Epic Comeback 22-1 over last 23 games

[RICHARDMILTER]

There are countless examples of teams being far superior on paper and not winning their leagues,championships,divisions,games,ect. I believe Mr. Brummner got extremely lucky. However this happens in real sports,simulation sports,and life in general. I do not doubt that you had the better team, and a tremendous advantage in run differential, but crazy stuff happens. You have to pick yourself up, and move on. Can you even imagine what it is like to be a DIE HARD CLEVELAND SPORTS FAN? One crushing disappointment after another. That my friend builds character! And as far as less talented teams passing or beating more talented teams, it happens every single day. That is why we play the games. Winners do not quit!

[LANCEBOUSLEY]

it is a little much to say "no precedence" based on your sample of 3.

[Urishade]

The way I look at it I pay my $24.95 under the assumptin that I put together a good team, one that is significantly better than another team, that I don't have to worry about things like this happening. To me I am paying for a service and when I get poor service I am inclined to speak out about it. The only reward and/or accolade you can achieve in the Strato world is winning a championship and receiving a free turn to play again.

So when I get robbed of that opportunity yeah I do get a little upset about it. A season lasts two months not two weeks. As such I feel as though I put a lot of time and effort into the project that is each season. To have all that time wasted because some absurd statistically anamoly is just not something that I am interested in participating. Whether or not that makes a D-bag or not is not for you or anyone else to decide.

As for the sample size of three I am fully aware that it is preposterous small and from a statistical point of view it holds no weight. That is why I threw the question out to the populous as a whole asking other people to come forward with statistical evidence that counterargued my point. Obviously if I had access to TSN's database of season results I could pull a much larger sample, standardize the data, and run regression models to determine its validity. But I don't so I can only go with what I have.

[askaufman]

I can appreciate your feelings. I don't play the "mystery card" games anymore after my top 3 picks turned out to have their "worst" cards. Some people don't think the $25 is worth getting aggravated over. That is precisely why I won't "waste" my money on games that you in good faith try to draft the best team and then you are rewarded with that result.
I love Strat and it is supposed to be the realism that draws you to the fun of it. Chances are it won't happen to you again but something that is supposed to be fun is ruined by such an absurd result. Sure the best team doesn't always win but you at least expect to make the playoffs. Ultimately it is a game of chance in reality and only your drafting and managing skills allow you to have a shot at winning a title.

[Urishade]

Thank you for commenting Aray as I enjoy hearing from different owners about this situation. My problem is that I usually only have one or two teams going at one time. So when things pan out like they did in this past season there is no where for me to turn to get past it. It seems as though a lot of owners are playing anywhere from 5 to 20 teams at a time.

So yeah I can understand why I have gotten some responses to let it go and just move on as to those others that would just be a blip on the overall big picture. So what I got hosed in that league I still have a dozen more to occupy my time. It is funny that you mention credits because that has been something that has alluded me over the past two years.

I have only earned one credit in my last 10 seasons and since I am only playing at most two seasons at a time that is close to two years of real time. It is not as thoiugh I am terrible player as I have a lifetime winning percentage of .515 and posted a .509 in the jsut past 2006 (orignally was labled 2007 season). So seeing my team match its numbers and have success has not been a common event.

Previous to this debacle I twice finsihed with the 4th best record but fell short of the wildcard while the 3rd division, who had a worse record made the playoffs. Before that my team was struggling through the all-star break but I made series of trades that things around and my team posted the best 2nd half record. But it was not enough and I fell two games short of a playoff spot as like yourself I got into too big of hole early on.

Overally my teams almost always underperform their projected win totals so it is a rarity that I get rewarded for putting together a squad that posts good metrics. All of which made this last failure so bitter since it was the culmination of a series of short falls spanning over the better part of a year. In the end when you don't play a ton of leagues the amount of real life time that passes between success, especially when it is filled with heartache and disappoint, is just too much to bear.

Basically I spend so much time crafting each of these teams, monitoring their progress, scouting trades, and making adjustments that the pay off is far too little. I am not one of these guys that gets up with a huge smile on their face and rushes to their computer to see the results. I look at it more from a statistically point of view and thus that is why I get so angry at these results because they don't just don't jive most of the time.

And for those of you who have stuck with this post this long a little treat. The much miligned Doggies took the 5th and deciding game of their opening round playoff series and are off to the Finals where I have no doubt they will be crowned champions in order to put a huge exclamation point on this magical trip through the looking glass.

[RICHARDMILTER]

You and the 1980 Russian Hockey Team both got hosed!

[GlenBrummer]

To be fair Urishade, I thought this team of mine was not very good, with the exception of being a power team, a trademark of most of my teams. It did lead the league with 346 HRs. That's a lot of homers and it wasn't a fluke. We hit 15 HRs in the 5 game playoff series. My RBI count relative to homers was down. Much of what happened in my streak is that those homers started to driving in a lot more runs. When you say the system was in error, i don't get that. If you look at my offense the players didn't overperform in their power numbers and that's what drove the streak.

In addition, I went with one mega reliever and 3 .50 9L and 9R types.

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/playoffs/team.html?stats=sim

The nature of that type of relief staff is that bad relievers pitch when my team loses leading to some blowout losses. Your relief staff lacked a dominant reliever and also did not have an abundance of unbalanced (i.e. 9L, 9R) relievers. Instead your team had 4 relievers priced between 1.1 and 2.2 M. I know a lot of experienced managers here go with an abundance of mid priced relievers and instead of one stud.

But I think your lack of a dominating mega reliever and also the lack of r/l unbalanced relievers led to a lot of one run losses. That's a sign of a bad relief corps. Conversely, when games are close and I have a lead, my dominant reliever plays and my r/l unbalanced relievers are most effective. If my team is losing, the dominant reliever sits and the unbalanced relievers pitch to the wrong side resulting in more blowouts.

And my starting pitchers actually all performed way below their real stats.

But yeah I never expected this team to win. I did however work hard as it crept into contention and the streak while some luck was also from paying more attention I believe. I just started SOM online (altho i have played SOM board game for years) and in over 2000 games have a .531 win pct.
Only 4 of my teams have finished a season and if all 20 of my teams to date were counted, 10 would make the playoffs as of today so i do resent some of the implication that it was a fluke or I don't know what I'm doing.

Currently of my 4 completed seasons, 2 are in the finals. The other team a 2006 team is better than this team but still had a mediocre plus run differential of only +61. But again it dominated its league in HRs with 393 and has one dominant mega reliever and the rest .50 unbalanced types. http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2007/playoffs/team.html?stats=sim There is method to my madness.

As your disapointment subsides (and I would be disapointed if I were you--I agree that this was quite an aberration), you might reexamine how you put together your relief staff. You note your teams' won loss records seem to fall short of your run differential. I believe that is not an aberration. Its how you constructed your relief corps. 4 mid priced relievers keep losses close but the lack of a dominating mega reliever set to pitch the last 3 innings of a close game where you have the lead leads to close losses.

The best example of this was my win in game 5 of the semi finals. Putz--who I spent 6.62 M on (more than you spent on your 4 relievers) came in in the seventh inning and pitched 2 and 2/3 inning so hitless ball to seal a 2-0 win. Putz pitches when my team is in close games with the lead. When my team is losing or blowing out another team, the bad relievers (they are not so much bad as unbalanced) come in and give up runs. So a game I might be winning 8-2 might finish at 8-6 or a game I was losing 5-3 might finish at 10-3.

[teamnasty]

I was in the league that Brummer and Urishade were in, and just lost the semis in 5 games. I see that Brummer's luck continues, having won his semis in 5. Great job!

I agree with Urishade that the end results in his division were incredibly lucky/unlucky. If he wants to abandon SOM online that's his choice. I dont like the tone of disparagement that you direct Brummer's way however. A simple "oh my God I underperformed my run diff by 10 games while Brummer outperformed his by 10.....good luck the rest of the way Brummer" would have sufficed to make your point and retain some class. But the ink you spill whining about the result and dogging out Brummer when its not his fault and its just a bloody game does make me lose sympathy for you. Its a frickin game man buck up. You constructed a dominant team , we all know it, we all know the luck Gods jobbed you, we all know that you outsmarted us on the merits. But unless you really think Brummer hacked the system or SOM is stupid enough to purposefully try and drive your business away by rigging the stretch run, I think you need to chalk this one up to the mystery of the universe and realize "its just a game". Otherwise there is no need to actually play the games after drafting a team is there, there are just the stat projections to be had from the players strat cards. Brummer, good luck in the finals.

[ronnyd5]

Urishade - You are the Absolute King of Uber-Dorks. You just don't get much less of a life. I really think you need to get laid....