored only 9 runs in the first 9 innings of those 4 games combined.

It's not even like we're a bad offense, we're 4th in HRs and 6th in runs (our average sucks, we're a power hitting team with guys like Khrush and Carpenter and Encarnacion). It's just whenever it's his turn our bats don't show up.

[waittilnextyear]

The La Crosse Fighting Frogs turned on the afterburners in mid-summer and ran away with the division. The Frogs are 92-64, with a 13.5 game lead, and clinched several days ago. It likely doesn't matter how the playoffs go (save for earning a whack of PP) as the Frogs are well within promotion territory (12 teams going up to bronze !!)

The bullpen and offense are areas of strength, but not really comfortable with a rotation of David Price/Michael Wacha/Austin Gomber/Trevor Williams/Sean Newcomb against playoff caliber teams...

...so why not open a regular pack and get yet another diamond player. This time a Patrick Corbin.



My pack luck is verging on obscene. lol. Getting a diamond just about every other pack.

[Izz]

B'sin'Glou are enjoying the crash-bang approach. They're also pretty patient at the plate. Their OBP of .359 is 23 points higher than any other team in I165.

Harmon Killebrew alone has 139 walks, though he doesn't have the most walks in our conference. That honor goes to Joey Votto of the Mytishchi Atlant, with 142. Votto is hitting .321/.466/.503 for the season. Wow!

[old timer]

Originally Posted by Izz

B'sin'Glou are enjoying the crash-bang approach. They're also pretty patient at the plate. Their OBP of .359 is 23 points higher than any other team in I165.

Harmon Killebrew alone has 139 walks, though he doesn't have the most walks in our conference. That honor goes to Joey Votto of the Mytishchi Atlant, with 142. Votto is hitting .321/.466/.503 for the season. Wow!

Nice! My offense hasn't reached this level yet, but we are 1st in HRs which my Clippers from PT 1 never approaced (they finished 8th once). We're also 5th in BBs but only 8th in Rs.

How are you doing record wise? We'll not get promoted, thankfully. We're 72-87 .453 so at least one more year in bronze which should help.

p.s. - I'm curious about your team name "B'sin'Glou". If you don't mind sharing, where did you get that name from?

[Izz]

Originally Posted by old timer

Nice! My offense hasn't reached this level yet, but we are 1st in HRs which my Clippers from PT 1 never approaced (they finished 8th once). We're also 5th in BBs but only 8th in Rs.

How are you doing record wise? We'll not get promoted, thankfully. We're 72-87 .453 so at least one more year in bronze which should help.

We're 93-68 with 1 to play. We'll end up with either the outright best or tied-for-best record in our conference.

Our bullpen is atrocious but our starters are mid-range, ranked 8th of 15. Our ZR is -26.0

Which means we'll be getting promoted but only to bronze as we started off in iron.

In the other conference, Joey Gallo has hit 51 homers. On our side, Stanton has gone dry to end the season and is currently tied with Tyler O'Neill on 43.

p.s. - I'm curious about your team name "B'sin'Glou". If you don't mind sharing, where did you get that name from?

I write science-fiction as a hobby. A central character in the novel I'm currently writing (though I haven't worked on it for 6 weeks) is named Turk B'sin'Glou. He may or may not be playing more than one side, hence the name B'sin'Glou Double Agents. I might change to B'sin'Glou Bandits for next season though, as that kinda rolls off the tongue better

My PT1 team is also tied to my writing, incidentally. Jazz Healy is the protagonist in this novel series. The Healy Hoggs are named after her.