The Quest for 33 Shutout Victories

[Renfro]

[UPDATED]

33 Shutout Victories has been achieved! Here's a list of who has done it:

SHUTOUTS LEADERBOARD(shutout victories / team / (forum name) / opponents BA / team ERA / W-L record / league level / season / season end date // playoff shutouts

1. 40 Thanos (taz20075) .220 / 2.22 / 115-47 / bronze / year 2029 / 02-07-2019 // 5 playoff shutouts for a yearly total of 45

A low number of stolen bases against has been established:

LOW STOLEN BASES(number of stolen bases / team / (forum name) / SB attempts - CS / CS% / primary catchers

1. 20 Sullust (Renfro) 40 - 20 / 50% / Tony Pena, Charles Johnson

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[original posting]

This Quest - a side quest if you will, and more probably reachable, to The Quest for the 9 Great Gloves - is to break the over 100-year old MLB record for Shutout Victories. The Cubs did it in 1909 with 32 shutout victories.

With the amount of Perfect Team players here creating defensive-minded teams, I would not be surprised if somebody has already broken the record.

What we want is proof!!! We also want the ingredients for success. We know the formula, but what are the ingredients? Did you train Simmons to play 3B? What about Tulo on 1B? Did you save up or get lucky and get the even better Ozzie Smith? And then moved him to 2B? What about catcher? Jody Davis, Charles Johnson, Lieberthal, Benito, Sundberg, Wynegar? - A side-quest to this side-quest is allowing the least amount of stolen bases in a season - if anybody knows the MLB record for that, post the answer below.

And how much do you weigh your pitcher's HOLD rating? I know that I won't ever roster a Greg Maddux or an All-Star Tom Seaver. That Dwight Gooden or Live Chris Sale, though ...

Post your screenshots and tell us about your defense first team in a follow-up post.

My "defense first" team, the Sullust Sullustans, got 28 shutout victories in 2028. Another team, the Gladstone Glovemen, in another Bronze league got 30 (en route to a World Series victory against my Milwaukee-themed team - nothing like getting a taste of your own medicine. Especially when my own defensive team loses the WS in 5 lackluster (but error-free) games.)

This year, after 6 season in Bronze, we've taken our talents up to Silver 335 where we currently have 7 shutout victories. And teams are 2 for 7 in stolen base attempts against us. And the month isn't done yet!





EDIT: Forgot to mention the starting pitching staff:

Whitey Ford
Cy Young
Sad Sam Jones (new this year!)
Patrick Corbin
Vic Raschi

[the_mad_monk]

How did you manage to remain in Bronze for 6 seasons?

[Renfro]

Originally Posted by the_mad_monk

How did you manage to remain in Bronze for 6 seasons?

A number of reasons that can be summed up with "bad luck in the playoffs."



First two seasons I was building up my team and got placed in divisions with solid winners. By now, we've all heard of the stories of the 84-game WS winner. My team wasn't it.

3rd season we lost 2-3 in the DS against the FTW-Keller Hawkeyes.

4th season was the worst. 97 wins was good enough to play a 163rd game, which we lost due to an error.

5th season lost in the Wild Card. This was also the season were OOTP was only promoting 2 teams up from Bronze. So basically, you had to make the WS, which, of, course we did not.

6th season we made it to the WS and lost 1-4.

All the while, teams like mine - f2p or not - are accumulating PP and building up better and better teams. We'd get mistaken for whales when in reality we'd been in Bronze purgatory for 6 - 7 years. But once I resigned myself to it, it was kind of fun.

There were quite a few of us out there.

[Mudster]

I've started doing this myself....need to go thru the training pains first...not sure a silver or less team will compete at the gold level, but I'm enjoying the concept so far.

[the_mad_monk]

Can't believe they didn't promote you after that 2025 season. My teams have been promoted for achieving far less.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by the_mad_monk

Can't believe they didn't promote you after that 2025 season. My teams have been promoted for achieving far less.

Promotions are not based neither on either regular season wins nor on Score, which I believe also incorporates post-season performance. This makes promotion far more random and luck-based than relegation ever could be.

[Renfro]

We've hit the June 1 mark and the Sullustans' quest for 33 shutout victories has slowed. We only got 4 in the month of May to put us up to 11.



I had stockpiled about 10000 PP so I figured I address the gaps in my bullpen, currently:

AJ Minter
Pedro Strop
Tug McGraw
Tony Cingrani
Zach Duck
Zack Greinke as middle and long relief

That's 4 lefties! Our bullpen ERA was ranked 8th and that had to change.

On to the Auction House and lo! Satchel Paige was there with a starting bid of around 11999. There was one bid for him. So I put on auction a bunch of my players, including Beltre, whom I had, for some sentimental reason, kept on the reserves. Anyway, with my auctions I was able to cobble together something like 12250.

Such is the life of a f2p player!

I waited until the last seconds before putting in the 12250 bid, thinking I'd swoop in the last second as I've done many times before, and ... the other bidder had a higher max and there went Satchel.

I idly searched the Auction House and saw that 91 Niekro was available for about 11500 in a buy now. So, I bought now and put Sad Sam Jones on the reserves and I still have four lefties in the bullpen ... but one great arm with a a stamina of 109 in the rotation.

Niekro also has a hold runners rating of 98, the best of all my arms. The side-quest to have more shutout victories than successful stolen base attempts against us (currently 5) is going really well.

[Renfro]

I just thought to put Sad Sam in the bullpen. His Stuff got a little rating boost. Now I have to wait 14 games before I can do that.

[Maddox]

Good luck I had the best staff in my league last year and only managed 23 shutouts in silver. I can't remember though if that is how many my starters threw or if that was the combined numbers. Their appear to be no way for me to go back and double check the previous seasons.

In gold this year I have 8 shutouts so so far with 13 complete games. So, with 33% of the season played I am nowhere near the pace needed for 30 shutouts

[Renfro]

Originally Posted by Maddox

Good luck I had the best staff in my league last year and only managed 23 shutouts in silver. I can't remember though if that is how many my starters threw or if that was the combined numbers. Their appear to be no way for me to go back and double check the previous seasons.

Yeah, I wish PT kept track of team records. For now, I just go to Reports and Logs. When you open up any report, OOTP actually writes up that report as an HTML file (which any browser can read) and saves it. You do not even have to "Open in External Browser." Then you just find the file.

I figured Silver league is my last good chance to complete the Quest ... hence the Niekro acquisition.

[taz20075]

Through 76 games I have 18 (on pace for 38). Fingers crossed.

[Renfro]

Originally Posted by taz20075

Through 76 games I have 18 (on pace for 38). Fingers crossed.

Hot damn. Awesome. How are you doing it? What's your pitching staff and defense like? This Quest for 33 was spawned from the on-going, and perhaps quixotic, Quest for 9 Great Gloves. With Great Defense Comes Bunches of Shutouts. The shutouts - as well as the reduced number of successful stolen bases against - were all a by-product of the original quest. But now these are the most interesting to me. So what's been the ingredients for your success?

At the halfway point, I'm at 18.



And on the 81st game, we JUST missed out on our 19th. I really got to do something with my bullpen.

[taz20075]

I went all glove, no hit. Lieberthal, Belt, Aparicio (2B), Simmons, Wallach, Pillar (LF), Kiermaier, Lofton (RF). I have Belanger as my backup IF and McReynolds as my backup OF (although the way Lofton is hitting I may swap out McReynolds once his RF rating goes up).



Starters are Dierker, Newman, Wood, Jones, Pennock.



I think I've got a good shot at the shutouts...

[Renfro]

Your ERA totals and opponent's BA are simply out of this world. I don't think an opponent's BA of .202 has been accomplished in modern baseball.

Here's my team at Game 106:

I'm only running a 6-man bullpen, which is probably not the most efficient. I had one 10-inning game where Eric Hosmer went into to pitch. He actually got out of a bases-loaded jam, too! Still, I could probably use another righty arm. The move up to Silver wasn't too kind to Pedro Strop, who was lights out in Bronze.

I moved Sad Sam Jones out of the rotation to make space for Phil Niekro, but then brought him back into the pen.

For pitchers, all things being equal, I do prioritize a good fielding pitcher with an excellent Hold rating. Another reason to move on from Strop. Raschi is the sole exception, his DEF is 53 and his Hold is 55. He's just been such a good pitcher to me it's hard to take him out. I have heard of people having great success with him out of the pen.



As for the position players, I also prioritize glove over bat. I do have Tony Gwynn Sr who has both. He's my leading hitter at .274. I am committed to Aaron Judge as my DH but I'm pretty sure I'll move back to Mel Ott after this season.



I'm at 21 shutouts. There's a chance but I think the natural flow of things in PT is for teams to improve as the seasons progresses. I was astounded at how many shutouts my team pitched in the first month - I think that's what prompted the original post - but it's been a slog since. Six teams get promoted out of Silver. This might be the last best season for my team to make it to 33.

[taz20075]

Yeah...when I said I prioritize fielding over hitting what I meant was I didn't look at offensive ratings at all. These guys are, for the most part, awful. I'm really interested in seeing how far they can continue their success. I'm still in Bronze. I've made the playoffs all but one season but have almost always lost my first series. And it should be noted that my park absolutely crushes offense. I've taken the modifiers down as far as they can go. Had Gwynn as my DH and sold him to go back to Waner because of it.

I've got about 25k banked and am struggling on where to spend it. Pennock is the worst of my starters. Do I go big on an SP to continue to leverage my stellar defense? Or do I sacrifice my defense first outlook to pick up some offense (like perfect Trout)? Or since my SP are FB pitchers, maybe upgrade Wallach to Robinson and leave my OF D alone?

All I know is that if I upgrade my SP I won't be disappointed with the expenditure. If I empty the bank for Trout there's a good chance I'll be disappointed with the return (worse D which leads to worse pitching and not a big enough boost to the offense to bridge the gap).

I may just ride this wave until I become a .500 team and see where I stand.

[taz20075]

Just updating. Now at 31 through 126 games.

[Renfro]

Originally Posted by taz20075

Just updating. Now at 31 through 126 games.

That's great. At Game 127, I'm only at 23. Everything stalled out at my team. All of a sudden we're making errors (up to 43 right now), and I'm allowing stolen bases (up to 16). Full update at the end of the day.

Oh, and I agree ... you don't need Trout. I think you'd be better served by continuing to improve your already excellent pitching.

[taz20075]

Well... It fell while I was sleeping. Looks like we're picking up steam. I was on pace for 38 but I'm already at 35 through game #135.

[Renfro]

Congrats! You're going to obliterate an MLB record that's stood since 1906. I picked one up this morning and am up to 25 at 138 games. It looks doubtful on my end. I sincerely think it was the quality of my bullpen ... or maybe my park factors?

And my team is still in first by a few games so promotion up to Gold is still a strong possibility.

Post your final regular season totals at the end of the regular season tonight, and I'll create a leaderboard as part of the first post.

And post your Great Gloves in the Quest for 9 Great Gloves thread.

[taz20075]

I made it to 40. Slightly ahead of early season pace.



Clearly, my stellar D helped my staff.