Why does my team suck?

http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1485478

I've had reasonable success in the ATG tournament, but I find the players championship to be much more challenging. I use the same rating system that I use for ATG, which is based on Marc Pelletier's system, but it doesn't seem to work for the players. My team whip is among the best in the league but I've blown nine saves and am 2-10 in one run games . My $4 closer, Ken Giles, is horrible while every other similarly priced closer is great. Pedro strop is a nightmare. It's even worse when you consider that the rolls have been pretty good. I think this team is just bad and I can't figure out why.

It seems that if you have 4 S5's you'd want a bigger pen.

You've really caught some bad luck when it comes to BP HR's and BP SINGLES. Blown saves and bad records in 1 run games can be bad luck as well. I do know that dropping and picking up players usually ends up hurting if you find yourself doing it too much. Be very sure that the new guy can be an advantage in at least one important category without hurting too much in another. What you don't want to do is end up with a 75 mil salary half way through the season when everyone else is playing near the 80 mil range. IMHO

My team is now 4-18 in Xtra inning and 1 run games. Yes 4-18.

I think u could shore up your pen since udo not have great starting staff. a good R2 can eat up a lot of innings to bridge to giles, like an alex Claudio who can also save some games and is a lefty (the other team has to start subbing and pitch hitting in middle innings which creates more mismatches for giles at end of game).

your up the middle defence is not great, 2b/ss/cf. sacrifice some offence- is Hamilton available in cf, Iglesias, Crawford at ss etc etc. your middle infielders are not making a lot of dp's. a good middle defence can make average starters look much better.

I often use some cheap starters such as gausman/clayton who are sp* and pitch every 4th day. I use the extra money for a stud bullpen. I set them on quick hook/max 6 ip. u would be surprised how often their performance is close to starters that cost 3-6 million. and a better defence is going to help

I guess I don't see a fit of team to park. Camden Yards is a homerun park. The easiest way to extract value from the game is to have a homerun park and have a bunch of 8 BP guys. Since Strat bases its salaries on an 8 8 homerun park all of your players will be worth more than their salaries. This is an optimization game and that is the easiest way to optimize your players. You have 9 guys with 8 bp homeruns you now have an advantage versus other teams. This is also not a good park for Robbie Ray--he gives up too many homeruns. You got bullpen guys with WHIP over 1 and costing less than 4. Your starting pitching is not dominant enoughto allow that I think. A 5 million R2 will provide value as they can give you 200-250 good innings.

Again, the question is always how do you extract value from your players so they are better than STRAT has them evaluated at? Ballpark fit, platoons, and expensive relief guys are the most obvious ones (I don't think that Strat is factoring Andrew Miller throwing 250 Innings.) Making sure you have a relief corp that fits the starting staff is important, too. Having an overall offense that fits the park is useful as well. There are a lot of other nuances of course but if your team does not fit your park I'm not sure you are going to overcome that no matter how well you manage your team otherwise.

Here is a power team I had this year that was ok. http://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1482238

Thanks. The feedback makes sense. My bullpen is under powered for my staff, but I did have Scherzer and DeGrom initially, but dumped them after very poor starts. I think the feedback about the match between my lineup and ballpark is particularly helpful.