Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Help me understand why my team is 2-17 in one run and Xtra inning games?
http://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/430530

my first thought is bullpen settings, second is SP settings.

It's so hard to say at the $200 cap. All the best cards are in play. I've tried things that work one time and don't work another. I'd say it's a crap shoot compared to $100 and under leagues.

Because you built a home run team in a singles ball park and you are playing a catcher with poor defensive skills (you have 15 passed balls already 3 times greater than any other team, that causes problems in tight games. You are batting Barry Bonds second so his 27 home runs have resulted in only 54 RBI’s and the 70 times Barry has gotten on base with other than a home run has resulted in only 19 runs scored so I think he is a poor #2. I would have Breshnahan as leadoff if I was going to have him as catcher then McGraw as my DH followed by Speaker and Bonds. At least you’ll have a winning record on the road but this team will struggle at home.

Also Tris Speaker - He should be set to DO NOT BUNT and DO NOT H&R. I see Speaker sacrafice bunting and H&R. Also Speaker leads off gets on, steals second Walk to Bonds. Breshnahan can steal and hits into many double plays lead him off and cut those down and improve the running. Also McGraw should be do not bunt and do not H&R he has a .600 OBP+ in your park and that is better than any outcome of strategy. Turn your stealing to conservative because you do not get enough hits to make it a great strategy and instead improve your success rate. Stop H&R up and down the line up, you lead the league in these, you are only going to win when you hit Home Runs so just swing for them.

I would also use the good fielding AROD since he has better speed and better OBP against righties than 4R AROD as well as increasing the defense for your team.

I went looking at four last 1-run losses. For each game, I saw things that could have been handled differently. Let me add that for sure a string of unlucky rolls happened for a 1-16 record to occur.

Your last 8-7 lost. Perceval was running out of gas, he was on the mound at F1 when He gave a 3-run double that put the other team at 8-3 or 8-4. BTW, the man who scored from first was on base thanks to a free intentional walk. You come back bottom of 9th with a Sisler homerun but you come up short by one run. perceval shouldn't be on the mound anywhere below F7. I'm sure that Garber at F9 is better than Perceval at F5, let alone F1. I'm not 100% sure what settings you should use but It must be more agressive or on quicker settings than your current settings. You might feel unease with being agressive with your current bullpen that only has 4 true relievers, in my opinion, you should have at least 5 relievers available if you use your bullpen agressively, not counting a Sp/rp that is used as a starter. As for the free pass, in 200M, you should be very conservative before yielding one.

In the other 8-7 loss, I saw this sequence.. Speaker hits a single, steals a base, Bonds walks, Then a quick out and G.Brown hits in a double play.
What I see here is that the stolen base had no effect. You would have been in the same situation had Speaker not stolen a base. I see that Speaker is your leader with 16 SB. I wonder how many of those SB were followed by a Bonds' walk, or a Bonds homerun, which in both case nullifies the value of the stolen base. And in 200M leagues, with starting pitchers allowing just about nothing, walks, homeruns and outs are the only things Bonds will give your team. So I would be tempted to use someone who won't steal a lot of bases as lead-off. Personnally I like Bonds 2nd, tons of onbase, ARod 3rd (thus yes I conceed using the Earl Weaver strategy, but only for your top three hitters, and besides, ARod horrible clutch almost forces your hand to have him there), and then have Speaker 4th and really have your speedsters take full advantage of your single hitters that are following (Jeter, Sisler, the catcher etc). In that scenario, It seeems to me that perhaps your best option is to use McGraw instead of G. Brown as lead-off, McGraw can't produce rbis, but that's a lesser problem behind Bonds.

Your two other losses, including a 2-1 loss, the tying run got on base bottom of the 9th, and in both occasions, a stolen base was quite reachable, in one case Gossage was the opposing pitcher (hold = +5, combined with Molina still gives a +1, -1 with the hold). In this case I think Sisler was the runner, so perhaps he didn't get the lead. In another case, Brown was the runner, and I was quite flabbergasted to see that no pinch runner in either case was brought in. I know from experience that the more players on the roster, the more moves Hal likes to do. So I would pack the lineup to 17 players, I would hire a Moreno or a Coleman and perhaps a cheap first baseman (I see there is no bench player for Sisler currently, which could be another reason why Hal remained still). Of course, I would set Moreno as pinch runner and I would pray that Hal listens to the strat gods!!

To bat Bonds 2nd with his .596 OBP (of which his card non-HR OBP is .406 vs righties and .467 vs lefties) and have McGraw with a .664 OBP after him makes no sense for optimizing scoring.

To respond to gkhd11a, when I wrote:

Personnally I like Bonds 2nd, tons of onbase, ARod 3rd (thus yes I conceed using the Earl Weaver strategy, but only for your top three hitters, and besides, ARod horrible clutch almost forces your hand to have him there), and then have Speaker 4th and really have your speedsters take full advantage of your single hitters that are following (Jeter, Sisler, the catcher etc). In that scenario, It seeems to me that perhaps your best option is to use McGraw instead of G. Brown as lead-off, McGraw can't produce rbis, but that's a lesser problem behind Bonds.

I think it's obvious that I meant "that's a lesser problem with Bonds behind". So my suggestion: 1-McGraw, 2-Bonds, 3-ARod, 4-Speaker and then the roll of the single/double hitters

Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure why HAL has been using fatigued pitchers, perhaps I had TOO MANY settings being used. I've deepened the bench, hoping for more PR and PH usage when trailing late. I had Flick set to PR, but I see that the last time he was used in that role was game 28. My obp is in the top half, although my hitting and slugging are sub par. Even with these weaknesses, my +45 run diff should not be producing a team that's 6 games under. Personally I think that either HAL hates me or the game has been hacked.

gkhd11a


really good analysis