hey y'all. Brand nubian here. So I'm about 22 games into my first season and my offense is going strong (5th out of 24 teams in runs scored) but my pitching is getting obliterated. I'm the worst in the league, and its not even close. I've given up 30% more runs than the 2nd worst team - yikes! Having done some research before picking my team, I was fully prepared for my pitching to be worse than what it would appear to be on paper (given the strength of the hitters on the other teams). So what I'm wondering is if this is a blip due to small sample size or whether my pitching is really that awful. Below are some numbers through 22 games. What can y'all teach this brand nubian?

Player SN IP OAV OBP ERA
Nichols, Kid 1898 59.7 0.321 0.387 6.03
Mullane, Tony 1892 51 0.275 0.365 5.82
Johnson, Syl 1934 22.7 0.351 0.413 5.56
Fassino, Edmund (P) 2020 18 0.303 0.321 4.5
Olson, Gregg 1990 12 0.244 0.346 6.75
O'Day, Darren 2014 11.7 0.4 0.446 10.8
Naulty, Dan 1999 9.7 0.194 0.342 5.59
Guardado, Eddie 1997 9 0.273 0.333 3
Jefferson, Connor (P) 2020 6 0.424 0.472 7.5
Ramirez, Neil (AAA) 2019 2.7 0.273 0.385 3.38
Kelley, Shawn (AAA) 2017 1 0.25 0.25 0
Foulke, Keith 1999 18.3 0.376 0.438 10.31
Gomez, Lefty 1930 10 0.38 0.426 10.8
TEAM TOTALS -- 231.7 0.318 0.386 6.49

Welcome to WIS!

Couple of quick tips:

1. Read through contrarian23's pinned thread Frequently Asked Questions about SLB. Lots of useful info there.

2. Pay special attention to pitch counts. I see you started 1999 Keith Foulke four times. With his real life innings pitched per game (IP/G) of 1.57, you really don't want to do that. He'll be running on fumes after 25-30 pitches.

3. Sticking with Foulke, I notice you already dumped him to the waiver wire. Keep in mind there's a penalty every time you use the WW, meaning your salary cap goes down. A lot of new owners hit the WW panic button early and wind up with a $60-70M team in an $80M Open League. Nothing wrong with using the WW if it makes sense, but generally speaking WW moves early in the season based on small sample sizes don't make sense.

Good luck!

Crazy gives good advice, especially the one about watching IP/G. If a pitcher goes too long, their performance drops off the cliff in a hurry. Just fixing that will be a big help. His waiver wire advice is also right. Stick with your team through the season, and you can study it afterwards to see what you can learn. If you dump players too early, you don't have enough sample size to know if it was a statistical fluke or a bad choice for the team. It's about the long game - stick with it and don't get discouraged!

One more thing. You've got a decent rookie relief pitcher ("Connor Jefferson") who in real life is 2018 Silvino Bracho: 31 innings, ERC# of 3.07, but an IP/G of only 1.00. Give him a Target Pitch Count/Max Pitch Count of 15/15 or 15/20, and he'll do much better for you than at the 40 pitch count he appears to be set at right now.

Appreciate the tips guys. Very helpful. I see what you mean about the WW too. I need to fight the urge to do something to my roster when my team is getting the best down on a routine basis.

An interesting exercise would be to compare your pitching staff to the teams with really good records and see if you can learn anything. Here's a team (not mine) from a league I am in currently. We're 97 games in and this team is 69-28. Here is the pitching staff (real life stats):

Owen, Frank	1905	R	45	40	22	14	0	356.0	1366	294	83	6	60	133	.227	.99	2.10	10	4	0
Rudolph, Dick	1916	R	44	40	20	13	3	333.0	1285	284	80	7	40	142	.235	.97	2.16	3	5	1
Joss, Addie	1906	R	36	33	22	10	1	299.0	1117	233	57	3	46	112	.218	.93	1.72	3	2	0
Wagner, Billy	2004	L	45	0	4	0	21	49.0	182	31	13	5	6	59	.181	.77	2.42	2	1	0
Podgajny, Johnny	1940	R	4	4	1	3	0	38.0	143	35	12	0	1	13	.250	.97	2.83	1	1	0
Sampson, Chris	2006	R	12	3	2	1	0	34.0	130	25	8	3	5	15	.205	.88	2.12	1	0	0
Walsh, Ed(AAA)	1915	R	3	3	3	0	0	29.0	106	20	4	0	7	13	.202	.96	1.33	0	0	0
Heathcock, Jeff	1983	R	6	3	2	1	1	28.0	111	19	10	1	4	12	.181	.82	3.21	1	0	1
Spencer, George	1950	R	11	1	1	0	0	27.0	99	13	7	3	7	5	.141	.76	2.49	0	0	0
Wickman, Bob	2006	R	28	0	0	2	18	26.0	107	24	3	1	2	25	.231	1.00	1.04	0	0	0
Herrera, Kelvin	2018	R	27	0	1	1	14	25.7	95	19	3	2	2	22	.207	.82	1.05	0	0	0
Totals	--	--	261	127	78	45	58	1,244.7	4741	997	280	31	180	551	.222	0.95	2.02	21	13	2

The team I posted has about 170 fewer IP than you do. By spending less on quantity, the owner was able to buy much higher quality. You have one pitcher (O'Day) with a WHIP under 1.00. Every pitcher on the team above has a WHIP less than 1.00, except Wickman who is at 1.00 exactly. His pitching staff also gave up few fewer home runs. Through 97 games in our league, that team has allowed 23 HR. Yours has given up more than that in 28 games.

The team above has the lowest WHIP, second lowest ERA, and fewest total runs allowed.

1245 IP is low for an open league - you need to know what you are doing to manage fatigue when you go that low...but it should give you something to aim for.

In general when just starting out, I recommend following all of the good advice above AND looking at the rosters of the best teams in your league. Try to figure out how those teams allocated their $80M differently than what you did. Where did they spend more $, where did they spend less, and what did they get for that $?

Posted by DCNats4000 on 4/11/2020 12:51:00 AM (view original):
Appreciate the tips guys. Very helpful. I see what you mean about the WW too. I need to fight the urge to do something to my roster when my team is getting the best down on a routine basis.

What they all said above. I second every word of it. As for the WW we have all been through that and learning quickly to use it only as a last resort or never early on is a good thing.

crazystengel noted that you can identify who your AAA rookies are. If you don't know that you can do this, check out the thread in this forum called "AAA Just the Charts" which tells you step by step how to do so. These are your bench players. So you can draft 8 full time players in the field, your pitching staff but otherwise get $200,000 guys that you do send to WW and replace with the AAA players who are better as your bench and use the WWW money gained to get an extra pitcher, or pinch hitter.

But you are ahead of the curve so far even in just asking the right questions. We all have had our learning curve period of getting our teams hammered. You will get through it sooner than most. But do look up the things on the forum crazystengel noted, especially contrarian23's work on pitching and on fatigue, and the AAA identification thread. Good luck !

Thanks for the tips everyone. Lots of good advice to apply to my current and future teams. Thank you contrarian for posting a sample pitching staff. My staff is too top heavy and I need more balance. In building my team I tried to focus on OAV+ and WHIP+.

I hope at least some of my poor performance is attributable to bad luck. Kid Nichols is on pace to have his worst season in the history of this site for me. Hopefully that means some better days ahead.

Happy Easter.

I ‘ve been at this a few years and won my first title(under a different name) the first time out...Ever since I’ve become more aware of how this game works, I’ve consistently finished with teams with a subpar(under .500) record...
There is a thread somewhere that explains what “stats” are important when selecting players and what stats are irrelevant...After a while of trying to find that thread again, I am hoping someone here can resurrect it to help us underachievers out a bit...Anticipatory thanx...