I'm really starting to wonder why I play this game. Tonight I got swept. That happens and I can accept it. But in two of the three games I played, I was defeated by a homerun in the bottom of the ninth inning.
One of the homeruns came off Eduardo Sanchez, who doesn't give up a homerun anywhere on his card. In the other game, Steve Cishek gave up two homers, one in the bottom of the ninth to lose the game. Like Sanchez, Cishek doesn't give up a homerun anywhere on his card.
In the 6 series before tonight's debacle, my team lost two out of three games. Before this slide started, I was rated third in the league in both offense and pitching. Now I'm rated 4th in offense and 5th in pitching.
Is it merely a streak of incredible bad luck or sheer horse puckey? I can't tell you how many times Ryan Howard has missed a ballpark homerun (1-15 chance) or HAL has brought in Venters with the game on the line to pitch to a guy who eats lefties for breakfast. To top it all off, Carlos Pena, who is hitting a whoping .123, has hit three homers off my team this week. He was on one team and cracked one against me, got taded and hit another two off my pitchers later in the week. The run of bad luck is simply phenomenal.
Remarkably, my team is still in first place in my division, hanging on to a three game lead.
Maybe the reason that I'm so disgusted with Strat is because, in addition to the above-described run of phenomenal back luck, my 70's team self-destructed over the same period if time, blowing a 5 game lead going down the stretch and pulling a Gene Mauchian style collapse of epic proportions, posting a 4-17 record and finishing in third place in their division.
If things continue the way they are going, I think I'm going to hang it up. I've enjoyed playing over the last two years, but to get so many bad breaks simultaneously with two teams is frustrating and detracts from the enjoyment of the game.