Season 32 (2050) Discussion Thread

[Renfro]

The wheels have come off the bus for the Xenomorphs, who posted a 10-17 September. We've gone 56-50 after our torrid 39-13 start. Thanks to that, we're cruising into the P.445 playoffs.

Over in P.419, the Mision Leyendas Junior and the Boys are 72-87 and face a major shakeup in the off-season. Junior's staying, of course, but other Rookie Sensations are being called in to replace some of the Future Legends. Fielding a team completely made up of Future Legends Missions and its reward card was fun - and netted a Diamond League crown - but the pitching is just not there to compete for even a WC spot. 95 Liriano is looking to bolster the rotation. What other Rookie Sensations have worked for you in Perfect?

[CrazyWR]

Well, down to the wire for the Doctrine, we are the only team in the division with a + RD, but are -2 vs our pythag and the team behind us is +5, so its a 1 game lead for us with 3 to play. Loser has a chance at the 2nd WC (2nd place team is tied for that) and a matchup with the Raccoons in that game. Hopefully we can avoid that. My bullpen has been godawful all season (15th in era in the conference, 4.72 ERA), hopefully they avoid melting down for a few days.

Hopefully we will get some extra October baseball one way or the other

EDIT: Just read back, now I especially want no part of the WC game. What a couple of pulls. Did you just buy packs or were those from missions? Either way, I'm jealous!

[Catchthedamnball]

The Mashers finished 77-85. The offense recovered nicely in the second half, and so did the defense to some extent, but the pitching remained horrendous.

Garry Maddox ended up losing the batting title to division rival Richie Ashburn by .003. Ken Griffey Jr. couldn't keep up the torrid HR pace either, and fell short by 3. His 95 RBI were well off Fernando Tatis Jr.'s top mark of 115.

Shortcomings in league accolades didn't stop career seasons from a few Mashers players in their inaugural season in diamond. Maddox led the NC with 53 doubles and stole 31 bases while finishing second in the conference in triples and hitting .312; Griffey had a 20/20 season, and Rocky Colavito led all NC left fielders in slugging, OPS, and triples (honestly I have no clue how he hit eight triples. Despite the deep power alleys at Fletcher Field, he has godawful speed and baserunning).

Good luck to any who made the playoffs in their leagues. I'll see y'all on Monday.

[waittilnextyear]

The Frogs (114-48, +369) easily won their division by 30.5 games, with the 2nd place finisher Newark Peppers winning a G163 to make the playoffs as WC #2. 114 wins is good enough for 3rd best in Frog history and the pythagorean expectation (122-40) would've tied the franchise W/L record.

Team MVP would have to be Ed Walsh (like usual). Walsh has yet to dip below 7 WAR in a full season. This time he went 22-5 with a 1.81 ERA (a new career best) and 7.8 WAR. He generally doesn't need the help, but was aided by a .260 BABIP. The guy is a machine. He doesn't have any chance at PoY though because a bunch of 100 Cy's and Walter's had even more ridiculous stats. 100 Seaver and SE Brecheen joined Walsh in the team's 20+ win club. The pitching was the strongest iteration the Frogs have put on the field so far, setting a new team record of just 432 runs allowed. That was only good enough for 3rd in the conference (lol). Singapore allowed 413 runs and Exeter allowed 428.

This postseason is going to be a grind. The Frogs go into the NC bracket as the #2 seed, but actually had a worse record than the WC #1 Exeter Blue Hawks (120-42, +502). The Blue Hawks had the misfortune of playing in the same division as the NC's #1 seed Singapore Sluggers (131-31, +639). Those teams will almost certainly get back together to mix it up in the Divisional Round, unless the Newark Peppers can upset Exeter in the WC game (very unlikely). The Frogs went 4-2 against Exeter and 1-5 against Singapore, so we'll be rooting for Exeter to make the Sub-League Series.

The Frogs will host the NC #3 seed Coffeyville Golden Tornado (110-52, +288). Coffeyville have been in Perfect for 19 seasons. They've won their division 7 times. They've won 100+ games 13 times. They have won zero PL titles. It's a good team and a hard luck team. It'll be tough for them to break through this week--they'd need to go on the road and upset the Frogs and then take out the winner of Exeter/Singapore. And that doesn't even factor in the 3-headed monster that is Westvleteren/Slumberton/Battery Park City in the opposing conference.

Coffeyville's starting pitching scares me the most. They rotate through 100 Lefty Grove, 98 Don Sutton, SE Vida Blue, 98 Carl Hubbell, and 98 Kevin Brown--it's the full mini-whale special. They've added a couple of the Astros SE cards into the bullpen as well (Dipino and Dotel). If they do have a weakness, it's that they don't really platoon their offensive players. They play the exact same 9 against RHP and LHP, which I hope to exploit! With 6 righty batters, I am loading up my rotation with RHPs. Walsh will open the DS (obviously). Then, 99 Coveleski and 100 Smoltz are being moved into the rotation to start games 2 and 3. 100 Seaver will get game 4 (if necessary). Brecheen, Vida Blue, and Mathewson all go to the bullpen to form a quad-stopper unit alongside PEAK Satchel Paige. So, I'm sure all these moves will backfire...

Good luck to everyone in the 2050 postseason (unless you are also in P442, in which case you are going down!)

[Westheim]

The Rebs avoid relegation by a single game, winning 6-3 behind Zack Greinke (12-19) on the final day of the season over H-Town's Hal Newhouser (18-11).

KC win their division by four games, rallying from an 8-18 April to a 90-72 final tally. No losing teams in that division, either.

As anticipated the Critters took the wild card with a personal Perfect League-best 91-71 record. Well, they didn't have that many winning records before, did they?

Big Walt won the ERA title. Mike Trout finished batting .188 (so on a hot streak!). Brooks Robinson is up to 85 DEF at short. Don't know where he'll top out; my best guess was 90 or just below.

Originally Posted by CrazyWR

Well, down to the wire for the Doctrine, we are the only team in the division with a + RD, but are -2 vs our pythag and the team behind us is +5, so its a 1 game lead for us with 3 to play. Loser has a chance at the 2nd WC (2nd place team is tied for that) and a matchup with the Raccoons in that game. Hopefully we can avoid that. My bullpen has been godawful all season (15th in era in the conference, 4.72 ERA), hopefully they avoid melting down for a few days.

Hopefully we will get some extra October baseball one way or the other

EDIT: Just read back, now I especially want no part of the WC game. What a couple of pulls. Did you just buy packs or were those from missions? Either way, I'm jealous!

I put in some coin about ten days back to help me complete the Senators/Twins mission and things did snowball a bit from there, although I dropped another tenner this week, too. I got a whole bunch of cards in those last ten days that really pushed the team forward, starting with Nathan and Santana from said missions, and that diamond pack you get from the overall Sens/Twins mission gave me my PEAK Brooks Robinson. I opened the odd pack during the week and already got rather lucky there, cracking two live diamonds (Woodruff and ...? Already forgot) and several golds that all sold, giving me even more PP. Also finally played that Frank Thomas card after pulling it a while ago. You may or may not remember my little meltdown over that.

And well, yesterday was just stupid. I kept cracking packs the last few days and selling some of the stuff that fell out. Overall I probably opened 30 packs this week for two perfects, several diamonds and a number of golds that were not entirely worthless. Two future legends that are still sought after, if I recall right, too. Then I shook two perfects that were probably less than ten packs apart.

I'm sorry?

But I see you squeezed out the division title, so we can't whoop you until the LCS.

[Westheim]

Okay, I bought the last two cards for the live Mariners, which also gives a free standard pack and...

[Izz]

Sheesh. Leave some for the rest of us!

[Izz]

So, first season back in diamond the 'Glou have made the postseason. As a wildcard but still, we all know what wildcards can do.

We finished 86-76, though a couple of big losses during the month put our pythag at 81-81. Trout somehow won the homerun title, with 34 (as a team we hit only 113 dingers). Our defense will likely stop us from making a playoff run. We committed 104 errors, worst in our division, to go with our also-division-worst -37.0ZR and .668 defensive efficiency

[HelpDodgers]

Playoff time. I'm where I expected to be. Lost division by 5 games but got home field in the wild card game. I'm okay with that since it gets me away from the Whips (who beat me 12 out of 17 times and won my division).

So, Clemens starts in Wild Card. Wish me luck.

[BigRed75]

The Quendas cruised to a playoff spot, finishing with a 100-62 record. That was five games better than last season. Even more encouraging was that this was the first season with an all-rookie (or near rookie) line up, now that we acquired Francisco Mejia as our backup catcher.

Pete Alonso stopped hitting home runs in September but he still finished with 27, good enough for the team lead. Casey Mize joined us mid-season but his 12-3 record with a 2.61 ERA, 162 ERA+ and 3.6 WAR in 20 starts easily meant he was our pitcher of the year.

The DMV Beltways, on the other hand...you may recall we entered today's play in third place, 6 games out, with a 4.5% chance of making the playoffs. That quickly narrowed as we played .500 ball for the first eight games (which, to be fair, was ahead of the .486 clip we had been playing at. A loss made us 4-5, and we were losing ground, now in 4th place, 8 1/2 games back.

The next game was a win. So were the 8 games after that. Then a loss, then another 5 wins. And incredible 14-1 stretch in the back half of September actually saw us take the division lead on September 29. Unfortunately, we couldn't hold on, but we did go to a Game 163, clinching our playoff spot with an 85-78 record. We could have played the last month of the season 25 times, and not made the playoffs in 24 of them. But this was the one where we did.

[JasonC23]

A couple of seasons (weeks) ago, Huntley was in a league with the 130-win Jersey Revolutionize and the 140-win (67 in a row!) Colorado Lions. They were clearly the best 2 teams and, with Jersey in the NC and Colorado in the AC, were destined to meet in an epic Perfect League Series championship battle...

...until some Red Raider punks ruined the whole thing by upsetting Jersey in the NC Sub-League Series.

Where I'm going with this is that, while, clearly, P432 looks like it will come down to Huntley and the Kogarah Kings for all the marbles (medallions?), all it takes is one punk team (Bat Cave Bat Chain Pullers? Lethbridge Bulls?) to upend everyone's expectations.

So, as the P432 playoffs, um, play out (sorry), this humble team manager is going to appreciate the best regular season his team has ever put together (by far). No matter what happens today, fellas...you made your manager proud.

[Westheim]

Dan Brouthers, Darryl Strawberry, and Joe Torre all go yard as PEAK Johan Santana outlasts Live Gerrit Cole in a 5-4 squeezer that pushes the Raccoons into the LDS against the 102-win Detroit Tigers, against whom the Critters went 9-10 in the regular season.

First Perfect playoff win …!!

[Orcin]

The Colonels (131-31) will play the wild card Montreal Expos (92-70) in the first round. It looks easy but Montreal beat us 4 out of 7 in the regular season. Their park favors contact and our park/team is geared toward power, so its good to be at home in this series. I may sneak Oscar Charleston into the lineup vs RHP in their park.

The Colonels are led by their pitching, and the pitching is led by triple crown winner Cy Young (29-5, 1.75, 291K). Young led the league with an incredible 11.1 WAR, posting 35 quality starts (including 3 shutouts) in 37 outings. Curt Schilling (24-1, 1.96, 8.5 WAR) and Walter Johnson (21-2, 2.45, 8.5 WAR) join Young in the playoff rotation and Ed Walsh (15-5, 3.20) may pitch a couple of games.

The offense was led by batting champion Joe DiMaggio (.345) and home run champion Babe Ruth (38 HR, his 120 RBIs were one behind the leader).

[CrazyWR]

Well, the doctrine lost their last 4, but the 2nd place team lost their last 6 so we squeaked in. Proceeded to lose game 1 3-0, gave up all 3 runs in the bottom of the 1st, bunch of zeroes after that. Definitely a winnable series but...the bats need to show up, we've only scored a total of 5 runs in our last 5 games (allowed 13).

Congrats on the playoff win btw!

[Westheim]

Both my teams have turned a best-of-5 into a best-of-3 at this point. For Portland, Hal Newhouser and Big Walt dealt zeroes for seven in Game 1 before 2013 Max Scherzer (a gold card actually) finished a shutout of the Coons, while two runs fell out of Big Walt in the eighth for a 2-0 loss. We won Game 2 in 10 innings, 4-3, after Lee Smith blew a 3-2 lead in the ninth.

[HelpDodgers]

Originally Posted by HelpDodgers

Playoff time. I'm where I expected to be. Lost division by 5 games but got home field in the wild card game. I'm okay with that since it gets me away from the Whips (who beat me 12 out of 17 times and won my division).

So, Clemens starts in Wild Card. Wish me luck.

Belfast out again. Scored 900 runs in season, 3 in WC game.

Belfast, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Good 100 win season. Good season. Time to make more changes.

Go grab a beer guys!

[Renfro]

In non-playoffs news, my packs only Yumenes Orogones netted a few statistical awards, the most remarkable being Live Vlad Jr. gaining not one, not two, but nine percentage points in batting average over the last 4 days to win the batting title. What helped was a 6-for-6 extra-inning game, also netting 2k. But what did it ultimately was going 2-3 with 2 walks in the final "meaningless" game of a 73-89 season in D.365.





77 Gwynn wasn't letting up either. He finished the season on an 11-game hitting streak.

[tallywood]

Finished the season 98-64 and swept my way into the Sub-League Series! FINAL 4! (does this mean we get to Perfect??? AHHHHHH)

p.s. I still haven't forgotten getting perfect-gamed last year in Game 5 of the Division Series.

[JasonC23]

Huntley has its best offense ever, by far, scoring 1,062 runs during the regular season.

So, naturally, the Red Raiders have managed 4 runs in 3 games against the Bat Cave Bat Chain Pullers and find themselves down 2-1 in the Division Series. After dropping game 1 to Huntley 3-1, the Bat Chain Pullers won 8-1 in game 2 and 2-0 in game 3. In the latter, the vaunted Huntley offense managed a mere 3 singles and 1 walk off Bob Gibson and Dennis Eckersley.

I have to say, it's astonishing how often the team Huntley faces in the Division Series after dominant regular seasons just happens to be the team that has the exact right mix to upset the Red Raiders...but hey, maybe the boys will pull the next 2 out? They did have winning streaks in the regular season of 22, 21, 19, 16, and 11 games; how hard could winning 2 in a row be?

(Wash: "It's incredibly hard.")

[CrazyWR]

Welp, after a 3-1 series win by both us and the Raccoons, it is showdown time. Good luck! Gotta say you are the favorite here but I'm hoping we make our first PL WS