How Bad Can You Be?

We ALL have underperforming teams. We do not all have consistently underperforming teams. Why not?

There is a multitude of factors contributing to this. They all affect different players in different ways and to different degrees. There is also a myriad of permutations in the way these factors all interact and shape each player's performance level. One would have to determine how these factors do work together--and how they do so for each caliber of player--to determine why some managers consistently underperform and why some don't. These are some of those factors:

1. SOM experience
2. SOM on-line experience
3. Intelligence
4. (As Turtle mentioned) Learning curve
5. Usage (or non-usage) of Ratings Guides
6. Variation in league type experience
7. Luck

So would you say that there is a discrepancy between the quoted price and the actual value of the card, and the successful manager is better at exploiting the difference? Couldn't an underperforming manager learn these discrepancies and improve upon his record over time then? At least enough to get to .500?

Factors 1-4 obviously show that managers do and will learn such discrepancies. They will also quickly learn that actual prices of cards are merely estimations of values of varying degrees of accuracy. And those values change with the different value structures of every league. So, most, if not all, managers will learn how to appropriately value cards and eventually get to .500. It just will depend on their share of the above-mentioned factors and how those factors interact for them.

So would you say that there is a discrepancy between the quoted price and the actual value of the card, and the successful manager is better at exploiting the difference? Couldn't an under performing manager learn these discrepancies and improve upon his record over time then? At least enough to get to .500?

Absolutely there are under and over valued cards in each set. Knowing and exploiting these cards is THE difference in winning...IMO.

Yes of course, the sub .500 GM could use this learning curve to their advantage...but they don't due to emotional attachment to the card itself. I am sometimes guilty of the same syndrome. For example....I don't recall ever drafting or using a Barry Bonds card. Despite several times being the most dominant and best valued card in a given set. I don't like him in RL so I don't use him in Strat. Probably could have won a lot more games/rings/creds if not for this emotional detachment to a card.

Absolutely there are under and over valued cards in each set. Knowing and exploiting these cards is THE difference in winning...IMO.
Yes of course, the sub .500 GM could use this learning curve to their advantage...[b]but they don't due to emotional attachment to the card itself.

I wouldn't go along with that supposition. Sure, the extreme beginner holds emotional attachments to, and aversions against, specific players. However, most players shed that irrational tendency quickly. What they don't shed quickly is the inability to identify the best cards/best deals and steer away from the bad ones.

So, most sub .500 GMs are not sub .500 gms because of emotional attachments/aversions. They are sub .500 gms because they haven't learned how to identify the best cards/deals, actually attain them, and successfully incorporate them into successful teams.

You have to wonder if the 45% winner side of the curve is simply fed a steady diet of newbie blood. If you hang around long enough, eventually you absorb the things you need to do to graduate toward to 55% of the curve.

I would imagine if you can't outlast the learning curve, you leave the game in frustration having only contributed to the left side of the ledger. If you have some success, you tend to hang around because then the game is more fun and you move steadily toward the right side of the curve.

Example

OF: Upton/C Gomez/J Bruce

INF: Santana/Hosmer/Philips/Hardy/Seager

I dont think this team would win over .500( assuming 30M +/- on pitching)

There are hundreds of combinations like this one.

To splinter,

I want you to know this post is absolutely screaming at me, "try this, try this, try this...!"

At $51.31, it's a little too pricey for just eight guys, though...

...maybe...

This might be the more interesting discussion. Name your eight man lineup that is nearest to $45 mil (leaving $3 mil for 6 fitty-centers) that CANNOT win half its games.

Ok sub in Rios for Bruce and Simmons for hardy and either Gattis or Soto for Santana

To many options on the staff but I'll cobble one together on the 26th

C Martin $4.87
1B Barton $4.69
2B Phillips $4.80
SS Andrus $4.66
3B Prado $4.45
LF Zobrist $7.82
CF Gardner $5.25
RF Craig $6.20
DH L. Cain $2.77

Total: $45.51 (+ $2.50 is $48.01)



Crazy insight: Is defense really this overpriced??

That team would not win 77 games