Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

And in addition, many of the better Barnstormers event 2 ($80 mil) teams often use bullpens with no relievers above $0.99. The others, generally speaking, usually use one above and the rest below.

That means managers are winning with starting pitching and basically forfeiting late come-from-behind opportunities. So shouldn’t there be even MORE visible garbage time?

I guess another possibility is that everyone is using a cheap bullpen now and the garbage time is simply more evenly distributed across teams. This gets to Hack’s point about managers evolving.

When I first started playing online I would often do a heavy investment in my bullpen. Once I realized I was in the minority in doing so I switched to a cheaper way. I’ve experimented with a few different bullpen builds but my default pen now is 3 guys between 2-.1.2m and a lefty and righty specialist. Usually 2 of the 3 above one with better reverse splits. I can’t remember the last 4m+ relief pitcher I used in a 80m cap.

Definitely a cheap bullpen is the way to go in SOM at normal salary caps. Not like real life. Akin to what you said, split heavy guys and one semi decent guy or so balanced. That's the "hack" bullpen-wise in 365.

Mattw0909 wrote:When I first started playing online I would often do a heavy investment in my bullpen. Once I realized I was in the minority in doing so I switched to a cheaper way. I’ve experimented with a few different bullpen builds but my default pen now is 3 guys between 2-.1.2m and a lefty and righty specialist. Usually 2 of the 3 above one with better reverse splits. I can’t remember the last 4m+ relief pitcher I used in a 80m cap.

I'll use Rhodes as my closer for most 80M teams. He's 4.14M (if I remember right), and has had many good seasons. I know you can get away with a lesser closer, easily. But 30 saves is 30 saves. Sometimes it's enough to make the difference between sneaking in the playoffs and not, given that losing 1-run games can be a killer. It's pretty annoying, though, that you can't just build a solid, balanced team and expect to do well. Only thing I have learned (the hard way), is that a decent investment in SP's is often successful, in any league.

Very important information is being overlooked. You DO NOT play the same number of games against each team in the league. A weaker division of opponents versus more equally matched opponents is a large contributor to all the differences.
I play in a keeper league where the commish always ends up in the playoffs due to him playing multiple leagues and the experience it gives him. He dominates always.

Regarding relievers, I have tried many strategies and overall I think past the 1.2M mark, most of them are just too expensive. In a recent league I tried a bullpen of 4 strong relievers with no specialists and my 6M guy with a godly card had a 4+ era, which is often what a 1.5M reliever gets. It just doesn't seem reliable enough IMO.

One thing that drives me nuts sometimes is how many losses happen in the 9th inning, it's unreal at times. I can feel it coming. I put in Choate and Bradford, etc and they seem to give up a hit or walk immediately and way more often than expected. Then the damn platoon teams (half of the teams generally) keep pinch-hitting over and over and force Hal to leave the specialist in against an opposite-handed batter. Due to the extreme offense spike in the 8th and 9th innings most relievers struggle to have a good ERA, meanwhile the starters seem much more reliable.

But this is just more of why I hate platoon teams, lefty platooners are ridiculously underpriced IMO. Beating a dead horse here Aside from that, I wish expensive relievers were more consistently worthwhile.

in this game when the dice are falling for the offense it doesn't matter who the pitcher is...and as far as platoon teams go make the injuries happen a lot more often...its bullshit a guy with 100 plate appearances only gets injured as often as a guy with 599 PA...I will bitch about this as long as I play this...in my 40plus teams Ive NEVER had a SP miss a start due to injury...thats bs and yet a 100 PA guy can get 600 AB

STEVENSTEFFANNI wrote:in this game when the dice are falling for the offense it doesn't matter who the pitcher is...and as far as platoon teams go make the injuries happen a lot more often...its bullshit a guy with 100 plate appearances only gets injured as often as a guy with 599 PA...I will bitch about this as long as I play this...in my 40plus teams Ive NEVER had a SP miss a start due to injury...thats bs and yet a 100 PA guy can get 600 AB

I find the injuries on L balance platoons to not be as impactful as intended, at least I would assume. Lots of times they get 15 game injuries but would only actually play many innings in 1/4 of those games anyway, and in some cases none. R balance platooners are much better priced IMO.

Would someone please explain how the pythag theorem is used and how it is calculated. Being a relative newbie to the game, compared to you vets, I'd like to understand it better. Since following rich and max I've taken to small ball quite a bit. It's hard to improve on rich's strategy but I'm always looking. And, yes, I too notice some anomalies in the results of games. So, any help would be greatly appreciated.

OK so I have actually done some investigation my own and now have a decent understanding of pythag. So no response necessary. Thanks anyway.