The first time I came here, I did two exhibition seasons and one full open league season.  Naturally, I didn't do very well.  Not sure about anything here I decided to go do something else for a while until I understood more.

That was back in 2011.  Yep.  Completely forgot I had an account here.

I came back to this just last month after finding the bookmark again, so here I am.  Still a total rookie.

There is a lot of useful info on the forums, but some of it is still kind of vague to me.  The reason for that, imho, is that the majority of forum-goers here know baseball and how the sim game is played.  I don't.

I came in here as part of the slim minority that like simulations and sim games.  I'm not in the know on stats, or the tools needed to know how to game the system.

But I'm learning.  I'd like to say Thanks to you folks who have helped out with advice and explanations.

*thumbs up*

Moving along!

One thing I will share is that I have this strange obsession with making teams using players only from 1885 to 1899, so wish me luck.

I think I'm getting better at this drafting thing.

Welcome back. Keep going and, most importantly, have fun!

My obsession with pre-1900 players is their names. Man, times have changed.

You think you've had a layoff.... I haven't had an account on here since 2002. This site kept me sane during 9/11, I would dig all day and check my teams at night.

Good luck brother and lets learn the game again ..

ARE WE RELATED?

Posted by alphabronx on 10/29/2015 3:09:00 PM (view original):
You think you've had a layoff.... I haven't had an account on here since 2002. This site kept me sane during 9/11, I would dig all day and check my teams at night.

Good luck brother and lets learn the game again ..

Thank you for what you did at that time. Most of us can't imagine what it must have been like.  It's great that you are back here.

Have fun!

If you really love picking old time players, find a theme league (or progressive) that uses just those players as it sounds like that makes the game more fun for you. And certainly have fun no matter what league you join.

I've actually thought about using all old players like that in an OL to experiment with hit and run. Those guys rarely struck out. They usually have high SB numbers but also high caught stealing numbers too. What I was thinking was setting hit and run on 5 and just see how that might work out...these guys make contact AND they have decent SB numbers. If the hit and run doesn't work, they might steal the bag a good percentage of the time anyway. I've yet to try it, but since you like using those guys Darth, perhaps you might give it a try and let me know how it goes. Just in case you don't keep up with this thread, I'll site mail you this idea too. I've enjoyed your participation in the leagues. Good luck!!!

Read the site mail and responded, but you knew that, lol. As I said, give me a chance to try that 6-man pitch staff. Probably won't work, but yah nevah know, right?

FWIW.. I made the playoffs once with a team made up entirely of position players pre 1900. I avoided the bad offensive normalization years and used only modern arms to avoid the horrendous defensive penalties. My pitching wasn't dominant enough to advance, however.

Well.  Just bought one more team for an open league.  Not going to do that again until the first two finish up.

I must say, not understanding some of the tools available to me really messed up my teams.  Hopefully I've got them cleaned up.

This third OL team I've started is one I'm not really expecting to get into the playoffs (but that would be nice).  It is an experiment I'm doing to see if I can get all 902 IPs out of John Clarkson.

Think I'll call the experiment Clarkson's Run.  The team is under a different name to protect the results.  If anyone is actually interested, I'll let you guys here know how it goes.

darthmetool, EVERYONE here has had a steep learning curve, you are doing fine. Read all the stickies on the Forum here, they all help strategy building (not that I am any good at it). 

There is a function in the draft center for your team to set search preferences to Advanced options - set it there and keep it there - it allows you to draft players using much more precise criteria. 

Use the # statistics - clicking on the advanced stats on a player's card when you click on their name - and use these also when drafting players. 

These are the so-called "normalized" stats which you should read about. These are how players are rated taking into account their performance against the average for the season they played which is then in turn compared to the historical average for baseball history. So this gives you some idea of how a player might be expected to perform against others from other eras. 

Remember the effect of baseball stadiums, effects that are sometimes dramatic. Beware of small sample size - a few games does not tell you anything about how good your team is or how well your players are performing. 

Try to develop teams that are shaped for their home stadium, and consider that the pricing structure makes deadball pitchers a distinct advantage, though they pull down the defensive performance of teams. 

But this advantage, while at times overwhelming, is not absolute - popfischer many of us who eschew use of a staff of deadball era pitchers have done well with a rotation of modern era arms, and I even came close to the playoffs a while back with a rotation entirely of post-2000 pitchers. 

Good luck. 

darthmetool, EVERYONE here has had a steep learning curve, you are doing fine. Read all the stickies on the Forum here, they all help strategy building (not that I am any good at it). 

There is a function in the draft center for your team to set search preferences to Advanced options - set it there and keep it there - it allows you to draft players using much more precise criteria. 

Done that part.  The stickies help a lot.  Been forum binging the past two weeks.

Use the # statistics

Doing that, too.

These are the so-called "normalized" stats which you should read about.

Read about those, too.  Not being snarky, just saying I found lots of good advice that I should have BEFORE I made those first two OL teams.

Remember the effect of baseball stadiums, effects that are sometimes dramatic.

This one I'm still getting the hang of.  Dang tough to work with.  Not many threads about working your team with the home ballpark.

Good luck. 

Thanks!  I think I'll need all I can get.  A lot of the posts I found helpful came from you, FYI.

Maybe if I can get some time (and lose some laziness) I will write a few articles for the forum.  Might title them "From the Cheap Seats".  A rookie's take on all this stuff.

Believe me when I say I have been going back and forth between here and Wikipedia looking up terms like Closer and Set Up.