Tue Jun 04, 2013 9:31 pm
Sorry I haven't been chatting -
I enjoy catching up and reading the banter and the amazing analysis (thanks Joe!) every once in a while. I noticed the chart on luck, and that I've been lucky - I would agree with that, in a very intuitive way on my part.
I've been tied up with real life stuff, work stuff, and strat stuff - PC finals finishing, and I've got to get the new PC finals started. I'm all ears for suggestions for improvements - please and thanks!
I seem to be particularly lucky with one run games - over many leagues. I haven't really analyzed it well enough to really say why, but I think something about the bullpen plays a role in that. But I can't even express that well, let alone defend the point! But I definitely have had good results with one run games over a few different teams.
I realize that this won't be a revelation to any of you guys, but I'm beginning to appreciate just how long you might have to wait to see whether your ideas about a team are right or not. The luck factor takes a long time to work itself out, and as Joe's analysis says, it can persist even for a whole season at a time. So theoretically to prove whether a particular team concept works well, you might have to do it several times - i.e. seasons. But you never completely do that - or I wouldn'y want to do that so much the same from one season to another, because I like to adapt a team concept based on what my divisional rivals are doing. Again, I really can't say that I'm an expert at that, and it doesn't always work or even make much of a difference. But often it does.
One thing that I noticed about my team this year is that I really like how the L-R splits worked out for my starting pitchers. Of the 3 RHP's, Hudson has the most evenly balanced L-R rating - "1L", while the other 2 RHP SPs have very L balanced ratings - Morrow and Weaver. The L-R splits for them are about 50-50 for Hudson, but more like 60-40 for Morrow and Weaver. I have actually tried to map out the results for a whole season on an estimated basis - I think I did that for this team, or it might be another recent team. My 5 man rotation actually got messed up when Hudson missed 2 starts with an injury. He slipped one spot in the rotation. I can't remember whether I deliberately let the spot # change or not - I think it was accidental or I didn't have a choice maybe. But for the last part of the season slipping one spot didn't make that much difference. I'm also happy with the L-R splits for my 2 lefty SP's - L balanced, and faced about 30% lefty hitters. But I feel like you really have to get your lefty starters the maximum advantage that you can, because this card set has so many hitters that absolutely destroy LHP, and because I think that severely L balanced RHB are underpriced salary-wise in the <$2 million range, since they make such effective platoon players. So, I'm just "OK" with my lefty SPs performances, despite having ballpark and L-R split advantages working for them.
Successes for hitters have been (1) the original idea, having Cano and Posey on the same team; (2) Morneau/Gimenez platoon, (3) Aybar had a great season. Disappointments - Granderson and Seager.
got to go