Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

What do you do when you're in a Franchise league, $120-140 cap, and your pitching isn't cutting it? One league, I got Walter Johnson as a supplemental, and he's sporting a 6.07 ERA and 1.47 WHIP. My team ERA is 6.24, so he's not dragging us down, but there aren't a lot of options at $140 mil. The other league, we're actually in first, but only at .500 . . . three starters have 6+ ERAs, including Carl Mays, Randy Johnson, and Bucky Walters. That's the $120 league, and more restrictive because the player must have a card for your team - in my case, the Reds. Am I just boned because I chose Crosley '66? With players like I have (Johnson in one league, Johnson in another) I don't think I can get any better . . . I just have to hope the offense picks up the slack a little better.

This is the frustrating part of the otherwise exciting aspects of this kind of league. (I'm in one of those leagues with you)

One observation... the slightly cheaper Walter Johnson at 10.08 might be a better fit in a homer friendly park like Crosley. Even so, the Big Train is bound to get better results as the season wears on.

It's still early... enjoy the ride!

Sometimes I think the dice rolls run against people in their batting slot or rotation choice.

After a couple of weeks stats are in, I may adust the batting order just rying to get different dice rolss.

For pitchers, I will throw out that .50 starter one game hoping for more favorable rolls one game different in the season sequence. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not

The are many things that affect ERA, but four major things effect it, especially in $120M+ leagues.

1 - Home park
2 - Defensive range of your fielders
3 - Fatigue and hook settings for your SP
4 - how do each of your SPs face up vs. the lineups and ballparks inside your division (opposition have heavy lefty, balanced or heavy righty lineups?)

It sound like #1 is working against you....but with #2, #3 and #4 you can still maybe make some adjustments.

I would imagine that the other teams' lineups might also affect ERA.

We ran a $200 million league where each of the 6 of us had two teams. Valen ran a team in Fulton and a team in Petco, and swapped his rotations back and forth between the two teams daily until the trade deadline. The average ERA difference between the two parks was almost 3 runs.

This would be slightly lower in $140 million leagues, but not drastically so. So if The Train has a 6.24 ERA he's really not doing too bad and you have some hope to see him step it up a bit in the future.

Yeah I guess I feel like there isn't a lot I can do, since I can only really downgrade at SP and that isn't likely to improve my ERA at all . . . all of the lineups are really potent.

IMHO, this is the major problem with playing in a league with a cap above 100m, pitching sucks no matter what. If you play in the lower caps, you can draft a Walter Johnson and get a respectable performance out of him in a moderate park. This game is really slanted toward offense and the only thing that you can do to improve pitching is to play in a 'smallball' park. Of course in a franchise league usually you are limited to the parks that your club played in, and unless you are looking pre WWII the parks tend to be hitters parks. Try a deadball franchise league, I'm playing in one right now and the pitching performances are great...of course the offense is built around speed, and 2B's and 3B's... no real HR hitters.

Best of Luck, Mike

Of course in a franchise league usually you are limited to the parks that your club played in

Hmm, could be an interesting discussion. Among the franchises that have great pitcher parks available which ones also have the most pitcher park compatible hitters available? Which ones make for the worst fit.

Interesting note here . . . may be the first time I've had a 20-game winner (Mathewson) and a 20-game loser (Johnson) on the same team. Johnson shouldn't be capable of doing that. He just picked up his fourth win tonight.