It's now 14-24 since trade deadline. Have lost 10 of last 12 and are now 3 games out of first. What a joke.

Most recent game finally got some runs but my best pitcher struggled and my GOLD GLOVE WINNING SS has costly ERROR.

This doesn't make sense.

I see nobody replying and that's fine. I know there are so many factors that play into this, but "just bad luck" seems to be the ONLY answer here. If you look at my team and the last 38 games there have been so many collapses.

Bats dying when P has been good.
P bad when bats were good.
Random Error here and there.
Two of my best RP having terrible last 10-15 games. One of them has an ERA of 18.00 in the last 10 games. His ERA entering that stretch was 2.44

And the team is 12-22 in the division which is HUGE obviously. But just got swept by the guy who was in second place. Team had a 6 game lead in 1st place 38 games ago. That's not a big lead, but in those 38 games the team went 2-11 against division teams.

2-11?????

So we were 12-13 against everyone else. This is really just getting destroyed by the division and two of those teams are under .500 and one has 99 losses.

It doesn't add up. I'm sorry, but this is really frustrating.

Ha. I'm just gonna keep posting this sh*t show of a finish to a season.

Just lost again to the second worst team in league. Now 5-6 against him on the season and 1-4 in last 5. They have 99 losses.
Now lost 7 in a row.
11 of last 13.
14-25 since trade deadline.
AND now 2-12 against division in that span.

This is beyond stupid. I've been doing this off and on for a while. But this has to be the dumbest finish to a season I've ever seen. Bad luck or whatever, but nobody wants to respond and that's fine but you all know this is BS.

I was trying to be nice on your other thread, but the real answer here is that your team isn't very good, and was over performing for the first part of the season. What you're seeing now is a regression to the mean.

Your pitchers give up too many homeruns to be reliable (hence the hot and cold nature). Putting them in a park that is neutral for HRs was a bad idea. I also wouldn't draft that few innings unless my pitching was better. They also strikeout batters a lot, and Ks are expensive, which takes away money you could have spent to improve quality somewhere.

On the offensive side, while your hitters have good OBP for the most part, their defense and range is poor at best. Putting them in a neutral park was also a bad idea. They also don't have a common theme that you could exploit to your advantage. Some hit doubles, some don't. Some hit HRs (but normalize poorly), some don't. In general, they aren't very fast (speed is important at 80M) and most of them are right handed (so they won't have the advantage in the majority of their PAs).

Lastly, you underdrafted PAs, which means you are relying pretty heavily on AAA. This is a risky strategy because AAA player quality varies wildly and they are not consistent. You've actually gotten pretty lucky on this front so far, but expecting it to be the case for the whole season is probably not wise.

Before you start blaming the simulation, maybe take another look at what inputs you're giving it.

I'm not asking for nice, so thank you for this response. That's why I've been relentless with this thread.

I know my P give up too many HRs. Didn't think a few of them would have given their + numbers on their season. My ace in particular. But yeah that was a risk I took, but they have also been fantastic at BB and OBP. But yeah, the HRs have killed me. I also didn't look for high K guys, just ended up getting them. My focus was low BB/9#, low HR/9 and low OAV+. I also drafted few innings and did a platoon thing with my rotation and Long A and B relief options. It actually worked until the last few weeks when a couple of them got tired. So it was a risk.

I actually drafted a lot of guys (my 1-5 to be exact) that hit a lot of doubles and that's why I chose a high +3 doubles park. We're in the top 3 in doubles, so that paid off. A lot of my guys did over perform and a lot of those numbers were at my home ballpark. That said, my pitchers declining (at home a bunch) and regressing to the mean also hurt my home field performance. So, yeah, you're right about that.

I don't agree about the no Speed thing. We're 2nd in SB and I have four guys with 78 SPD or higher and they've all stolen 184 bases combined. Yes, 80+ of those were one of them but still, we had 4 good baserunners out of 8 on avg.

And yeah, I did get lucky on the AAA players and a lot of them produced very well for me the first half of the season and I knew that a couple were over performing and once they started to slide, I stopped starting them.

So I do agree with everything you're saying, but this collapse has still been a little ridiculous IMO. A bit too drastic in some areas but I guess that's how it goes. The things I took a risk on, backfired the last 40 games of the season.

Thanks for the feedback and taking a look. I'm trying to get better at this.

ALSO - last thing I'll add but I'd LOVE your thoughts on this.

The last game I just lost against a team with 99 losses.

I faced '84 John Denny. He was at 81% ENTERING the game. He went 7in and gave up 2 hits. So..... really? What's the response to that?

Bad luck? Bad winds? My players all had the flu? They're the 1919 White Sox and are throwing this thing? If so, where is my cut? :)

Lol, it happens. I’ve used 1888 Silver King in as many as four consecutive games before and he’s been solid. Then I tried it again and he got thrashed. 81% isn’t 0%, theres just a higher likelihood of a bad start than 100% (but not a guarantee).

As for the speed thing, while your team isn’t SLOW, it also isn’t FAST. Stolen bases mean next to nothing. It’s your Speed rating that determines how likely players are to take he extra base, etc. While there are definitely many ways to win, some top owners only take players over 80 Speed at 80M-120M (or at least the majority of their players).

For context on why “stolen bases mean next to nothing,” a few owners, myself included, have run tests where we roster a team filled with guys >= 90 speed but set their stolen base settings to 0 and they’ve still won 100+ games. In my own case, I sent the same team into the same league twice and had stolen bases set to 5 for one and 0 for the other. The 0 team won the World Series and the TOC after winning 110+ games. The 5 team also made the LCS and won 100+ games, but at the very least this showed me that SBs barely matter.

Odd, I never start a P who's less than 98%-100%. Good to know I can if need be.

Maybe I need to finally try a league with a higher cap limit. Any suggestions on that front?

Thanks for all the feedback.

Skunk206, another top owner, frequently runs leagues with no restrictions (similar to open leagues) at caps of 110M and up. The only other difference is that there is no AAA.

I also run a 100M league with the same style (no AAA) that will have a new season starting soon.

Check out the Theme League Classifieds forum. That’s a good place to start.

Okay great. The idea of drafting all my bench players is awesome.

Thanks man.

I've got a $114M and $123M league open right now. Come join us.

Also, I once had a team at 87-60 cruising to a division title with a 10-game lead. Finished L15 and missed the playoffs entirely. No fatigue issues and no other explanation. Bad luck isn't the answer we often want to hear, but it's a legitimate thing. Also, don't discount small sample sizes. A full 162-game SIM season is actually a very small sample size when dealing with a statistical simulation of this many variables. When our teams are losing, we expect them to get better, and people tend to blame the SIM for screwing them. When our teams are winning, we expect them to keep winning, and people tend to give themselves the credit for building a good team. Weird things happen though. A lot. Ozo's right about your team in general though.