HCKL Chat/Trades

13 minutes to fill a division.

Awesome, we're good to go. It's gonna be tough sleeping tonight.

I'm not a prognosticator, so I have no idea how all this will play out, but I'm thrilled with how my draft turned out. Getting Fiers, Hendricks, & Duda will hopefully make me a contender. But, I dare say, I do have the best 'pen (Betances, Kimbrel, Chapman, and Giles with a Choate thrown in for lefties) - not many hits on those cards.

Is it wrong to say this is one of the best days of my year?

Opening day is never a bad day Smitty, and yes you grabbed some nice cards in the draft.

I think I did better in the Supp draft (Arrieta, Harrison, Vogt) than the FA draft . My trade of Gomez for Neshek & change is not looking good now, I underestimated the injury for Eaton.

That said, I see a lot of parity this year. West div has 3 teams with payrolls of $114M or better with Palm leading all teams @ $131M. Will be a dogfight in season 1.

Central has 3 teams over $100M with Zim @ $130M. He looks to be the favorite in that div pre-season but will be challenged.

East has the most balanced div with 3 teams in the $117-119M range, and Niners also over $100M.

So we only have 2 teams in the whole league under $100M payroll, and they are not under by much. Much more even distribution of player wealth than in past years from what I can tell.

As one of those lowly clubs, I am looking for some help at 2B and in the power department.

As one of those lowly clubs, I am looking for some help at 2B and in the power department.

Sent you an offer...

Replied, thank you.

It's that time fellas - SIM TIME!

I have not done a full sim in a while, but I had the chance to put the teams in over the weekend, so the prognostications/analysis below are the result of multiple simmed seasons with 25-man rosters. I recently added another 8G RAM to the desktop, so that helped crunch things a lot faster, could do a full season in around 3 minutes, used to be closer to 8 minutes.

For those of you like me with some big injury rolls, these sims will likely underestimate your performance a bit, but should still be close. I did 5 full sims total.

Season 1:
E: Qk, C: Zim, W: Palm, WC: Smokey

Palm had 97 wins, other playoff teams in low 90s. Smitty & Craig were close with wins in the upper 80s.

Season 2:
E: Smokey, C: Zim, W: Craig, WC: Qk

Smokey had 98 wins, I had 94 as did Craig, Zim had 91. Palm & Smitty contended.

Season 3:
E: Qk, C: Zim, W: Craig, WC: Smitty

Craig had 99 wins, Smitty 97, me 93 and Zim 87 in this go-round. Palm & Smokey contended with wins in the mid 80s.

Season 4:
E: Qk, C: Zim, W:Palm, WC: Stoney

A bit of an outlier as I had 96 wins, Zim 91, and the West had Palm at 86 and Smitty and Craig at 83 & 82. Stoney snuck into the WC with 85 wins as the West beat each other up down the stretch.

Season 5:
E: Smokey, C: Lev, W:Palm, WC: Qk

Smokey busted out with the only 100+ win season with 101. Lev snuck into the Central title with 82 wins to 81 for Zim, the only time Zim didn't win the Central. Palm had 89 wins to take the West and I took the WC with 91 wins. Jason had 88 wins as the WC came down to the last day of play.

So based on 5 sims, I think we see some pretty strong trends:

1) Zim wins the Central. It's close but there is enough evidence to call this one.

2) The West is the div of death in Season 1. Their low win totals are due to beating the crap out of each other. I'm going to call it for Palm but it's close.

3) The East seems to be a 2-horse race between me & Smokey. I am going to call it for my team since my bench is much deeper which will come into play down the stretch, but I will need some injury luck.

4) The WC is likely to come from the East. The Central seems weaker overall after Zim, and the West has 3 good teams that take away wins from each other.

Happy to field any questions!

Qk

So after my one season in the sun last year, yet again I have no shot. You're a regular Mr. Sunshine, thanks Dave.

Well as usual, take the sims with a grain of salt. Especially because I just figured out I had ballpark effects turned off, resimming now to see what kind of difference it makes...

Well as usual, take the sims with a grain of salt. Especially because I just figured out I had ballpark effects turned off, resimming now to see what kind of difference it makes...

Rosters have changed too. I now Have Sipp and Cubit has Asdrubal for 2b I dropped Fields and brought Up Smith, not that i really have a place to play him. If I didn't fear both Jaso and Gattis going down I'd be tempted to bring up Betancourt as a defensive sub at Catcher, but with my luck all that would lead to is both Jaso and Gattis getting nailed with 20 gamers and Betancourt in full time