i'm finishing up an OL with joss's in half the playoff teams. i got the most wins at 112 with no deadball pitchers (Maddux, Merritt, Lee, Eckersley, Halladay). now hopefully i'm not victim to the 100 win curse...

I guess that the issue really is that we all draft the same players. If there were some sort of draft for every league, like they have in the Strat-O- Matic simulation, certain players would still be more desirable, but everyone wouldn't have them. Overall, I like this simulatiion, but it is getting tedious. There certainly are managers who eschew the "cookies" and have success. I think the ultimate reason certain players appear with such regularity is that many of us are lazy, and are looking for a short cut. Many of the flaws of this game are with the players, not the simulation. But, I sincerely wish they could incorporate some of the better features of the other simulations. When was the last time anyone has seen a comment from anyone in admin in these forums? they used to be in here pretty regularly.

Shameless plug - I still have a theme going that needs five that has it so there are no Deadball pitchers allowed. Been stalled on needing five for about a week now....

I don't get how people continually play in open leagues, yet complaint hat they face the same cookies all the time.  There is an easy solution, other than complaining or quitting the site.

JOIN OR START A THEME LEAGUE. 

Sure, some theme leagues take some time to fill up, but if a league is well-thought-out and the owner is known for running good leagues, these usually fill fairly quickly. 

The leagues I play in are usually 1947-present to avoid the deadball era pitchers.  It can be done.  It will be done.

I was obviously completely frustrated when I put up the original post a couple of months ago.  Since then I have joined several $60M themes, and several franchise themes.  I still like the idea of open leagues, it's just unfortunate that you pretty much have to cave in and use the cookies to win.  I had been using new players and new ideas and was wallowing around .500.  Threw a few cookies back into the mix and winning percentage goes up exponentially.  Greg Jefferies hits .406, I've got an '07 Ed Walsh about to get win #40, Rickey Henderson stealing 110 bases, etc.  I have an OL team that is 95-46 right now.  So it isn't that it's that hard to win, it's just that I really don't get any pleasure out of winning that way.  It's why I never owned a Carruthers and I never owned a Joss.  The great and good players of every era should be pretty even against the great players of another era.  The skill should be in balancing a full roster, strategizing, ballpark factors, managing fatigue, etc.  It just doesn't make sense for instance that 70's players suck so bad.  Take a $10M Marichal or Palmer and they will go 15-22.  We all know the futility of Joe Morgan and I can't count how many times I've been burned by 70's Cepeda, Mays, McCovey, Jim Rice.  Many that were so bad I had to release them.  Anyway...not saying anything that anybody doesn't know - and I'm really not whining.  Just wish the other "managers" were more interested in trying new players and ideas than reinventing the wheel again and again.  Thank GOD I haven't seen the Dominican Boggs guy in awhile - how could that be interesting?

Actually I think liga's teams show a lot more diversity than many other owners'.  He uses lots of different combinations, most of which use some version of Boggs, and wins with most of them, but it's hardly the same melange of Castillo, Raines, Roberts, Dilone, etc that one sees over and over and over again.

I'm currently in 2 open leagues. '07 Walsh that is doing so well for you, for me is 9-28. I have a few cookies in '80Dilone, '92 BipRoberts, 07Figgins, '75GaryCarter, '95Weiss, '06Meredith, '12Weilman, '18Toney. Really glad to say I'm currently in first place with a 48-60 record.  If Walsh would be pitching anywhere close to what he is suppose to I'd at least be .500.

I hadn't played in open leagues for a while before these 2 and they will probably be the last for a good long time.

Contrarian - Perhaps I spoke rashly of Liga's teams.  I was in a league with him where he was smoking the league, so I went and looked at his other teams.  He was running about 6 or 7 teams all at different stages - and they were all nearly identical with only one or two changes.  Perhaps that was just a random thing, but at the time I thought they were so similar it wouldn't even be interesting to follow them if I was the owner - and they were all playing .600+ ball - most well better than that.