Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I wanted to make this public. My league with Kriff is winding down and I have to say he is improving. It is obvious to me that his earlier attempts really weren't malicious, he was just really that bad. He actually drafts pretty good now and I think that with more experience and a little help, if he were to want some, from all of us, he will be threat to win a ring. He's made some moves but he axed players that weren't performing and gambled on guys that are decent bargains. They weren't unreasonable moves at all. He just pulls the trigger a little quicker than some of us. I for one will not worry about if he is in the league or not. He's actually trying.

Note that I was his first advocate a while back. He still drops too many players but nowhere near as bad as before. And he is ahead of me in the standings in this league at the 141 game mark.

I know how tempting that is. You get frustrated when guys you think should be performing to a certain level aren't, and -- as the saying goes -- the grass is always greener ... This is especially true in ATGII because of the deep talent pool.

I think part of the trick is, even if you think you've drafted well, knowing which guys are mistakes and which are just a statistical aberration which may improve. On one of my teams (Zizzers), which is in one of your leagues Grindi, Cobb and Williams sucked for me early in the season, but then got back up to their level. I almost dumped them, but had vowed more patience. Of course, I wasn't 20 games behind midway through the season with that team, which allowed me to be more patient. That team may still falter down the stretch, because my pitching is pretty weak (all mix-and-match value guys), but I'm at least learning. So, too, I suspect, is Kriff.

Kenny Rogers once said that you got to know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em.



Beyond just knowing who's good and who's not, and how to assemble the team, educated patience is the key to success in the long run.

When I have a player grossly underperforming, as I do, it seems, on every team I have ever created, I try to analyze whether it was because of a draft error on my part, or just bad luck. If I am convinced it is the latter, I hold on to the player regardless. I have the irrational belief that the luck may even out over time...no guarantee when every roll is an independent occurance, but I also take perverse pleasure in the spectacularly awful stats that players can accumulate. On one team, my ace, Demaree, started the season 2-14. His ERA was under 4.He is now 8-15, but I must admit that a sick part of me was interested to see if he could lose 30. I had Tippy Martinez lose 20 out of the bullpen one season. These stats are sometimes more interesting than what you would have when you start rebuilding a team mid season in hopes of acheiving mediocrity.