Why was this team so good?

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1651547

On Opening Night I expected this to be a relatively weak team. 3 hard lefty SPs in Hilltop didn't seem ideal. I thought my offense would mash lefties but not face a ton of them, which turned out to be correct. But never did I think that all those little platoons would add up to the best offense in the league, hitting close to .300 with a +300 run differential. Not with all those sub-$2 lefty hitters playing half their games in Hilltop. Anyone have any insights as to what went right here?

I think there are a couple of factors at play here. First, generally, in 80m cap you won't see too many rosters with four 9+ mil dominant starters. You might see a few of them in the league, but you see a lot more average starting pitchers than you would in the 100 mil which gives those lower dollar cards a chance to succeed.

Second, I have noticed since ATG9, when they made the super reliever nearly impossible to use in low cap leagues, a lot of people are bailing on their bullpens and using a lot of cheap extreme directional relievers. You see a lot of 9L, 8R type relievers, a nice set up for those pitchers to beat themselves when the platoon pinch hit feature puts those relievers in a lot of bad match ups.

Together this is a breeding ground for those platoons to excel.

I used a similar approach with this team. Not quite as extreme as yours though:

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1587869

As for your LH pitchers, in the 80m cap, there are quality left handed assassin type cards, but they aren't devastating in the way you might see in the 200m cap where Bagwell, Posey, Lezcano, etc show up and basically make LH starters nearly unrosterable. So your starters were able to dominant LH hitters pretty well and hang in there against the RH batters. It also helped that there was a DH and you really didn't have to rely on your bullpen for any significant innings.

It just always makes me laugh that people were so outraged about relievers pitching 200 innings, but have no problems with SPs pitching 360 innings.

Is that supposed to be more realistic or more fair???

His entire bullpen pitched 86 innings. But somehow that is (what?) more realistic than a so called " super reliever" pitching 200 innings????

I just can't even play ATG9 it is so impossibly stupid.

Thankfully they didn't ruin all the retro games and sets.

@Radagast Brown I agree with a lot of what you say. To piggy back on that, the other thing that really bothers me is there should not be any SP post 1990 to have a *. I Think it was late 70's the last time a SP made 40 starts. Some got in the high 30's during the 80's, so you can make an argument for them having a star, but beyond that everyone should be a 5 day starter.

Honestly, I have looked at more than one of your teams and said to myself "What's he thinking?" and then 100 wins later....so I would be curious what your logic/secret is. That being said, a couple things that jump out at me. You have a heavy (16 player) roster all with extreme ratings--without looking too deeply into your boxscores, I suspect this leads to a situation where you always have a pinch hitter available with a favorable matchup and even if you burn through a couple of those guys, there is always still one more. Given that most managers run with the minimum roster and thin pitching staffs, this gives you an upper hand. Even though the players are cheap, you always get a favorable matchup in the late innings. A second thing is that is seems like in this set a lot of players with "L" ratings are underpriced--this extends to pitchers as well. Folks comment on Mercer a lot, but it is not just him. It seems like many of your teams exploit those good value players with L ratings that others may pass on--Bass and Galarraga leap to mind.

You have a heavy (16 player) roster all with extreme ratings--without looking too deeply into your boxscores, I suspect this leads to a situation where you always have a pinch hitter available with a favorable matchup and even if you burn through a couple of those guys, there is always still one more. Given that most managers run with the minimum roster and thin pitching staffs, this gives you an upper hand. Even though the players are cheap, you always get a favorable matchup in the late innings.

On the contrary, everyone except Hal Wagner (and obviously Hornsby and Dahlen) are set up with a platoon PH. So if anything it seems like I'd be vulnerable to late inning matchups if my platoons kick in early, then the opposing team could switch handedness again without anyone left on my bench.

Your splits seem pretty amazing then

[quote=On the contrary, everyone except Hal Wagner (and obviously Hornsby and Dahlen) are set up with a platoon PH. So if anything it seems like I'd be vulnerable to late inning matchups if my platoons kick in early, then the opposing team could switch handedness again without anyone left on my bench.[/quote]

I've found in the 80m that can happen, but usually isn't the case. Most people are loading up with S9 SP's and a very minimal bullpen. So usually the SP's will last fairly late into the game.

What i see more often when the starter does get blown out, HAL will bring in someone like Andy Hassler and try to get 3 or 4 innings out of him and he just gets beaten mercilessly by the LH assassins that have come into the game. By the time you get to the late innings, the game is out of hand and if you do get into a few unfavorable match ups it usually doesn't cost you the game.

Good point mburatti, that does scan with my experience too.