First ATG 8 Team

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1382838

This is my first ATG 8 team. Went with Coors Stadium. It is a $80,000,000 league. Looking to have a good time and just wonder what the feeling is with this team. SGT D

Is "OMG that team sucks!" too harsh for you?

If you're going to go with cheap starters, you have to spend money on your bullpen. If you want to have an $8 million bullpen, it should be two .75 guys, two 2 million guys, and a 3.5 million guy to finish it off, not 5 guys from 1.3 to 1.7 million. One .75 million guy should have a fatigue rating of R5 and be designated as the mopup guy, with your 50 cent starter as the secondary mopup. The other .75 million guy should be somebody like Paul Mirabella or Stu Miller you have set as a LH or RH specialist. And for God's sake don't even think of using a guy with an endurance rating of R1 in this ballpark except as a one-batter guy.

I wouldn't use any of the hitters you have on your roster in Coors at 80 million. McGwire will hit, but there are plenty of $8 million 1B guys who will hit also. Ditto for Chipper and Yaz. And Ripken, Pudge, and the Hawk are low OBP double play machine cards - they will kill many more rallies for you than you can imagine. As far as Roberts and Bernie go, they are just meh with most of the people here.

Cheaper and/or better alternatives:

C - Carter 80, Daulton, Palm, Haller, Bench 75 or 69. Also you can consider a much cheaper platoon or individual here.

1B - Beckwith, Giambi, Foxx 29, McCovey, Greenberg 38, Suttles, Greenberg 40

2B - Gordon 41 if you want a power hitter there, or Huggins if you want a leadoff guy. And if Huggins get the dreaded 15-game injury before game 100, tough it out. There's only about a 15% chance that will happen.

3B - Brett 85 is a stud, Schmidt and Mathews both have excellent cards under $9 million, and there are platoons available for low budget solutions.

SS - Nomar 97 is an RBI machine without the DP's, or you could go with Donie Bush as a leadoff tyoe. (Nomar-Huggins, or Gordon-Bush would work for me with the leadoff guy hitting there and the other hitting 7th or 8th with your C in the other spot).

LF - Delahanty 94 will hit .400 for you with doubles and triples power, George Foster will hit 50+ HR with decent perpherals, Rickey 1990 is a pure stud, Medwick and Hafey are studs from the 1930s that will drive in tons of runs.

CF - You might want to try the new Dykstra card here - I have fond memories of that card since I won a FTF strat league with that card leading off. Cedeno 77 will be excellent if you expect to see more than the normal 30% of lefties. I usually tend to spend for a CF stud in $80 MM leagues - I have two $80 MM teams starting next week and the CF's are Murcer 72 and Torriente 20. Lofton and Averill would also come into consideration for me, and I have always had good results with Doby 53.

RF - People laugh at me, but I like Barfield here. Jack Clark 82 I have also had good results with. If you can swing the money, Kaline 55 and Clemente 67 both look like productive cards to me. I love Ott 36 also. Sosa 98 is very popular at $80 MM.

I was going to say you dont' have enough pitching. I tried a similiar experiement but had 2 stud relievers and still gave up as many runs as I scored. It was fun though

My experience has been that when you spend less than 1/4 of your budget on pitching there is a 90% chance you will lose 90 games.

I disagree with the feeling about pitching listed here, I find little correlation to winning and pitching dollar allocations. In general I think it is mostly about getting value into all your lineups.


19% pitching http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/360439
17% pitching http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1378161
16% pitching http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/386250

There are a lot of ways to win in Stratomatic and I don't think there is any percentage of pitching necessary to do so, however one really good reliever with 300 innings always helps the team as the value for the innings pitched is so outstanding, but championships are possible with no special pitchers if you score enough.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1308897, this was my first ATG team and went with pitching and hitting.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/151847, this was a team in ATG IV that I went with hitting and cheap pitching. This was a $80 million league.

SGT D

Bam

and Bam

I agree with the others... you need to throw a lot more money toward your bullpen. Try to keep your hitting to $60 mil or less. You can keep your $8mil on starting pitchers, and that leaves you $12 mil for bullpen.

Like a previous poster said, find a .75 guy for mopup duties.
That leaves you $11 mil+ for 4 quality relievers.

I'm not sure the 3 example teams posted by g11 are apples to apples... two of them looked like DH leagues and the third team was in Forbes. Yes, you can win a lot of different ways, but in Coors 99 IMO you have to have a bullpen in a non-DH league.

Your RP's are much better now BUT, way too many LH's.

Bill Wagner has a great card and is a R2 but you might be better off with a R3 or R4 who can pitch a lot more innings for you. I am guessing you are using a lot of your favorite players and that is fine but sometimes winning with guys you have never heard of from the 1800s can be more fun than losing with your favorites...... I do not think your team is quite as bad as some are saying but consider this; guys like Larry Walker are pretty dependent on those ballpark HRs to reach their real numbers. A lot of Walker's ballpark HRs will be mere fly outs in other stadiums. So take a look at the other stadiums in your division and league as well as your opponents' starting pitchers and maybe make a couple of moves. Remember you want to be happy with your team at the start of the season because once it starts it does not make much sense to make free agent moves and degrade the value of your team. GOOD LUCK! Never underestimate luck, especially in this game.