Post Mortem on first team

[MICHAELBUSH]

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/80s/playoffs/team.html?stats=sim

I just finished my first 80s league. My team finished 81-81 losing in game 5 of the semi-finals.

I actually thought my team was a bit better than this but what do I know! :>)

I played in Atlanta Fulton County.

I had 4 starters: Higuera, Liebrandt, Andujar, and Alexander. These 4 starters were decent all with ERAs right at 5.00. It would have been nice to have one of them clearly lead the staff, but random distribution of results will certainly produce this result frequently I suspect.

I spent too much on my relievers. Spending 4.7 mil on Holland and 2.6 on Gott when I had Sutter in the pen was just wasteful. I could have used the money better to either upgrade on of my SPs or to wish for a better SS.

My hitting went well overall. I dumped Darrel Porter mid way thru and signed Simmons. He went down with a 20 game injury with 32 games to go so I cast around and found Moreland. He was a pleasant surprise. Hernandez was awesome at 1B. Randolph should be have had a better year but was at least OK. Guillen at SS was a steal for the money. I got aced out in the draft and in the waiver perior to replace him and finally just rode him out. Not bad for 75k. Nettles performed adequately given his salary. My big success in the draft was getting big years from Eric the Red, Kal Daniels, and big Dave Parker. I know I was lucky here and they drove the teams offense. I played around a bit at DH till I finally just plugged in a traded for George Foster and didn't worry about platooning any more. He was had an adequate season but not a gang buster type of year.

On the Bench: Tim Flannery was exposed with more playing time than I had hoped for. Mike Young came thru well but again he had a lot of playing time. Daryl Boston was adequate especially given his salary as a spear carrier for ED.

It was a very exciting season and has hooked me on this game. I currently have three teams in different leagues waiting for drafts to finish.

I would welcome any comments or thoughts on this teams construction and season.

Thanks,

Mike Bush

[MICHAELBUSH]

Ignore my comments on my bench. The only player who saw significant time was Daryl Boston who did OK for 75k as a relacement for whoeever was injured in my OF.

Mike

[bjs73]

The team link you posted will work for your account at TSN but not ours so that we can view it. The best and easiest method for posting a link is:

1. Go to your team's front office.
2. Click Regular Season Stats. That should bring up all the teams in your league.
3. Click the hyperlink from your team from the hitting statistics.
4. You will now be at your team's home page. Except the URL at the top will have an extra tag at the end on your browser. ID=XXXX or something like that.
5. Copy and paste the whole URL with the ID # included into the message on the board and we'll be able to see the final tally on your team.

:D

[MICHAELBUSH]

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/80s/team/team_other.html?user_id=48938

Thanks for the info.

One other comment on my team, I still think it was better than it's results but my runs scored vs earned runs allowed works out to a .500 record.

Is there any way to see total runs allowed?

Best Regards,

Mike

[Outta Leftfield]

Hi, Mike,

Welcome to the game. I got hooked about 6 months ago and am now on my 8th team. I think you did very well with your hitting, but you don't mention your pitchers at all. Maybe that should be a focus for your next seasons?

Although you're in a hitters park, a 4.99 ERA with 1.44 WHIP is generally not going to get it done in terms of winning a division. You want to have a WHIP of about 1.30 or below and a significantly lower ERA. You allowed 800 ER and score 835. With unearned runs you may have allowed 860 R or more. You'd probably need to score 1000 R to win a championship at that rate. You might be able to push your offensive totals up a bit with more experience, but a higher priority might be to prevent the opponents from scoring.

A few comments:
1. Maybe you stayed with Higuera a bit too long? It doesn't look like he was in his best year. Same with Andujar and Liebrandt. Alexander was OK as a 3rd or 4th starter, but you need your top guys to perform better. If one guy can't get it done, try out another. You're really looking for the good pitching cards. May take some trial and error to find them. Sometimes a cheaper guy has a better card.

2. I would have given Kison some more starts. He's got 2 outstanding years on his card. If you got one of them, and the stats suggest that you might-- you've got a real bargain. If Kison's in a good year, then you can gravitate toward a 5 man rotation, seeing as how the *SP starters aren't getting it done. Often theare are good 5-day pitchers hanging around, since most guys prefer a four man rotation. I generally start with a 4 man, but have sometimes bailed out into a 5 man when the first round of guys can't get it done.

3. Only Sutter in your bullpen was effective. Try dumping the bad guys when they underperform and look for some cards with good years. I generally stock up on some cheaper BP options (.75M to 1.5M) since a lot of those guys have good cards. Guys like Donnie Moore, Bill Dawley, Ken Dayley, Terry Leach have been outstanding for me in different years. If you spend less on the bullpen you can spend more on hitters or SP. Stocking a bullpen with cheap but effective RP's is one of the keys to a cost effective team. Look for low WHIP, low ERA and at least two or three excellent years on the card.

4. Try playing in a more pitcher friendly park a few times. I can keep you focused on winning through limiting the opponents runs as much as through scoring runs yourself.

5. Your defense really wasn't bad. So I think most of the runs allowed come from being in a hitters park and using pitchers not in their best years. Only the best years can survive with all the good hitters in this league.

[nycalderon]

One of the things you learn as you play the game more is when to identify players who are not good enough. Granted you play in a hitters park, but you probably could have done better if you had gotten rid of Higuera, Andujar and Leibrandt. Leibrandt is maybe borderline. In a park like that a 1.30 whip may be hard to achieve... DiPino, Gleaton and Holland also should have been tossed.


Still ... you had great success for a first team..

congrats

[MICHAELBUSH]

Much appreciated.

Mike