Advice, criticism welcome

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1402722

This is my worst team of the ATG tournament so far, but I'm not sure why. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

"Re: Advice, criticism welcome"


You're fat...don't be fat.

$5 million closers don't work in $80 mil. You are spending 6% of your budget on a guy who isn't going to pitch as many innings as either your $4 million starter or your $1.5 million starter. If you're going to use a $5 mil reliever at $80 mil, he should be making more than your entire rotation, and be at least an R3 for fatigue.

Too many lefty killers in your lineup. With that McGwire card and that Petrocelli card, you should have somebody like Graig Nettles or one of the cheap Brett cards at 3rd or Geronimo in CF. Or both.

Also, you may have gone overboard on the injury cards - thus you're carrying Vince Dimaggio as a bench player.

I agree that you are taking too many risks with injury on this team, but dropping lots of salary at $80 mil. cap is never going to pay off. Why did Gehrig go? He was doing well even if the team wasn't.

Also, your left side of the infield defense sucks. You have missed over 200 X-rolls (over 60 at short) in addition to Over 100 team errors and 16 throwing errors from behind the plate.


....also, "don't be fat."

I'm fat?!? I stopped looking in the mirror years ago. Right after my toes disappeared.

Thanks for the advice though. Too late to fix this team (or my expanding waistline), but it's good advice for future teams. As for the fat, change is for young people.

I disagree. Your bullpen is fine. I have a recent championship with Murray. I am not fond of your starters but I've seen worse win. What your problem is the rest of the team. You have a huge problem up the middle on defense. For me a 2 is as low as I go and it is rare that I'd have 2. Never 3 . You have very little obp. No really good leadoff man. You have 6 starters under 5 mil. and 4 under 4 and none of them consistent enough for me. You'd have been much better off with say Scott and .72 Melillo at SS and 2b and boosting 2 other players than what you have. I've found I can win most consistently with only 3 no more than 4 guys under 5 mil. if I get the right ones. Such as Bowa, Melillo, Hamilton and Weaver. Two is best. Http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1401833. With very little adjustment a 5 mil RP could replace a current RP and still win. Plus you're just begging for trouble with 6L McGwire. You can't have a guy you are counting on hit under .250 against rightys. Hell Bowa will hit that. Think about it. 2/3s of his at bats, which is how many rightys he'll face, he will suck. What a waste of money. 3R is as far as I am willing to go and that is Sosa and Mays. Unless my guy is under 3 mil I won't go past 2L. You just don't face enough leftys. And yes you are right about injuries. I don't even like using 2 inj at catcher. I don't normally use guys with 15 game injs. If I do it is no more than 2 and I get good backups. You have horrible team speed you've had 253 chances to advance your runners and been successful 70 times and thrown out 24. That means you've only tried to advance about a third of your opportunities and been out a fourth of the time. That's horrible. You've had way too many dps. Your catchers have 186 stolen bases against them. That equates to at least 100 runs against you. You have 123 errors with a fourth of the season to go. You'll end up with about 160. Way to many. Here's the final thing. Your trying to win in an 80 mil league with a 78 mil roster. It is rare that changes during the season help. 1 or 2 is usually not devastating but 7. Ai yi yi. No chance. 3 rules you shold take to heart. 1. Money on the field wins. 2. Trim the fat. Put the money into your starting pitchers and position players NOT your subs. 3. Strong defense up the middle. As a side note when putting your team together. Make sure everyone has a place to bat and every place in the order has a batter to fill it. You don't want 4 number 2 hitters or 5 that hit cleanup. Rule of thumb. 2 speedster with good avg and 400 obp for 1 and 2. Your 3 hitter should be one of your 3 power hitters with highest obp. 4 best power hitter, 5 last power hitter. 6 . A .300 + guy with a lot of flyball Bs is ideal. 7 and 8 whatever.

Don't get mad at me. This is what I see wrong. Others do it different.

Road 2425 358 621 114 9 127 342 249 482 20 4 68 .256 .328 .468

vs. R 3046 799 138 11 171 466 335 607 .262 .339 .483

You can't hit and your fielding sucks. Next question?



Hank

Thanks all! As a fat guy, I have a pretty thick layer protecting me from the slings and arrows I invited. I appreciate the critical feedback as my goal is to improve over the long term, not to win immediately, although the wins have been coming this year. It's only my third season playing ATG and my first two teams this season finished first in their divisions. I lost the finals in game 7 with my first team.

I tried something different with this team (loading up on cheap but injury prone players) and have learned that this is probably not the best approach. I have learned my lesson with regards to 3s in the infield. Just don't do it. My pitching was SOOOO bad at the start of the season that I decided I couldn't afford the luxury of Lou's big bat at 1st base, but that was probably a mistake. I think I've learning something important here and that is that it doesn't matter if you have a balance of lh and rh hitting, what matters is that your hitters are balanced between righty and lefty killers. You can have an entire lineup of righties in rh ballpark as long as some of them also kill righties. Ditto for lh ballparks. I was too prone to RHP with this team, a fatal flaw when 75% of the pitching you face is RHP.

So far my fourth team in the tourney is competitive, so lessons hopefully learned.

Hold on there. 3s and 3b, 1b, and LF is fine. They only get around 20 chances each a season. An arm in lf can help. Strong defense up the middle cuts down a lot of runs. I like a 1 or 2 in RF and I like to have an arm. Although if you have a 5 arm in center opposing managers will tone their setting down that a 0 or +1 isn't a killer. I don't use nor want any righty lefty killers. When you do that opposing managers can rearrange their pitching and beat you. Like I said before a 3R works because 2/3 of the pitchers you face will be right. If you go even 2L on your guns you are going to waste a lot of at bats. 3L can turn a 8 mil player into performing like a 4 mil player. There is enough players in the pool to stay away from 2 and 3Ls

Hold on there. 3s and 3b, 1b, and LF is fine. They only get around 20 chances each a season.

3b has the same chance for an x result as cf and c, Mathew. They'll have closer to 60 x chances than 20 per season. And fielding is the wildest in terms of varying results of all the stats, so you have to be careful generalizing. Bad outfielder results are so much more serious than bad infield results, this is one of the hardest areas of the game to generalize about.
After 144 games, these are the x chances by position of one of my teams:

c 81
1b 45
2b 133
3b 53
ss 164
lf 56
cf 60
rf 50

Small samples, like fielding, lead to big variations in outcomes from season to season.

Hank