You get put in the T.O.C., you get hammered with the craziest fatigue system you have ever seen. You lose in the first round and then you wonder what happened.

Seriously though you will see the humor and irony after playing a few.  Few wise men have figured out the TOC, and even they will say that they were lucky.  You need a mountain of pitching to get through the tournament.

32 seeded teams, all of whom are WS finalists.  Five rounds -- first three are best of 5, last two are best of 7 if memory serves me right.   If you are an $80 MM OL team, you may be a little confused if you are thrown into a $90 MM or even a $100 MM TOC.  For TOC purposes, the actual salaries of your AAA players are added into your approximately $80 MM base and, as you know, they run in the $1.5-$2.5 MM range each.  From what I've seen over the years, being in a $90 or even $100 MM tournament won't hurt your competitive chances.  The owners who sometimes get a raw deal are those who come out of Progressives; they rarely win.  No clue how SIM calculates fatigue in the TOC, but it's a little bizarre.  Someone like contrarian23 would know.  TOC finalists get a boatload of credits and obviously the winner gets the most.       

Fatigue goes from "winded" to "tired" to "exhausted" to "near death" in 2 or 3 games....kinda like an over 50 softball league team

Nothing to add here, just a big congrats on the WS appearance!

IMO, if you have drafted a reasonable amount of IP (such as an OL where there is a minimum of 1200 and you get 2 AAA pitchers) I don't think that fatigue is much of an issue.  It isn't total luck to win one of them either.

Without mentioning the astonishingly great 26 innings pitched "relievers" name, don't start him or some owner with a ridiculously high winning percentage will blast you in the owners forum for doing it.  That's what I learned from my first TOC.  On a more serious note, when competing, just don't leave any bullets in the chamber.....and GL

What crimsonblue said is right. If there's any danger of elimination, and in a 5 game series there is as soon as you lose a game, you throw everything you've got at winning that round. It's not totally random, but it is random enough that you should prioritise getting to the next round well over having your best team ready for that round. 

I wouldn't say it's random, but luck certainly plays a big part in any short series, and you have to win 5 of them to win a TOC.  In addition to good fortune, you need to rely on strategy and matchups.  I've only won twice, and in one of them fatigue was such a problem that I tanked G1 of the finals to give my guys some extra rest.  Put us in a hole, but I had rested SP the rest of the way and won it in 7.  Anything you can do to give yourself an edge is fair game in my opinion (and crimsonblue, whoever whined at you about starting a low-IP ace needs to be slapped.)

There are many reasons fatigue is more of a challenge in TOCs than in a normal WIS season.  Here are two:
-- Unlike early regular season games, there is no "damping", so if you have an extra-inning game early in the TOC, or an offensive explosion, your guys will take a major fatigue hit
-- Unlike postseason WIS, you only get extra rest between rounds if you win your series in fewer games than your next opponent won his.  If you both sweep, neither of you gets extra rest (I am 99% sure of this - please someone correct me if this is erroneous)

I've done very poorly in TOCs over the years, so I'll refrain from giving any other advice.  There are many owners who have been much more successful at it.

Posted by contrarian23 on 11/2/2011 11:40:00 PM (view original):
I wouldn't say it's random, but luck certainly plays a big part in any short series, and you have to win 5 of them to win a TOC.  In addition to good fortune, you need to rely on strategy and matchups.  I've only won twice, and in one of them fatigue was such a problem that I tanked G1 of the finals to give my guys some extra rest.  Put us in a hole, but I had rested SP the rest of the way and won it in 7.  Anything you can do to give yourself an edge is fair game in my opinion (and crimsonblue, whoever whined at you about starting a low-IP ace needs to be slapped.)

There are many reasons fatigue is more of a challenge in TOCs than in a normal WIS season.  Here are two:
-- Unlike early regular season games, there is no "damping", so if you have an extra-inning game early in the TOC, or an offensive explosion, your guys will take a major fatigue hit
-- Unlike postseason WIS, you only get extra rest between rounds if you win your series in fewer games than your next opponent won his.  If you both sweep, neither of you gets extra rest (I am 99% sure of this - please someone correct me if this is erroneous)

I've done very poorly in TOCs over the years, so I'll refrain from giving any other advice.  There are many owners who have been much more successful at it.

Contrarian23 is right.  Nobody should blast another owner for doing anything legal it takes to win.  Rumor has it that the owner who was victimized by contrarian23's brilliant fatigue strategy in that classic 7-game final threw his entire bullpen at contrarian23 in a subsequent TOC to advance past him to the second round, effectively demolishing his own chances for future advancement.  But you have to play one round at a time, and it was worth it.  The 7-game TOC final to which contrarian23 refers, decided in the 9th inning of Game 7, was a classic final, even if I'm not the world's most unbiased source on the subject.  

Posted by brianjw on 11/2/2011 11:28:00 PM (view original):
What crimsonblue said is right. If there's any danger of elimination, and in a 5 game series there is as soon as you lose a game, you throw everything you've got at winning that round. It's not totally random, but it is random enough that you should prioritise getting to the next round well over having your best team ready for that round. 

I have the opposite approach. if I lose round 1 it's no big loss. It's much worse to win a few rounds and then lose because of fatigue. I like to give my players adequate rest in the early rounds, then if I advance far enough I have a good chance to win the whole thing.

I'm surprised CaptainStatistics23 tanked a game in a playoff.

And I highly recommend everyone listen to rbrains and do your best to lose in the first round. Helps out those of us interested in round 2 a lot!

so its a double loss elimination? The TOC seems really neat. Who thinks of these things?