ATG 9 Too Flawed?

ATG 9 is my favorite. I play 80M DH and one thing that I find very unfortunate is how cheap STRONG platoons are. Particularly on the L balance side. There are a bunch of lethal $1M players that have hitting cards comparable to MUCH more expensive players. Yes I realize there are less lefty pitchers but I feel this is extremely unbalanced. For a while I would only play righty pitchers just because I was so tired of it and low and behold the rings were coming in for me. And yes I do realize these platoon players are imperfect but they're tremendously overpowered and that's why 80%+ of the top managers are using them every single league. Running as many platoons as possible.

Another thing I'm not a fan of is how atrocious the vast majority of catches are. Their pricing seems to have very little rhyme or reason to it and some cards are extremely strong versus others in their price range. A lot of the 6M catches are terrible and it makes no sense.

The pool of cards is enormous with huge batches of cards coming in more and more. Is this the final ATG? All this is doing is making platoons stronger and more easily attainable. In a regular league there are 4+ teams abusing platoons. I don't watch real baseball but I have to assume there is a lot less platoon usage than in this game. It gets silly when there are 5+ pinch hitters in a row and 3+ relievers - nearly 10 players switched out to hit the ball once. Then HAL just leaves in a 9R against a lefty when there are other relievers to use.

Another issue I see is the droves are suboptimal cards flooding into the game. What is the point of them exactly? Tons and tons of awful and ridiculous cards such as Mountain Goat Spencer. Meanwhile we get Bengie Molina... it doesn't add up. I am considering switching to No DH leagues or a different set altogether for the sole reason of seeing a reduced usage of platoons. Anyway that's it: Poor card balance and way too much platooning. If you have fun with it then great but I'm tired of it. Curious what you guys think

I am bored of the platoons which is a reason I am attritting out, but I think there are a few options I would find palatable (that would never be done).
Or at least put stuff like this as options for the commish starting a league.

1. implement reasonable game usage controls on "extreme" cards. Kind of like the unleashed sets concept, but seriously Ken Smith and Gates Brown playing every day or even every night against a LHP or RHP is just silly to me.

2. Implement a fatigue system and ditch the injuries. The model of a competing product uses a fatigue system that has a player stamina which determines how many innings in a row they can play prior to needing rest. And it is a gradual decline in performance. Same for pitchers but is based on realistic pitch counts and consecutive appearances, with allowances for guys that go S/R.

3. inning or pitch count or game or PA limits.

4. Update pricing model for usage at average of 80M-100M

Platoons are the defining feature of ATG9. Not sure why but I assume it was intentional. Haven't played 20xx but they can't be as prevalent there. Also I always recommend $140 to folks who don't like platoons, that cap is the sweet spot with very few viable platoons.

At lower caps no DH just means one more bench bat aka one more platoon. I typically run 7 platoons in non-DH leagues vs 6 platoons in DH leagues.

With all the overpowered RHH lefty mashers their LHH counterparts are not very good. Despite this I still find LHPs to be highly effective in most environments so I assume the left-on-left penalty more than cancels out the handful of RHH platoon guys.

Not sure I understand the Mountain Goat Spencer complaint. They added entire teams so that includes the worst players on those rosters. And there were so so many great cheap cards in the last two adds from NeL and expansion era. Why is the presence of 50-cent cards that no one uses a problem?

Despite this I still find LHPs to be highly effective in most environments so I assume the left-on-left penalty more than cancels out the handful of RHH platoon guys.

Yes it does seem that most of the better pitcher values are southpaws at almost every salary echelon.
I know I don't have issue with 50 cent players--I like that they do entire team adds

It may be too simplistic, but isn't the best weapon against platoon lineups a pitching staff loaded with reverse guys, RH pitchers that are tough on LH hitters and vice versa?

It may be too simplistic, but isn't the best weapon against platoon lineups a pitching staff loaded with reverse guys, RH pitchers that are tough on LH hitters and vice versa?

One would think, but while I like the reverse lefties I seldom dabble in reverse righties. I find leagues where RHPs would face a high % of LHH, LHPs are also facing a high enough % to make hard LHPs the better value.

Thanks for the replies. I will take your thoughts and ideas into consideration. At for the dreadful cards such as Mountain Goat Spencer - what I don't like is wasting my time clicking on them. As I cannot remember what all the bad cards are I will over time check them over and over. Cards that nobody will use outside of some kind of niche circumstances. Filling the games with hundreds of atrocious cards is just irritating IMO. I also think the game should see balance updates instead of just firing in hundreds of more cards each time. Duncan and Blowers and Collins etc are just disgustingly underpriced for the performances they put on. More time should be spent cleaning up this mess.

Thanks for the replies. I will take your thoughts and ideas into consideration. At for the dreadful cards such as Mountain Goat Spencer - what I don't like is wasting my time clicking on them. As I cannot remember what all the bad cards are I will over time check them over and over. Cards that nobody will use outside of some kind of niche circumstances. Filling the games with hundreds of atrocious cards is just irritating IMO. I also think the game should see balance updates instead of just firing in hundreds of more cards each time. Duncan and Blowers and Collins etc are just disgustingly underpriced for the performances they put on. More time should be spent cleaning up this mess.

It's only a mess in your opinion (perhaps shared by a handful of others?). The diversity in the cards and new card additions is what keeps it interesting for many ATG players. Mountain Goat Spencer was part of a Negro League Great Team added to the set, that's the only reason he is in. Bengie Molina was part of an expansion-era addition of over 100 cheap bench players that many had been clamoring for, to use in franchise leagues, etc.

I've only played 30 so ATG games while I've played 270 20XX so I know a lot more about 20XX than ATG. That being said, 20XX seems to be a much more playable game to me at this point than ATG. There is no five aces strategy in 20XX; it's too expensive and with starters at S5/S6 you have to construct a decent bullpen (probably at least 10 mill). The fact that your relievers have to face more than one batter also makes using cheap one-sided guys problematic. Yes, there are platoons but you need to spend lot to get a righty who is really good against lefties.

So there is a lot of variability on how you construct teams. You can use one-sided pitchers (and they are used a lot) whereas I have found that just doesn't work in ATG. In ATG, except for maybe Sutton, you're better off getting the more expensive guy rather than trying to cobble together cheap one-sided guys. Also you can put together different line-ups in 20XX against one-sided pitchers. The difference between some of your weaker position players and cheap bench guys is not that great. So you can strategize over the whole season--varying your teams--whereas I don't see how that is feasible in ATG. There is a lot of strategy pre-season but once the season starts then the team runs itself. I kind of like the day-to-day strategy in 20XX.

Putting together similar teams over and over again is not very fun...

They need to make really good platoon guys like Blowers much more expensive as well as make *S8s and *S9s a lot more expensive. Make non-star guys cheaper--very hard to use those guys right now. Make good relievers much cheaper. Maybe make one-sided starters cheaper. They're basically unusable in the game right now. That would create a lot more variability in team construction.

MaxPower,
I am interested in your view that platoons don't work well at 140M. Given your success rate, I figure you know what you are talking about. Could you expand on that a bit? It seems that that higher cap would give you more flexibility to use platoons, especially in DH leagues where the SPs tend to pitch more innings, giving more opportunity to exploit a platoon edge.