Biggio or Lajoie

[frankbama]

Just pulled a perfect Lajoie. Put him on my team and put up Cano for auction. The auto lineup likes Biggio better - is it all in the eye/avoid Ks? Lajoie seems to be rated higher in everything else including contact which I'm learning is more important. First year player so still learning what's more important but figured Nap would have been the preferred option by the AI. Also a good 70k difference in the AH!

[QuantaCondor]

1) The auto lineup (which should be avoided at all costs if possible) basically just favors OVR and then picks randomly after that. I would never try to learn any lessons from it.

2) There's a third option-- sell. What does the rest of the team look like, and could those funds be used more effectively elsewhere?

[frankbama]

Thanks. I use auto sometimes just to have it fill out the pinch runners and all that stuff, to give me a starting point, but I know what you mean.



I have the Cano that everyone has and just put that one on the block. I definitely don't mind selling, though the Biggio is fetching much less than the Nap at the moment so I didn't want to sell Biggio if Nap was going to perform worse (or really just even with since I could get more for Nap). I still have Bagwell backing up Musial at DH and Miggy Peak (the 99 one). Bags can also play 3b now but that doesn't really help much.



I definitely could sell one to get some better pitching or to fill out the FOTF Rangers to get Pudge to pair with the Berra - I only need 2 more diamonds to do that and get some "free" packs with completing those.


Anyway, long story short (too late), whatcha think?

[QuantaCondor]

To get meaningful feedback you should probably post the full roster (screenshots of the roster management page are fine). That does more than just say "hey here are the guys I have", it helps assess the kind of assets you have in total. The level you're at also matters a decent amount; power and eye matter a lot more at lower levels (silver and below) and generate you PP.

Probably before even seeing any of that I'd say you should sell Nap if you're in that phase immediately after finishing the live SE collection, just because he's worth so much more and having PP is more important than having players. His value is also inflated because he's in a recent expensive collection; he's not an 80k player on talent alone.

[frankbama]

Good idea - i think I did this ok - my computer doesn't do a completely full print screen so did my best.

[QuantaCondor]

Great. So, as a gold team, you're beginning to hit the level where you'll see some serious competition where it's useful to know some things about the game that make your team perform well. In no particular order:

-The most important pitching stat is control. Basically, you're rewarded a lot in terms of BB% reduction for each point of control, and you're not rewarded as aggressively for having a lot of MOV or Stuff. So a guy like Randy Johnson is going to get very bad very quickly as you ascend the levels-- 4.5 ERA is about as good as you could possibly expect. A guy like Valenzuela will be a lot better both because he has more raw stats and because his stats are distributed better.

-You really should not use AI auto-setup to configure your roster at this stage. Pick players you think are good starters and make them SPs. Pick the reliever roles and positions yourself. Pick the batting order and defensive alignment, etc. You barely have any control over your players in this game, but it's basically all confined to your roster choices (and the AI has TERRIBLE instincts).

-You might want to think about picking a set of park factors (in Team -> Info -> Ballpark). The only players who don't need to care about park factors are whales, otherwise you're throwing away wins. Plus it's fun to experiment there.

-Range is the most important defensive stat. You generally want a ~100 IF range SS, at least 90 range 2B (ideally higher), 90+ range CF minimum, and 70+ range corner OF (all minimums; the more the better). This helps your pitching immensely; for example, Larkin99 will just shed runs because his bat can't justify the low range being put at SS

--AvoidK is probably the most important stat on a batter. Not because avoiding Ks vs other outs is good, but because avoiding Ks is really good in the engine; it turns outs to hits. Meanwhile, power and eye fall off the higher you go up the ladder. Just something to keep in mind.


You can structure your team however you want, but these are the kinds of things you might look to do to restructure your team moving forward. Also be aware that the gap between gold and diamond is MASSIVE. This is like a 50 win team in a typical diamond league I would guess. But that's okay, even getting to diamond would be a great accomplishment

[frankbama]

This is awesome thanks. It's tough sometimes to get everything, even with watching the videos and reading.



Why is it that live cards, no matter what their ratings tend to suck after a while? Does the AI/programmers just not rate their control like a historical? I still feel like at least a couple of them should perform on a comparable level.



As for other players I have on reserve, I know Sergio Romo is not a historical legend and I wouldn't count him personally as anything more than an occasionally good reliever, but his ratings make him look like he should be good at this level - 92/81/91, 91 control would seem to work well. But he's not. Gordon Jones and Tudor seem like they should be better than their results. Of course, being alive during Tudor and Romo's careers, smell test says they should be about as good as their results if they're pitching against lineups with 5-9 HOF.


To eventually replace Larkin, would you concentrate on FOTF Orioles, Reds or Brewers or just buy/hope to pull another?



Finally, do the types of pitches mean anything?

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by frankbama

This is awesome thanks. It's tough sometimes to get everything, even with watching the videos and reading.



Why is it that live cards, no matter what their ratings tend to suck after a while? Does the AI/programmers just not rate their control like a historical? I still feel like at least a couple of them should perform on a comparable level.



As for other players I have on reserve, I know Sergio Romo is not a historical legend and I wouldn't count him personally as anything more than an occasionally good reliever, but his ratings make him look like he should be good at this level - 92/81/91, 91 control would seem to work well. But he's not. Gordon Jones and Tudor seem like they should be better than their results. Of course, being alive during Tudor and Romo's careers, smell test says they should be about as good as their results if they're pitching against lineups with 5-9 HOF.


To eventually replace Larkin, would you concentrate on FOTF Orioles, Reds or Brewers or just buy/hope to pull another?



Finally, do the types of pitches mean anything?

Live cards have a ratings boost to their OVR relative to historical players. So the guys you see as 90+ OVR actually should probably be in the 80s or less if they were on the historical scale. Modern baseball also doesn't really play well in the PT engine-- in PT you want to avoid Ks and hit for contact, where in modern baseball you go for slugging at the expense of batting average and getting many strikeouts (and POW scales really poorly in PT). There are also very few truly elite modern defenders (at least by PT's standards), which makes a lot of them even more unplayable since defense is so important. Some are fine-- live Mookie was once fine as a budget card, although you can probably do better now.


90/80/90 was good on release, but so many good other cards have been released that it just doesn't really compare favorably. It's probably better than live SE Randy Johnson (and might actually be a decent thing to slot into your pen and/or sell), but they're both relatively outclassed in gold+.

I wouldn't attempt to complete any FOTF sets. All of them in isolation are a bad idea where you pay more than you get back, unless you complete ALL of them to be able to get and sell the toppers. Some of the bronze, iron, and silver sets might be fine, but I wouldn't attempt to complete any of the top level sets. Just buy the card if you want that.

If you want PP, you should do tournaments and/or just sell guys off to get more assets and regroup. At this stage there are very few non-SE cards whose values are actually related to how well they play and not tied to whatever collections they're in. In other words, your 20k non-SE diamond is probably like 15k worth of people looking to buy the card to use it in a collection and 5k of actual bat/arm. It's okay to drop down to lower levels while you're rebuilding, since you are absolutely going to get dominated in diamond where a majority of the teams know these kinda basic ideas about how PT works.

For the near term just regroup, get some achievement PP, play some iron/bronze quick tourneys (copying winning rosters if you need to), pick a set of park factors (FULL lefty factors + min righty factors, using many lefty bats and many lefty pitchers, is a popular and effective example of a build), and learn from the winning teams in your gold league.

(and no, pitches/velocity don't do anything whatsoever EXCEPT the top 2-3 pitches SPs have, and the number they have, determines how big their stuff boost is when converted to reliever)

[frankbama]

Hahaha somehow that team got promoted. I was amazed I was in such a bad division my 81-81 club made the playoffs and got promoted to Diamond. I'm going to get smoked. My guess is lucky to win 40 games.

Thanks for all the info. I did start a 2nd team a couple weeks ago so I'll actually play that one correctly - just in time for OOTP 22!

BTW though, it would be cool to see a more modern game in PT somehow - I know it must be tough with programming, but as much as I like learning about the early century players that I hadn't heard of (Ellis Kinder and Bill Doak on my team for ex.), it would be nice to calibrate it so HOF power hitters and modern players be better than they are yet keeping the high skills of the older players. I dunno. Still fun as-is.

[cardsfan79]

I have found if you want to use AI to give you a base when reconfiguring your lineup, you can do this by first locking any players you want to keep in the lineup in the player strategy screen. (Screenshots below) That way the AI does not remove them and lock them for 15 games. Hope this helps