12 wins away from 8 tickets!!!

Well, my quest to hold both crowns in ATG and 20XX turned into empty dust...This said, I'm losing to great champions, Stoney and Cristano have repetitively made the final rounds in their respective fields in recent years...

I'm taking a long break from tournaments for a year or two, sad to say, but I'm getting annoyed to see no improvement by the SOM management for the online game and the lack of customer services. I'm fed up to see the same loopholes continue year after year, some I was exploiting, most notably the fact that SOM does not implement the new rules they have created to restrict bullpen overusage. And I'm getting a bit bored by the game itself. But I'll still continue to play a season or two just to keep the strat mind active.

An question for the Championship Finals managers, is it better to play in pitcher's park or hitter's park. The parks selected indicate they may think pricing system favors Pitchers and / or non-power Hitters...

labratory (Forbes '65): 18 - 8 - 1 - 1
luckyman (Metropolitan '71): 8 - 14 - 3 - 12
cristano1 (Forbes '57): 17 - 17 - 1 - 1
chris_s (Wrigley '59): 4 - 5 - 4 - 17

AVERAGE BALLPARK FOR PLAYOFFS: 12 - 11 - 2 - 8

No, I don't think there is a bias towards low field teams...with maybe one exception or two, all owners in this league made great picks for position players, but These four teams had in my opinion, by far and away the best efficient rotations among the 12 teams. They were the closest of the 2 models that, I believe, are the best way to build a succesful rotation in the 80 or 100M format:

-a bunch of mostly cheap great bargains around 2-2.5M and a great backhand reliever
- at least 3 great 9M+ *SP or 4 great 7M (non *) SP

Chris had only 2 great *SP, but his 2 other selections weren't too bad. Only one other team among the non-playoffs team went close to one of the two above formulas (HankO), but some of his choices for position players were so at odds with his ballpark selection that he ended with a better record on the road.

Interesting comments marc, thanks!

Just checked the boxscores...

Nerds needed Greg Maddux to close out series in their home park and he came through.

For Poutine, a frustrating way to end the season, shut out by .54M Ed Farmer!

So the 3rd and 4th seeds advance to the final round. Congratulations to Chris_s and cristano1!

..... I'm getting annoyed to see no improvement by the SOM management for the online game and the lack of customer services. I'm fed up to see the same loopholes continue year after year, some I was exploiting, most notably the fact that SOM does not implement the new rules they have created to restrict bullpen overusage.

Amen brother! I've been harping about "super reliever" abuses in the ATG game for years, but SOM continues to ignore the problem. No way should relief pitchers be routinely pitching 150+ innings a year, but it's not unusual to see Dale Murray and Bruce Sutter get 300+ innings.

I think there are huge overabuse problems among hitters too. Gates Brown, Tamargo and my personal least favorite, the Ken Smith walk machine, not to mention the myriad others. I haven't worked out all the math on it, but I suspect that if you were to implement an increase in injury with overuse (I would guess that increasing injury rating by 1 for every 10% "overuse" would be a good place to start doing the math). Ken Smith as a 2 million dollar guy with a 6 injury rating wouldn't hold the luster of him with a 2 injury.

And I admit, I will use these rules to my advantage because they are the current rules, but I still think the game would be dramatically improved by fixing this problem.

Marc, congrats on two great runs which, while they didn't end with championships, got damn close. You designed excellent teams.