Season 16 (2034) General Discussion thread

[waittilnextyear]

The Frogs seem to have found their...uh...webbed footing here over the past day or so. The team has climbed out of the relegation zone ever so slightly with a 48-73 record and -77 run differential. It would be nice to put a few more teams between the team and the relegation zone (the last team in has a 45-74 record), but things are looking up with 9 teams having triple digit negative run differentials compared to the Frogs' minus 77. I have the Lumberton Lumberjacks squarely in my sights as the 4th place team in the division with a 2 game lead over the Frogs. If teams continue to play to form, the Frogs should have no trouble avoiding the sojourn back to Diamond level.

Other positive news...the Frogs have the best ZR mark (+48.2) in the conference. The Frogs also played the whale-ish 89-31 Brooklyn Cyclones pretty tough at their home ballpark. If it weren't for a Willie Mays walkoff HR against Eck and Bob Gibson giving up a late 3-run HR to Bill Dahlen, the Frogs would've actually won the series (a series that the Cyclones swept to be clear). 100 All-Star Max Scherzer has been impressive so far with his 1.37 ERA in 4 starts. I think I might keep him.

[HFBL]

It is really strange...one player could have a good year then the next really tank, then rebound the next.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by HFBL

It is really strange...one player could have a good year then the next really tank, then rebound the next.

Yeah, it happens with someone every season. This season, Frank Robinson started off poorly (after having 41 HR, 157 RBI and .940 OPS the previous season) so I decided to start Lajoie at 1B and it's payed off since Lajoie is having a great season. But there's really no way to know if or when you should swap someone out (assuming you even have more than one option with comparable ratings). So I know I'm just gambling since it could have happened that Lajoie would have performed worse and Robinson might have turned things around. But I like to tinker so I'll keep trying to guess who's the one(s) having the off year. So I'm curious, what do you do? Do you try to guess and bench someone who's been cold for a while or just leave him in?

Assuming your team continues to play well, we might meet in the playoffs. Good luck the rest of the way!

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by old timer

So I'm curious, what do you do? Do you try to guess and bench someone who's been cold for a while or just leave him in?

If I have good choices, such as your case, I do what you do. If it is Babe Ruth starting poorly and my next-best option at DH is Phil Rizzuto, I will stick it out with the Babe.

[Westheim]

Crunch time! Who are the crunchers and who are the crunchees?

Raccoons, definitely the latter, nailed into last place and 25 games under .500, but also clear of the relegation zone by nine games. Another lost season, and no improvement anywhere near.

The Rebs can only realistically hope for a wild card anymore and hold a 3 1/2 game lead for the second such card. But I have confidence that somebody will crunch that out of them, too, down the road.

Accountants have also fallen out of the first-place battle. They were in first as late as early August, and since have been crunched for a 5-game deficit. They do hold the first wild card, but that, too, is a 5-team battle and those five teams are only separated by four games and the team has plenty of chances to get crunched some more.

[PocketsAintFull]

Both my Diamond teams are hanging on above relegation, *just about*. Only 2/3 games in it though, so that's gonna be nervous later

Bob's bronze crew (Crew?) are limping into the Playoffs with a 5-10 September so far, but *should* still be able to get the No.2 Seed. The top team in the conference are way ahead, so it's looking like coming down to a Division Series again to get to Silver ....

[old timer]

In terms of RDiff, the Raccoons are far behind last year's pace, but we're ahead record wise. We're only 1/2 game behind the team with the best record in the league even though their RDiff is 436 to our 328. We're also down to a magic # of 1. I still can't believe we're going to clinch with the Arlington Cowboys in our division. We've somehow played them even (8-8) - they've just not been very lucky this season.

Keeler won the MVP last season so I didn't expect him to follow that up with another MVP like year. He's currently leading the league with a .388 AVG and .999 OPS. He's also leading the conference in WAR.

Hubbell is finally pitching well after a rough start. Walter Johnson hasn't been so great this year so he'll end up in the bullpen in the playoffs along with Seaver and Spahn giving us 3 SPs in the pen to join Wilson and Eck who are both having good years.

Speaking of Spahn... He's pitched surprisingly well since being moved to the bullpen. He was a solid #5 SP, but for some reason he's been terrific in the bullpen (2.25 ERA since being moved to the pen) for 3 straight seasons now.

[waittilnextyear]

Things are getting a little bit too interesting for the Frogs here in the last gasp of the season. Yesterday it looked like the team had changed its trajectory from "maybe relegation-bound" to ".500 ish," but today the team finds itself veering in the wrong direction. Thanks to the well-represented whale class in P431, you might imagine that the relegation class is also fairly well populated. How about these standings for the bottom feeders?

Glen Dronach (40-105)
Tacoma Aroma (43-103)
Geoje Mongdols (52-94)
Fargo Buscemis (57-89)
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Dania Beach Victory (58-88)
La Crosse Fighting Frogs (59-88)*
San Diego Marines (59-87)
Lumberton Lumberjacks (60-87)
Commodore 64s (60-86)
Cheap Seat Chuggers (60-86)
Philadelphia Philip's Steaks (61-85)
Denver Hellfire (62-84)
The Vancouver Canadians (64-83)
Nashville Expos (65-82)
Motor City Togers (66-81)

The bottom 3 is pretty much decided, but it should be interesting to see which team ends up in that final relegation spot. The Commodore 64s and Lumberton Lumberjacks have a pretty brutal slate of games upcoming, so they might be in the worst position here.

My Frogs start a 3-game set against the Buscemis with the next sim, so we'll need to take care of business to not let them pass us.

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers have been in last place basically since opening day. I came home from work to see that they were 1-11 and have been trying to get them kick-started all season but they just won't improve. Just about everyone is having their worse season. Got rid of Felix Hernandez with his close to 6 era and a 3-16 record. Also gone are Strasburg and Scherzer, replaced with Sad Sam, Chris Short, Mark Gubicza and Herb Pennock. 79 Herb Pennock is outplaying all of them. Telltale stat of the season is being 19-34 in 1-run games.


Marathoners have been floating a few games below .500 all season and at times closed the divison lead to 3 but have faltered as of late and are 7 games back with 15 to play. Not looking good. Starting pitching has been sub-par and is in dire need of some upgrades.

Last season the Miners escaped relegation and we had a little over 2000 PPs to spend and took a chance on 2 packs. We got lucky and pulled a 96 Vlad jr. but could not sell it even below the average price so we decided to break up the "Only Cardinals Theme" and put him in at 3b since Joe Torre is already at DH. Vlad has been better than expected, batting .303 and 26 Hrs.

The Miners kept blowing late leads so we upgraded 2 reliever spots and again had a little over 2000 PPs and bought two more packs. This time we got 91 John Henry Lloyd. I wanted to try to sell him for the 70k but needed an upgrade to Renteria so we kept him. In his first 20 games he's hitting .383, even after starting out 1-12. He's had a big hand in getting the Miners back in first place and a possible playoff spot.

[Orcin]

The Colonels are probably headed for the familiar 2-seed in the playoffs tomorrow. Long Beach-Compton has won 11 in a row to take a 3 game lead on the top spot with 10 to play. Whatever happens, it has been a good week for me. I generated a personal best 31,000+ points so far this week.

[JasonC23]

Originally Posted by Orcin

The Colonels are probably headed for the familiar 2-seed in the playoffs tomorrow. Long Beach-Compton has won 11 in a row to take a 3 game lead on the top spot with 10 to play. Whatever happens, it has been a good week for me. I generated a personal best 31,000+ points so far this week.

Meanwhile, in the AC Central, Huntley just had a 12-game winning streak snapped, while Interstate 80 is on an 8-game winning streak. The end result of all that winning is Huntley up 5 games (110-45 vs 105-50) with 7 games left to play. The division winner will be the 2-seed, with AC West champ Pawnee already having sewn up the best record in the conference at 118-36.

And as it turns out, those 3 teams are also the only AC teams with more wins than losses! If the season ended right now, the AC East champ would be the St. Paul Copper Kings, currently 74-80, and the second Wild Card team would be the Long Beach Schooners, currently 76-79.

This makes me nervous, though, as last week, Huntley hosted the Wild Card game as a 101-win team against an 81-81 team, and lost. Meanwhile, in PT19, the only time Huntley ever had a 100-win team facing a team with a losing record in the Perfect playoffs, we lost the Division Series 3-2 when Spud Chandler gave up a series-losing 2-out, 3-run home run in the top of the 9th inning of game 5. So while this certainly looks like a very top-heavy conference, anything can happen come playoff time.

[waittilnextyear]

Frogs are 2.5 games out of the relegation zone with 5 to play.

[waittilnextyear]

Originally Posted by waittilnextyear

Frogs are 2.5 games out of the relegation zone with 5 to play.

And that's a wrap. The last team relegated from P431 will have at most 64 wins. The Frogs already have 65. Cutting it a bit close, aren't we?

[Cheesehead1964]

My Bees just won my first Perfect League division, with 91 wins. Only my second Perfect League playoff appearance. My first was a wild card.

I fire sold my Thieves and created a SenatorTwins theme team. The transition was painful as I struggled with pitching but I completed all five of the Senators/Twins franchise mission and got a 100 Johan Santana. Been picking up some other good cards too. Also completed the Twins Live mission.

My Bears flirted with relegation as I went back to a Negro League or Negro League/MLB only lineup instead of adding the pre-integration players. Probably go back to that next season. Was toying with fire selling those players for higher value Negro League card set cards but they are so expensive...

[moalkha]

After a couple years, all 3 teams made the playoffs again

Doha (115-47) won the division and is the #2 seed in the NC. The challenge for this team is to keep playing well in the playoffs given the rotten run in the last few years.

Great Lakes (113-49) is the #1 seed in the AC. Since this is a 20 team league there is no wild card game and we go straight to the division series where we play the Chicago Rynos against whom we have an 8-2 record in the regular season.
The highlight of the season was once again Pedro Martinez, who won the pitching triple crown by going 22-6 with a 1.80 ERA and 10.2 WAR.

Perugia (98-64) is the #2 seed in the NC which is a blessing because the #1 seed and one of the wild card teams are uber teams that are likely out of our reach.
I was able the upgrade the pitching by buying Bert Blyleven who promptly went 6-0 to finish the season. With the spare points I bought a few packs and pulled 99 Walter Jonhson .

[old timer]

The Raccoons topped 120 wins for the 3rd straight year, winning their most ever (124), but still fell 3 short of the best team, the Gramma Philes. Speaking of which, their version of Tim Keefe went 28-0 1.38 ERA! Why can't my Keefe ever do that?! They do have a better defense (+42 ZR to our +15.8 ZR), but still...

Unfortunately, we have the best conference record which truly is a curse in PT. We'll get to play one of our division mates - either the 108 W Cowboys or the 99 W Farm Boys. The other division winner, the Beach Bums (102 W) get to play the Whirlibirds who won only 77 games. Not fair! And it's not like my team ever benefited from this in the past either. [Just practically every prior season, that's all. ]

For the 1st time, we'll have 2 top notch SPs in the bullpen for the playoffs (Walter Johnson and Seaver). Both of them get really nice boosts to their stuff as RPs.

[Westheim]

The Rebels notched the second wild card, while the Accountants managed to **** up everything during a 10-17 September. That included a 12-game losing streak…...

Ugh… I don't know what to do with any of these teams anymore…...

[PocketsAintFull]

Woo! Diamond teams finished strong, cleared relegation

My AH players sold on those teams too, so I have PP to spend

Bob's Milwaukee All-Stars did just enough to keep the 2nd seed for the Playoffs, and will face a DS against a team who beat them 5-2 in the regular season

BUT I have faith after they got the most end of season awards I've got

So all-in-all (including completed Negro League mission), a good week so far! Good Luck everybody, y'all got this

[RunninYakAngler]

The YakAnglers finished tied at 70-92 for the last relegation spot so I'm not sure who gets relegated. They went on a decent little run the last two weeks to make it interesting.

Marathoners finished 79-83 and 9 games out of the division. 89 Dizzy Dean went 3-17 with a 4.91 era and 89 Pujols had his best season for me with a .291 avg and 30 hrs,

The Miners held on and won their division by one game with a 90-72 record and also had the best record in the conference. Both wildcard teams are from my division and all three teams spent their fair share of time in first place.

[BigRed75]

When I went to work, the Redlegs were leading their division, the Lumber Company was in a wild-card spot, and the Barbers were safe.

When I came home from work, the Redlegs had backed into a wild-card spot, the Lumber Company finished three games out of the playoffs, and the Barbers were sent down to Bronze.

So you tell me.