Thoughts on this team?

Can you please tell me your thoughts on this team?

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1419660

I originally had Stanton and Bryce Harper but i opted for Altuve and Ben Revere and James Shields.

Thanks in advance,

I am frustrated because dudes have guys like Dan Otero who is garbage and guy is killing it

Just a quick glance, but your D isn't so great, with 3s or worse everywhere but 1st and 3rd. Typically want to have 2 or better up the middle (2b, SS, cf)...although if offense outweighs the defensive liability, you can always work with it. Your offense is kinda blah too.

Also WAYYYY too early to be making changes based on only 9 games of performance. Otero's killing it? Anybody can over such a tiny sample...Brauns killing it through 9, but that won't last either.

You gotta wait out 30-40 games before you even start to think about potential changes...your just gonna keep getting hit with FA penalties if you keep making panic moves

Totally agree with Keyzick. Weak Defense at 2b SS CF and RF. Not sure of Kershaw/ Darvish You could save a few milliion by getting a cheaper *Starter. Fair top to bottom power and nice Bull Pen but weak on base although very good speed can compensate,

I wouldnt wait too long as I think team going to struggle. Hope ya have good luck.

I am not wild about the makeup of this team. There does not seem to be much thought put into the pitching staff. For instance, you should be using 5 SP who do not have an asterisks (or 4 guys who do have the asterisks), you are paying for several of those guys to pitch on three days rest but they will only pitch every 5th day.

Why are just about all your relief pitchers right handed who mostly get right handed batters out? Where is your good left handed relief pitcher? I just see a lot of areas where you did not spend your money well and I see weaknesses and a general lack of balance. Balance is important. You have good speed and OBP but defense is well, not good. Why all the poor fielding second basemen? One of those guys should have been someone who could be a defensive replacement. On the positive side, I like Jean Segura, even as a backup or he could even start vs. RHP.

Now, this is important, even though I have basically just trashed your team (which gives me no pleasure), you can still compete for a playoff spot.

The worst thing you did was make those changes after the season started. You do not want to be making wholesale changes now that the season is under way.

If you can trade a RH relief pitcher for an under performing left handed relief pitcher, do it. Or if you want to make some minor changes like getting a good defensive backup second baseman, that is okay. But the absolute worst thing you can do is start cutting guys and making changes all over the place. Performance 9 games into a season means nothing... Performance 90 games into a season still means nothing, those are tiny sample sizes. You have to be patient, in Strat-O-Matic, in real baseball, and in life... Chances are you will ignore my advice and start dropping guys who are having a slow start, that is the worse thing you can do, I can not stress that enough.

I am sorry to have spoken ill of your team, but I felt I should be honest as to how I see things. I played two teams with this set and both went to the championship, so I know a little something about this game.

Next time, the best thing you can do is ask for help, BEFORE the season starts. But don't be sad, you can still win with that team and you will learn how to be a better GM and hopefully you will take pleasure in some of your player's personal stats and have a good time. I wish you all the luck in the world. Cheers!

The replay stats mean nothing, especially 9 games into a season. Look for a left handed relief pitcher who is currently struggling (which again means nothing) and try to trade one of your top right handed relief pitchers who is doing well. I know it seems counter intuitive to trade a pitcher who is doing well for one who is struggling but this is the only way someone will make this deal. And a player's stats after 9 games on someone else's team means nothing. You really could use a better lefty reliever...

Either way, don't stress about it too much, what's done is done, you will learn something and who knows you could get lucky and compete for a playoff spot. That is one of the great things about the salary cap, as long as you don't devalue your team too much by making too many major changes you still have a chance to have a good season.

Here is a positive thing, you are pretty well balanced offensively. You have power, speed, OBP all that is good and your offense is not bad. And you have some really good pitchers, Kershaw for instance. And the fact that some of your starting pitchers are lefties means you don't need lefty relievers as much, though I still wish you had a better one. Good luck! Remember patience is important and next time do not cut guys 9 games into a season. Cheers!

Keysick is right about the defense. You need to look at Dean Carrano's analysis to get a sense of how many runs you give up with bad defense. The game works by rolling dice, with 50 percent on the pitcher's card and 50 percent on the batter's card. The pitcher's card and batter's card both have 108 chances on it (you only see 36, but when you look at a column on either the batter's or pitcher's card a 2 comes up once, 3 twice, 4 3 times, 5 4 times, 6 5 times , 7 6 times so each colimn actually totals 36 chances). Your defense gets reflected on your pitcher's card on X chances. These are 30 out of 108 chances on your pitcher's card. SS comes up 7 times and 2B 6 times, so those are particularly important.

Conceptually, I think your team makes sense--a fast team with decent batting average in a pitcher's park. You need to pay very close attention to ballparks as that is the prime way to gain an advantage. Everyone has loaded teams so you have to find a way to gain advantage. Kaufman is 11 11 on ballpark singles and 6 6 on ballpark hrs . What does that mean? Every batter's and pitcher's card has 5 spots (out of 108) where ballpark affects hits. A ballpark is rated 1 to 20 on whether it give up hits. So when you are in Kaufman and one of those BP singles comes up a 20 sided dice is rolled and if it comes 1-11 there is a hit. Kaufman is a park that gives up a higher than average singles so can be tough on pitchers with high WHIP and perhaps helps a high-average speed team. A batter's card can have from 0-8 BP homeruns. These are exceptionally important for strategy! A player who has a lot of BP homeruns is really valuable in a park like Miller with an 18 rating. Why? Because his salary rating does not fully reflect those BP homeruns.

Kaufman is not good for BP homeruns with a 6 rating. I think Stanton has 8.5 non BP and 8.5 BP hrs ( 8 out of 108, 8.5 out of 108). So in Kaufman those 8 BP hrs get reduced to 2.4 hrs. But since he has a good number of Non BP hrs he is not a bad choice for Kaufman. Some players will have like 4 non-BP and 7 BP hr and their power will be drastically reduced in Kaufman. Strasberg is a good fit for Kaufman because he has a low WHIP and gives up hrs which Kaufman dampens. Petit would be a good pitcher there too. Except for Darvish your pitching looks decent and I like your relief set-up at least for the top 2 guys--they 're solid. But I think getting rid of Stanton was a mistake--you might have too little power at this point. I think overall your offense is not good enough to do well. In a park like Kaufman I want my offense something like .250 .320 .400. You're not close to that (small sample size but I don't think It's going to get that much better).

You have to try and figure out strategies to maximize the value of players or you can quickly get frustrated.
Here is Dean's article.www.mfooz.com/bblog/wp-content/uploads/offense-vs-defense.pdf

Can you please tell me your thoughts on this team?

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1419660

I originally had Stanton and Bryce Harper but i opted for Altuve and Ben Revere and James Shields.

Thanks in advance,

Is this a 21-game free trial team?
Some general advice.

1) Looks like most of your opposing starting pitchers are RH so your lineup should reflect that. Altuve and Donaldson are heavily biased towards LHP so you won't get the best use of these high priced cards.
2) You have a mix of SP and SP*, ideally you want the rotation to be 4 SP* or 5 SP or else you are wasting payroll.
3) You do not need to carry that many RP. too much payroll sitting idle. All your bullpen are R1 pitchers. MY preference is to have your stud setup guy be a R2 with a good cheaper closer. At the very least it is a good idea to have at least one R2 or higher. I like Todd Redmond in the 2014 set. A decent cheap R3.
4) The poor overall defense has been mentioned.
5) Cabrera has a ton of gb(a) chances on his card. Again my preference is to avoid high double play cards, especially in a pitchers park. He already has hit into 4 of them.



The 2015 Set should be out in a couple weeks or so

Thanks guys,

I appreciate you taking the time to give quality feedback. In retrospect i should have done more research before diving head first into the deep end. I'm happy that it was only a free league as i signed up to try it out when i heard about it on Sirius XM Radio.

If i had known that it wasn't just add and drop with out losing salary i would have made different decisions to begin with. The key is learning from my mistakes.