Season 13 (2031) General Discussion

[nutt]

Not a bad standard pack pull

[old timer]

The Raccoons now have 3 games to go and are 3 games out of 1st and the last 3 are against the 1st place Ghosts. I don't feel optimistic about our chances, but it's nice to at least have a chance of winning the division. Maybe we can at least put a scare into them (Ghosts).

We ended up winning 18 straight games which is what made this possible. It was worth 4k PP which makes me wonder, what is a 20 game winning streak worth? Is a 20 game winning streak the highest achievement given out or is there a longer winning streak achievement?

Congratulations to all who've clinched a playoff berth, including the Fighting Frogs! Your guys have a shot at the division title too. Good luck!

Edit: 1 down, 2 to go (or 3 if we're lucky)! I started newly acquired 99 Johnson instead of Keefe since Johnson's been hot and he helped defeat the Ghosts in the 1st game. The next 2 games will be against perfect Young and Grove so it won't be easy.

Edit 2: Campanella got a pinch hit HR (off of 100 Clemens pitching in relief) in the top of the 9th to win it for the Raccoons. 1 more and with some luck, 1 more!

Edit 3: Oh so close! We lost game 3 to the Ghosts and now we'll have to face the Vlad News Bears in the WC game.

[waittilnextyear]

The AC in P405 will be the playoff bracket of doom. It's really unlucky that only one of: Bville Battling Bonsai (122-40), Vlad News Bears (108-54), Dyersville Ghosts (114-48), Evergreen Forest Raccoons (112-50), or Somerset Dolphins (101-61) can represent the conference in the championship series. The Raccoons and Vlad News Bears figure to have an EPIC wild card throw down.

As for the NC, or my side of the bracket as we call it in my neck of the woods, there's nary a 100-win team to be found. Although my Frogs didn't hop quite fast enough to hold onto the division, I am happy that the team showed a Fighting spirit down the stretch. It's almost like there was a frog sitting in a boiling pot, but it actually jumped out before getting cooked! The Frogs went 17-11 in September (11-2 in final 13 games) and put serious heat on the division leader to keep winning.

We'll be rewarded with a winner-take-all game against the SLP Enraged Chimps. It's a good looking team that appears to have made good progress on the collection missions (Rickey Henderson, Eddie Plank, Johan Santana have all been plugged in). I think there are other primate-themed teams that are owned by the same person?

Looking forward to see if my Frogs can win their first Perfect level playoff game and actually get themselves into a series of some kind.

[Warhawk]

White Tigers weren't quite as successful as last season's 96 wins but 87-75 was enough for us to win the division; all 4 other playoff teams won at least 99 though so we're gonna have to pull out something special in the playoffs. Lineup has been upgraded nicely this season, adding Rickey Henderson and David Wright from the collection missions; Wright's put up a better OPS than my other 3 diamond third basement I've been using (Bryant, Turner, and Rosen) have in the last 10 seasons, Henderson I have as my outfield backup where he's learning the other positions and pinch runner. I also pulled a 1937 All-Star Joe DiMaggio, so the Yankees are pretty well represented right now with Henderson, DiMaggio, Judge, Sanchez, and Chapman as a setup guy. DiMaggio only played games but hit .314/.387/.557 to lead the team in OPS and had 17 home runs. He'd have been second in the conference in OPS if he'd qualified. We had the 4th most runs and 2nd most home runs. Starting pitching kinda stunk though, the best ERA was actually Kluber at 4.27; deGrom, Syndergaard, and Sale were all in the mid-to-high 4s and Gibson was over 5. Relievers other than Eck with a 1.93 weren't very good either, only Cole and Giles stayed under 4, and only just.

Black Panthers first season in Gold saw them return to 81-81, meaning 3 of their last 4 seasons have been within 1 game of .500. Opposite situation here, pitching was pretty solid with 4 of the 5 starters and 5 of the 7 relievers with an ERA+ over 100 (Minter had a pretty awful season as the closer though). The lineup, on the other hand, kinda stunk outside of Bonds, Banks, and Jackson. Luke Appling was particular disappointing, dropping to a .640 OPS when his worst in the previous 5 seasons had been .729. George Sisler too, he's a 94 contact rating guy who hit .246.

Golden Lions keep improving, going from 66 wins in their first season in Gold to 75 last season to 87 and a division win this season. Not much in the way of standout performances but everyone played pretty good, 10 of the 13 pitchers had an ERA+ better than 110. Rizzo had his best season in a long time hitting .279; he had hit .200 2 seasons ago.

[Westheim]

Both the Accountants and Rebels made their respective Bronze League playoffs, and both did so in a division that put up three playoff teams. The Rebels won the second wild card by two games, while the Accountants won their division by one game - Game 163. They beat the Hinckley Fire, 5-4, on a ninth-inning, 2-out walkoff double by Chili Davis off David Robertson, plating Tony Fernandez.

Raccoons are … who knows? They finished in a 3-way tie for last place, 57-105, and two teams will be relegated. DeGrom (7-18, 5.58 ERA) pitched a gem on the final day to even get them into that tie… Do you see anywhere whether you are relegated or not? I don't think I was in this spot before.

Only one of the rather valuable cards I offered up for sale actually sold (Grandal). Might tear up the perfect Sale then if he doesn't sell by tonight…

Uff...

[old timer]

The Mammoth Mud Hens won 92 games in their 1st season in gold and amazingly enough, that tied for the most wins in the entire league. In fact, the Mud Hens were the ONLY team with an RDiff > 100 (+114)! I'm so used to perfect leagues now that this seems so weird. My Raccoons had an RDiff of +288 and were over 100 below the top team.

My Raccoons 1st championship came at the gold level so maybe the Mud Hens can duplicate that. Like a lot of ftp teams, their strength is defense and pitching. I was thinking of having the Mud Hens join the OL, but 4 of our SPs are cards that don't qualify so I'll probably not be able to join for a while. Maybe we'll make it to perfect and then we can join NFTP instead.

[dancariaz]

Won my division for the first time ever (102-60 record), rather comfortably too, 2nd was 18 GB. Is this the season I finally get back to gold? I sure hope so.

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers won 105 games and ran away with the division, but had a losing record in September, not the way we want to go to the playoffs. 84 Darin Erstad was impressive, posting a 7.9 WAR, a .338 average and 21 hrs.

The Marathoners finished 2nd in their division with 96 wins and a wildcard berth. Had the division lead for most of the year but couldn't sustain it when it mattered,as the NJ Rasslers put up an impressive run. Absolutely insane this team is 4 wins from a season of misery in Perfect. We have one diamond, I think it's Will Smith.

And the Miners won their division by three games with 90 wins, barely getting by the Mason Comets who took a Wildcard. 91 John Tudor was our only addition and through 5 starts has a 2.80 ERA. Matty Mo had the most wins with 19 and had a 2.92 ERA and Tex Carleton put up a 2.98.

[Magus978]

Amazingly, I got all 6 of my teams (across 2 licenses) into the playoffs. Granted, 5 of them are in through the wildcard backdoor and are probably losing no later than the divisional round, but this is going to be a busy Sunday morning, even if it may end up being an early one for me.

[Westheim]

Walker Buehler squeezed out the Rebels in the Wild Card game, so they will stay in Bronze for another season. The Accountants will face Hinckley in the LDS, who they previously beat in the tie-breaker game for first place.

[RunninYakAngler]

The Marathoners get to Noah Syndergaard (4.2 IP 6 ER) and beat the Wyomissing Spartans 6-4. The Marathoners had to go with 89 Felix Hernandez since 89 Paul Splittorff (20-7 3.12 era) was tired from pitching game 162. We didn't trust 89 Max Scherzer and his low movement against the bashers of the Spartans.

[Magus978]

New York Patriots (Silver) win their wildcard
Brooklyn Dynasty (Gold) win their wildcard
Tri-State Sky Rockets (Silver) lose their wildcard
Metuchen Mariners (Packs Only, Iron) lose their wildcard as a 102-win team

Oof....especially the Mariners crumbling against a far inferior 87-win team. Big oof for them.

[waittilnextyear]

Good to see both my Frogs and the Evergreen Forest Raccoons winning very close wild card games in P405.

It was Johnny Pesky with the go ahead RBI double in the 10th inning to give La Crosse its first playoff win ever at the Perfect level. Now it's on to face the Lake Elsinore Storm in the divisional round.

[PocketsAintFull]

Tough Crowd in the Gold .316 NC West

[The_Myth]

Welp, at this point it's just hilarious.



This is my team's year to year. Each year but one I've made the playoffs, and in all of those years I've been ousted before the Sub-League Series, failing to be promoted.

Now, I'm in the playoffs and I'm about to be swept out of the division series by a whale who won 140 games this season (and has all but maybe three cards that are perfects). I'll be in Silver. Some day.

[Magus978]

The Brooklyn Dynasty are going up to Diamond after a stunning sweep of the heavily favored Hickory Crawdads. Only gave up 1 run in the 3 games. This team is going to get annihilated next week, but the heck with it. Let's go and make the most of it.

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers have finally, after 5 seasons in Silver, made it to Gold with a 3 games to 1 Division Series win over the Des Moines Retrievers. Game 4 winner was Zach Greinke, who went 7.1 inning allowing no runs. Series MVP was the one I keep trying to replace, CF Curt Flood 76. I was very concerned with this matchup as the Retrievers were 12-7 against the YakAnglers this season.

[old timer]

The Raccoons are hanging in there against the Bville Battling Bonsai who won 122 games and took 5 of 6 from us in the regular season. In the 4th game of the divisional series, I changed my starter from Clarkson to 100 Seaver (who I had in the bullpen) and Seaver combined to SHO 100 Young 7-0.

The final game will be in Bville with my 99 Johnson (who got shellled in game 1 - his 1st poor start for us) vs Ed Walsh. We've not yet been to a perfect series so I'm really hoping for some luck and more luck so we can finally have a chance for a perfect title.

[RunninYakAngler]

The Miners will be digging for Diamonds!

Steve Carlton doesn't make it out of the first inning allowing 5 runs but the Miners claw their way back to win 11-7. Series MVP was 89 Albert Pujols.
Never dreamed this team could get this far.

The Miners will be facing the Kansas City Monarchs, another team built on power. I think Giancarlo Stanton has more HRs than all the Miners combined.

And on the other end of things the Marathoners lose a tough battle to the Burien Rapids 3 games to 1. Games scores were, 3-2; 4-3; 4-3; and 4-2. Rapids were the better team and deserve the promotion. It'd been interesting to see what would happen in Perfect, but that can wait a season or four.

[Westheim]

Accountants sweep their way through to the Silver League. And, well, the Bronze LCS.

Masterplan is working …! (giggles fiendishly)