The Lincoln Park Pirates are we

[Lemandria]

Rookie of the decade?

Our scouts have turned up the felon they’ve been searching for, at long last.



After what may be the most extensive and expensive talent search ever. Jackie’s already had a seismic effect on our everyday lineups, without a single at bat.

We desperately need him after the miserable, miserable July we’ve just experienced.

Our team ranks 14th in the AC runs scored, 28th (!) overall, just not hitting–that’s how much better their amazing pitching staffs are, compared to ours. Nearly no one on the bench is swinging enough bat to hit these guys–and we’re seem to be having one of those mysterious no-particular-reason ‘off’ years offensively anyway.

Sadly, our Felon-Jackie will be this leagues’ TENTH Jackie. We’re only struggling to simulate parity.

Jackie–you’d better not hit .115, not with your contract. No pressure.

This is the single most expensive PP card I've ever owned, on any team, ever. About eight weeks of moving funds around, the full array of Live Ka-ching Money Missions to finance him. Just misery.

But best of all, perhaps we can turn attention to our poor struggling pitching staff at laaaaast.

[rburgh]

That's a brutal mission to complete.

[Lemandria]

Jackie didn't hit .115, but others (nearly) did. Another meh season this year--finished 2nd in division but near .500.

Three teams won divisions, but in lower brackets. Theme team disease. I don't judge any of them as likely to win their respective Series, but we'll see if we can ride RNG past better teams.

[Lemandria]

Gaylord Perry moves in to prop the rotation up.

Not much else to report, Purgatory continues. This past week's division included a double shark attack.

O is bad.

[Lemandria]

Tease

The felons are frolicking this year, for the first time in months.

Off to a great start that shows ominous signs of being unsustainable. We’re hitting a little bit better, we’re pitching a little bit better, and the close call games are falling our way.

Division 1st Overall 2nd. But the rdiff is small positive and pythag is +6, tilted way in our favor. We're winning the one-run and extra inning games, horrors. The team one game behind us, the Blue Sox, has an objectively better team with a much stronger rdiff by pythagoras is being mean to them (-2).

Which generally means that in the long haul we can expect him to overtake and pass us, as we come down to earth.

Thanks to the scheduler the critical games against UBS won’t happen until September. They’ll likely no longer be critical by then.

Happy with the pitching and the defense so far. Everyone knows Joe Cronin won’t hit .315 all season. The universal backup (Peckinpaugh) is also hitting over his weight. The catchers are swinging bats. To me it feels like this league’s pitching is weaker than the general tide of excellence we’ve been facing for the last eight or nine seasons.

And no one is running away with the league. There’s usually one (or six) clear strong Perfect contenders, burying the rest of us too deeply to get any air. (All due respect to the Leggo$, the current one seed, looks like the eventual series winner.)

I’d take all of that as a positive sign, if only there weren’t so many felons hitting .250 season after season after season. And handful of offensive players clearly don’t have the chops to play at this level (or the level above, for certain).

The replacement list is long. Cano, Cronin, Dihigo, usually one or more of the catchers, Giambi. Even Yas has never really hit for us.

Evaluation unchanged, O is bad.

[Lemandria]

Good year, not good enough

We never did manage to catch up to the Blue Sox, who were the quality of the division and the two seed of the league with 105 victories.

But the felons found and towed 92 vehicles and won the wild card by a substantial margin. 2nd in division, 5th in league, 96-66. Gaylord Perry had an amazing 15-7 season, and won the ERA crown @2.89.

Jackie put up a solid 6 WAR, and Joe Cronin (!!) 4.4.

Well done, felons. There will be Grog for everyone if we survive the WC crapshoot game.

O is still bad. +20 rdiff ain’t gonna cut it.

[Lemandria]

Well, it was good while it lasted.

The disastrous release of the FOTF missions and price gouging that followed it seconds later have effectively buried OOTP21 as a viable product.

You can simply feel the masses of players exiting in disgust.

Check back in a month–meanwhile, scout up other game products.

[rburgh]

I think they have fallen in love with the missions concept to the detriment of what is a very enjoyable baseball simulation. To some extent, tournaments also detract from the enjoyment of the game. And it was certainly foolish to require, for example, the acquisition of 17 golds and 5 diamonds in addition to numerous irons, bronzes, and silvers in order to acquire Tony Gwynn.


I think they are catering to the guys who don't have any problem dropping $100 or so every week to buy the PP's necessary to keep up with the latest cards. But hey, they're a business and if they think this will improve their bottom line, more power to them. I just wonder how many of the whales will continue to pony up money when there are only a few hundred teams in play instead of 10,000.


As I see it, their only way out from here is to simply flood the AH with the cards necessary to complete all these missions without having to take out a loan against your house. If they make sure that there are always at least 10 cards for every guy required to complete a mission, prices will suddenly become sane again. Right now it's not unusual to have to spend 4000 PP's to buy the cards required to get a regular pack, which you could otherwise get for 1000 PPs without the hassle.


And I'm very curious as to who the FOTF for the Pirates will be, since there are already two perfect Honus cards and a 99 Clemente. Will they be issuing a perfect Stargell? If so, how are they going to justify fudging his ratings to make the card worth anywhere near what it will cost to acquire it.

[rburgh]

All the big players have apparently gotten their fill of the FOTF cards, you can actually buy some historical diamonds for under 10K.


And I see that my Pirates and your Pirates just matched up in a 3-game series. We won't meet again unless our playoff paths happen to cross.


But I'm pretty happy with my Pirate team, since it's all Pirates. I will have to go get a Josh Bell memorial live card, if I don't have one already. At this point, I am hoping to get an AVS card for somewhere around 20K and then get the Peak Adams and, probably, Schoolboy to replace Friend and Ellis in my rotation. But those two guys aren't completely awful at the Gold level and are serviceable at the Silver level. I doubt I can ever get this team to the Diamond level, though. Just not enough star power. A perfect Stargell would help.