First ATGII Team: can this experiment work at all??

[Minoso Express]

Ok. Others have kindly educated me regarding the benefits of McCormick v. Merkle beyond what I could see in my inexperience, so it's done. I'm dubious about the catcher situation, but am willing to become a believer.

This team makes it past .500 and I've got a lot of free teams to pass around.

Cheers.

[JUMA]

The team looks a helluva lot better than my first one. I think you're a real good bet for .500+.
If it were me, I'd ditch White & let Evers fly solo; I'd also ditch Bernard for a Medich/Nipper type who will not pitch. With your 3 studs, the pen hopefully will not see much action...what action they do see you want funneled to Staley & Hall. Make the job easier for HAL by eliminating 1 bad option.
I'd also get Gibson back behind the plate.
Best of luck.

[tkl33]

McCormick is an RBI machine, especially for small ball teams. You really don't need him with Furillo, Alou and Dawson, but you didn't seem to like Cleon. I really think your team as is will do well...over .500 for sure. The only real thing you lack is a couple good on base guys. Rolfe will have to lead off with this team. That's why I was really pushing for Cleon. He and Rolfe would make a nice 1-2 with Furillo, Alou and Dawson behind them. Defense at 1B won't hurt you much anyway. You could dump some BP if you were to change your mind. Most important though is to have fun and don't dump guys too early. Let the cards play themselves out!

Good luck! :D

Tim

[Minoso Express]

Tim- Cleon's one of my favorites, but I have not used him at 1B. I think that was putting me off. He is on a current 1969 Shea team I have. The team sucks, but mainly due to him and some key changes I've made in the last week-- changes made in no small measure to what I've learned about Strat from scouring the message boards and chatting with other managers-- despite being 3rd from the bottom in team hitting (but improving position almost every day now and the team is 1st in pitching), we've taken over 1st place in the division.

Through 81 games Cleon's batting .374 with 7HRs, 43 RBIs, 13 SBs, .444 OBP, .540 SLG., 19 doubles, 3 triples, 36 walks. He's hitting .375 against righties and .372 against lefties.

So I'm going to go with Cleon at 1B and use him with Rolfe 1-2 on this team.

Dumped Gibson, picked up Kennedy, picked up Dalton Jones to back up Cleon and will use my remaining funds to scour the catchers hovering around 1 mil to see what I can do about that.

Let the games begin.

Cheers, Phil.

[Treyomo]

One more thought. I love all the changes...that staff could be dominant. I like all the players in your lineup...but....

Look at your four best hitters - all right handed, and all at least 1L in balance. Aparicio as well is a 2L. If your division is heavily right handed, you might want to see who is out there LH to give your lineup a bit more balance. Not sure you need to do this, as your top 5 plus Evers are all very solid, but it's at least worth a look.

[Minoso Express]

They'll be facing 37% lefties in my division.

As Juma has pointed out, there IS Charlie Keller available. I would have to play him in left, though, which means losing Alou-- is the gain in balance worth losing all that Alou brings to the table? What would you do?

[buster j ratt]

37% LH Need someone like a Lake to platoon at C Hegan good Can be downright awesome against RH :twisted:

[The Last Druid]

IMHO yes. I actually prefer Keller to Alou anyway.