Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I would appreciate thoughts from the group about these two Polo '41 100M teams.

The first was a Barnstormers team that I thought was pretty good but came up with only 75 wins and finished 1 game out of last place: http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1124437

The second was an attempt to duplicate the team, but I was unable to get the exact same players. It won 100 and finished first: http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1130097

They don't look too different to me - I tried to get strong starting pitching. The 75 win team had Maddux, Mathewson, Hershiser and Higbe as starters and the 100 win team had Alexander, Walsh, Hershiser and Higbe.

The 75 win team had Huggins at 2B, 11.83 T. Williams in RF, Wallace at SS, and Montero at C vs. RHP while the 100 win had 10.30 Morgan at 2B, 4.46 F. Robinson in RF, and 4.11 Stephens at SS and Ashby at C vs. RHP. The rest of the lineup was the same. Morgan clearly was an upgrade vs. Huggins but the other three do not seem to have added anything more to the 100 win team (although the 4.46 Robinson was a bargain). Was it all Morgan??

Are these two teams really 25 games apart? If so, why? Was I just lucky with the 100 win team or very unlikely with the 75 win one? Was it the competition - Barnstormers vs. non-Barnstormers? Thanks for any thoughts - go ahead and be critical - I can take it.

I've played a number of Polo41 teams. Without touching your competition, two things jump out to me:

1. 275 home runs won't go too far with a $100m team in this park. The BPHR should be your main advantage at home but the first team was out-BPHRed by its opponents. That's reflected in the lower run total of the two teams.

2. A contributing factor was luck. The first team was out-rolled by its opponents by a substantial margin, all in the hitting. The second team had it much better with the rolls, scored more as a result, then got lucky with the Pythagorean outcome. And yes, it had a hell of a year out of Morgan.

Here are a couple of my better efforts in this cap/park:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/339582
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/373754
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/386044

Guynick - Very nice - Thanks for the examples of those winning teams.

You seemed to have gotten a lot more out of Maddux than I did.

I thought I had some pretty good value HR hitters but they came no where close to some of your teams. I do think the 75 win Polo team was jinxed. Wolfgang was terrible in relief. All of the HR hitters that were repeaters did better on the 100 win team than the 75 game winner.

I suspect most folks use walks and HRs as their basic strategy for offense in Polo '41. Does anybody have other successful strategies for Polo?