Anyone have luck with a theme team?

[yno88]

I have a Cardinals team They're leading their division in diamond. They'll get killed in perfect. Too many terrible defense guys (Brock Torre Musial Hornsby) Going to a defensive lineup eliminates a ton of the run production. Not much top shelf pitching either after Gibson. It's been fun but I'll probably dismantle it and start again.

I did an Oakland As theme. Could construct a sick lineup, but not nearly enough pitching prospects.

I need to do division or era themes. Probably not so limiting.ng.

EDIT: Typing this post got me thinking. The fire sale is underway.

[Cheesehead1964]

Expanded my Brewers (now "BraveCrew") to include Milwaukee Braves, too. A theme I was thinking about anyway... Gives me a lot more card options.

[bms]

Took a while to build, but my F2P all-Indians team is at 57-39 in Gold right now. They made Diamond in 2030 but got killed. An all-Indians theme could probably do well in Perfect if somebody paid for the peak cards of Feller, Covelski, Paige, and Blyleven.

[RunninYakAngler]

My F2P Miners are an all-cardinals theme team and have made it to Diamond but I can't see them getting any further unless they start racking up a lot of points each season, and that doesn't appear likely. There is such a major price increase once you get all the decent Golds and a few Diamond players. Staring at 20k+ starting prices is demoralizing. And like yno88 a couple of posts earlier stated it's either good defense or good offense. I went the defensive route and still play 63 Marion and 74? Oquendo in Diamond, who actually still do quite decent. Right now in Diamond we're just another .500 team with little hope of going up or down.

[Cheesehead1964]

By BraveCrew made it to the playoffs. I acquired some decent Brewers last season so this season I'm going all Brewers.

[CurlyKarkovice]

My At Some Point White Sox team (doesn't have to be a CWS card, any player card who played a season or more on the South Side) won a Diamond League championship when I "wasn't looking" (in Chicago to watch some baseball, father's day weekend).

Since then in Perfect League around a .500 ball club. Though my collection of White Sox earned me the Perfect Ed Walsh card so that is a plus. Big holes in OF defense, 1B defense, bullpen, Lineups vs LHP seem to be the most glaring problems to make the playoffs in Perfect right now.

I'm sitting on diamond Maddux and Sandberg and 89 ovr Bruce Sutter so was thinking of being a Chicago Chicagos theme but I remembered I hate the Cubs. Maddux and Sandberg I always enjoyed watching growing up though. Not old enough to remember Bruce.

[dbqs]

^ Nice! I think I need to expand my definition of Sox to anyone who's played on the team as well... mine is an all-CWS team that was killer at the lower levels but has just been getting punched up pretty bad in Perfect for a while now - though all the Collections missions and getting 99 Appling/Ed Walsh has brought the performance up considerably! (Currently in the #1 wild card spot...)
Sox just don't have a great catcher - I could probably live with myself playing the BOS Fisk if I can manage to get my hands on one someday.

[Morug]

My Expos do well in gold since the addition of special edition card..but miss some good players to be contender. No very good SS with an Expos card so I use Andrelton Simmons for now. I need Orlando Cabrera to be created..my only other option at SS is Chris Speier, a Giants who played for the Expos too, but very hard to have this card.

[RunninYakAngler]

I'm seriously considering blowing up my All-Cardinals team as they are fighting relegation this season. We just don't have enough offense to compete and the pitching is very inconsistent. And I used the teams 4000 PP on four packs hoping for the best, and got a Vlad Guerrero Jr. card. Now to sell him and add a player or two or keep and rebuild?

[PocketsAintFull]

My All-NL team have had Pete Hill from the Negro League Stars collection playing for a while - I figured that collection could play either All-AL or All-NL really

Not only has Pete been an excellent RF/CF/Batter, but due to having him, i've started the Negro League Collections Mission on that team too. So it's looking like a proper collaboration coming of All-NL/All-NeL players, which is somewhat fitting

[Charlatan]

I had a Texas Rangers team that was trying to join the other MLB-themed teams (though I took forever to get out of Iron and am currently stuck in Bronze). The guy behind the MLB themed teams has given up trying to make it work (it requires a lot of dedication to people managing friend lists). So I had a team I could restructure.

As a fan I grew up rooting for the Washington Senators - right around when they were moved to Texas. So my childhood dreams were always about the Senators. That made the decision of what to do easy! Thus is born the Washingtoon Senators - the only players allowed on this team are those who have ever appeared in uniform for the Washington Senators.

What does that mean? It means I get any player in the PT20 set who's appeared on any Washington set - WS1 (the original Senators who moved to Minnesota), WS2 (the second Senators who moved to Texas).

That gives me a good nucleus of players like

• Walter Johnson
• Sam Rice
• Camilo Pascual
• Joe Cronin
• Cecil Travis
• Mickey Vernon
• Goose Goslin
• Stan Spence
• Frank Howard

But wait, there's more! I don't care if the player card shows some other team - if they have *ever* worn a Washington uniform, they qualify. That means I can include some pretty good players who you think of as being from other teams. Players who were with WAS and then moved with them. Guys like:

• Harmon Killebrew (played on some WAS teams in the late 50s and early 60s)
• a bunch of other Twins from the early 60s like Bob Allison, Zoilo Versalles, Jim Kaat, Earl Battey
• Toby Harrah and
• Jeff Burroughs of the Rangers

However... anyone who was traded to or from WAS qualifies! Plus, you may not know this, but Washington (at least in the 60s) specialized in trading away future stars for other teams' old broken down stars. But in PT20 these guys aren't broken down, they're shiny and new! So you also get an assortment of guys... some very good guys ... like:

• defensive whizzes like Aurelio Rodriguez and Ed Brinkman
• Denny McLain, who Rodriguez and Brinkman were traded fro
• Ted Abernathy (came up with WAS in the 50s)
• John Roseboro (46 games in 1970)
• Curt Flood (13 games in 1971)
• Jackie Jensen (1953)
• Jim Piersall (1962)
• Johnny Pesky (45 games in 1954)
• George Sisler (20 games in 1928)
• Willis Hudlin (8 games in 1940)
• Early Wynn (8 seasons in the 30s-40s)
• Wes Ferrell (2 seasons in the late 30s)
• Stan Coveleski (2+ seasons in the 20s)
• Sad Sam Jones (a bunch of seasons in the 20s)
  and...
• Tris Speaker (the 1927 season)

So all in all, there's a pretty good assortment of players. As with all historical teams, relief pitching is going to be an issue but hey, you can't have everything.

So that's my theme team of the week!

[BigRed75]

I'm happy with how my Cincinnati-themed team is going. We just made promotion to Diamond (which the guy in the post above me loves reminding of since we beat the Atom Smashers). The requirements is that they played for the Reds, or are from the Greater Cincinnati area. For my purposes, this includes Dayton, as well as SW Ohio, Northern Kentucky and SE Indiana.

It helps that the collections came in with good rewards. It also helps that I have completed them. I'm hoping for great things with a full season of 100 Eric Davis, 95 Joey Votto, 92 Vada Pinson, 91 Paul Derringer and 97 Aroldis Chapman.

[HRBaker]

My Memorial team (1950 and before) made it to Perfect - kind of an "average Joe" there. In any "theme" situation your limiting your choices so the climb is harder and longer - especially if your not spending money. But making it harder is the challenge right?

[yno88]

My Cardinals theme team won Diamond last night. The key was upgrading the defense. Gone are Lou Brock, Joe Torre and Stan Musial. Added Marty Marion, Ken Boyer and (oops) live Mike Trout. Pulled him from a pack and just stuck him in the lineup. The only decent StL CF is a light hitting Curi Flood. Now I just need Trout to get traded to St Louis.

Boyer's 85 DEF at 3B allowed me to move Rolen to SS (90+ DEF) and Ozzie to 2B (90+ DEF). Also moved Hornsby to 1B where he will eventually be a 64 DEF and moved Big Mac to DH.

Time to get my teeth kicked in in Perfect.

[SpacePope]

Originally Posted by yno88

...(oops) live Mike Trout...

I cheated and added a live Trout to my theme team during a postseason once as well. He is the bane of theme teams. Such amazing value for the amount of PP. I had to sell him, the temptation was too great.

My Giants/Dodgers team made it to Perfect last week. They got over 100 wins (1 of 4 teams to do it in P422 though). I got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs to a team that cost less but was much better optimized, but that's to be expected with running a theme team.

Anyway, since I was out of the playoffs early I decided to put a bunch of my cards up at relatively high prices expecting maybe one sale. 4 of my best starters sold! Great for the PP situation, but my team is now in rebuild mode.

[Ty Cobb]

Just took one of my teams to all pre-steroid...that's when I feel the game lost its way. Might get hammered for a bit. Don't care. Want to breathe deeply and just do my best.

[OMGPuppies]

Originally Posted by Ty Cobb

Just took one of my teams to all pre-steroid...that's when I feel the game lost its way. Might get hammered for a bit. Don't care. Want to breathe deeply and just do my best.

What about going the other way and forming a team of all steroid users?

[SpacePope]

Originally Posted by OMGPuppies

What about going the other way and forming a team of all steroid users?

I thought about doing this but including players with other vices as well. There are some great cards: Clemens, Bonds, Gagne, Gooden, Rose, Ruth...

If you include racism as a vice you could probably add about half the elite historical white players.

If you include people banned from baseball you could add Shoeless and even Mays and Mantle (both banned briefly for working as greeters in Vegas).

The problem is more how expensive the team is than lack of players.

[lightningbolts35]

I had an all Athletics Legends Team (Philadelphia & Oakland) that did very well until I got into Perfect League. Used that team for 3 seasons in Perfect and I was able to play .500 ball with that team but couldn't beat any good Perfect teams so I abandoned that Theme team. But it was great while it lasted!

[OMGPuppies]

The favorite theme I used was a power and speed team. I tried to get as many 20/20 guys as I could. I think i took it up to silver. The problem was horrible contact and defense doomed it.