Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I had a struggling team, so I've made some wholesale changes...

Please advise on what you guys think the state of my team is now:

[url]http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2006/team/team_other.html?user_id=11350[/url]

ANY help would be appreciated. I just made some changes to improve my defense. I'm still really worried about my MIF play (Felipe Lopez is killing my defense, but his bat is on fire).

PLEASE HELP!!!

Would be better if you posted a link to your team. Maybe its not Oswalt as much as its your defense. Without seeing the team, ballpark, divisional opponents, its difficult to offer an opinion.

I've made some changes to the team, so the post is different...still please help!!!

Wow, that's a lot of changes.

A few Qs: Are you playing Coco Crisp in CF?

>That +2 in CF might contribute to some extra bases taken by runners/ extra runs allowed.

Along the lines of runners, 3/5 of your rotation have some farily bad holds +5 Sheets,+5 Halladay, +6 Webb. By no means am I remotely suggesting to change them but check to see if you are matching against speedy teams, between the steals and OF arms some of the pitching stats might be explained.

Are you letting HAL fill your lineup cards? Have you had plenty of injuries? I ask because when it comes to second basemen, I've seen F. Lopez 4e21, Orr 3e44, Derosa 4e18 and Durham 4e14 listed as your 2B in the few boxscores I've perused. Either way that defense is really going to make it tough to win, especially when you consider the offense those players bring in return.

1st and foremost advise (from my point of view) try to not drop any more players, doing a quick math run of your cap I think you've lost over 10 mil in salary through drops already. Always tough to compete that way. So, first of all try to stop the bleeding.

Don't have many other suggestions right now. Hopefully some other will chime in.

thanks Cummings...I just logged in to try and help my buddy with this struggling team. Yeah, I know I lost a TON of $$$ making some changes, but he was going nowhere, and had primarily all 4s in range, bad arms, and high injury guys. As you saw, I made a lot of changes to improve the defense and injury ratio (I got rid of guys like Reggie Sanders, Moises Alou, and Chipper Jones to shore up the injury deal, and acquired Perez to play 2nd to get rid of the horrible defense you mentioned there). I know Crisp's arm will hurt me in CF, but right now I don't have a lot of options. The few options on the waiver wire with decent range are high injury guys (Torii Hunter, Mike Cameron, etc.). The only possibility I can think of is grabbing Juan Rivera for Crisp, but I'm worried that that may hurt my offense too bad.

Personally I'd keep Crisp, or to put it in another way I'd only/mainly do changes via trades right now. Always tough to trade in season but maybe offering a package dealing from strengths to try and balance the team, if not Coco will have to do.

Hope some others chime in with opinions. I'm a bit dry at the mo.

Well, for future reference, when asking for advice and opinions, at least wait for some answers before totally wiping out the team. Thats about the only advice I can give regarding this team now. You've pared $13 million off your salary cap! Sorry if I'm being blunt about it, but at $80. you still might have had a chance with a few suggestions from some good folks, including the great C2 who's chimed in already. Your best bet now is to hope for the staff to come through with some steller performances. I wish you luck and good fortune.

My only advice is for the future, and that is you can not overestimate the impact defense has on this game. I made a lot of mistakes trying to field teams with great SP and good power and they failed ecause I had too many 3's and 4's. I think a good rule of thumb is you should not have more than a total of 18 for your 8 fielder's in defense range. Try for 16 if you can. That is start with 2's and if you need a 3 for hitting, keep them in the corners, usually lf or rf. Then try and draft a one defender to compensate. You should try and make sure you have no lower than 2's at ss,2nd and cf with arms that have a minus or at worst 0 rating for at least two OFs. I may allow myself to have one number three in an important place, usually Kent or Young at SS if I am in a hitter's park.

I had a PetCo team that 7 number 1's in the field, it had no SP who cost more than 2.8 million and it won 96 games because I had great defense and used my money for D. Lee, Varitek, Jones, Crawford and Ichiro guys with offense. The point is every team should have an architecture. In a balanced park it might be balance. In PNC stack up lefties with guys who have good LH hitters with 2 03 L ratings. As Cummings said check out the little things like pitcher's holding on. I like to peruse the leader's stats to see hwo keeps showing up in stats good and bad. Check out the manager profile and see if the teams who are winning do things like have good hit and run or good SB percentages.

I know there are teams who win with some bad fielder's in key positions but they usually have a stacked line-up in places like MM or PNC.

Anyhow, the other advice is, wholesale changes rarely work.

Finally, I would ask you to study some teams that have had success. I keep a file of all the teams that I see win 90 games or more and try to analyze what were the key drivers. Or write to the owner and ask what was the plan. Who are the key players to make that plan work.

Best of luck in the future. When you are contemplating a new team try your ideas out on the forum and get feedback before you draft.

:D

Well wahler, I am going through your team/ league through Berce.

Wow, what a funky league, you have some really good SOMers there, stevep, altec, stlou... Also the FA is quite remarkable, Castillo and Brian Roberts, Derreck Lee, Edmonds, Haffner, Ellis, V. Mart, Big papi...wow, how come I never get in those leagues? :wink:

OK, let's see, your run differential is not as bad as your record would indicate, your Pyth record (Rs. 373 RA. 403) would give you a 42-48, not ideal but workable from a comeback POV, [i:65fef681a7]usually[/i:65fef681a7] when I have teams like that I look at Bullpen management, as I said, [u:65fef681a7][i:65fef681a7]usually[/i:65fef681a7][/u:65fef681a7] what happens is that I blow late leads that account for a good ammount of losses, looking at your team your current SPs account for 32 losses, your current BP accounts for 8 losses, that means that 13 losses need to be found. If I am correct you dropped Oswalt with a 3-10 record so that's 10 of the 13 and I imagine that the remaining 3 losses were from the Pen guys you dropped, also you "only" have 9 BS so that would seem to indicate that your starters are giving up the lead and you're often playing Ketchup, so...hmmm... well, the defensive imprevement might help you there, also, if you don't mind my asking how are you setting up your pen/pitcher usage i.e. Slow hooks on SPs, conservative BP usage/ quick hooks on specs, etc. maybe through settings some better results might come your way.


From a defensive POV: It's holly Katookies time, after 90 games you have 89 OSBs with only 22 OCSs that means that opponents are [i:65fef681a7]averaging[/i:65fef681a7] 1.2 SB Att. per game. :shock: Wooof, rough stuff there. So, far that: having changed Barret was a good move IMO, McCann should help a little, not much though since Catcher and Pitcher can only add to +5 and we already went through that earlier. Unfortunately I don't see much that can be done, with your pitcher's holds only Yadier and Pudge can make a dent, if you can swing a deal for them that might help.

Offensively it's hard to tell, you could try a DH platoon of Renteria/Fielder. Try offering Lee to the Seadogs (they're at 35-55 and likely to deal) in a swap for Jose Reyes, not too wild about Reyes but his 2e18 is a major improvement on your current F. Lopez 4e21 Rating. Lee would fit Fenway well for the seadogs, he has Furcal to cover, he can certainly benefit from the SLG since Randy Winn is his Biggest HR threat at the mo. and you can certainly use the speed and the defense. Best of all if that deal works out for Both (Reyes is currently his DH batting 7th -in Fenway C.Lee seems like a better choice IMO) the deal could free .82 Mil + your current .16 you have almost a mil to upgrade else where or give you wiggle room for future trades.

Lopez could then move to 3B in platoon with Crede, or back into the DH if you are not too crazy about Renteria/Fielder (which I think could give you some bang for your buck, IMO).

OK, getting tired now. More later. Recap, Try for the C. Lee/ J. Reyes trade, IMO is a fair trade but if jlib05 doesn't want it then we'll find other avenues.

Hope some of this makes sense, just writing as I think...and I think in fairly convoluted ways. :wink:

Jerr: Thnx for the kind words/adjective. We lika mucho and appreciate it mucho more. 8)