My team St.Louis Vigilantes in Regular Joes world is the top Ranked team in Franchise Rankings but is currently 29-40 and 3-13 in my last 16 games. I have 5 players over 80 ovr and 2 @ 87 ovr. Can someone help me figure out what is wrong here?

One potential issue is your line-up is extremely RH hitter heavy. You only have ONE hitter with >67 rating vsRHP. That's not good.

Interesting point. I hadnt thought about that. Hmmm....that's not a easy or quick fix.. Thank you for your help

Get a CF. Mendez is a below average LF.

If you could get a Gap stop CF, it shouldn't take Malachi Lewis too long to be ready.

Overall is not a very good way to assess the quality of your team; it overemphasizes certain ratings that aren't that important (especially, very high stamina and durability in pitchers who are bad enough that you don't want them to be able to pitch 240 innings).

Your team is only OK. Your current record understates the quality of your team somewhat, but .500 is about where I'd expect you to end up, maybe a little worse than that.

To improve the team going forward in future offseasons:
1) As has been said before, you need a CF something terrible.
2) Get a legitimately excellent bat at DH.
3) The pitching staff lacks top-end arms, although you do have 5 ML-caliber SP, they're 4 SP3s and an SP5. If you got 2 genuinely good pitchers to replace your marginal back-end guys, especially in the bullpen, the staff would be in much better shape.

Good points. Thank you. I appreciate all the help I can get.

Better defense would help the pitchers out a lot. And as dedelman said, you shouldn't rate players too highly based on their Overall. I like to say that players with high Overalls who can't really hit, field a specific position, or get hitters out are the guys you see in the Rule 5 draft.

Ok so would it make more sense to sell everyone off and rebuild or is this team close enough that a few trades could get me closer to getting back on track?

You're kind of in the middle. The whole "sell everyone and rebuild" is a downer. If the world is worth a damn, it's going to take 3, or more, seasons to tear it down and build it back. So you're talking about competing in August of next year. IMO, it makes more sense to improve what you've got.

The team has potential but you need to do some shopping.

The cheap fixes that will see noticable improvement are a Real 2B (defensive wise) a real CF (defensive wise) and a bench defensive SS that match Rando Ordonez's defensive numbers.

Now the hard part. You have a 1A or 2 ish pitcher in Germany Lemke, a #4 maybe a 3 in D'Arby Lord and then a bunch of 5's / LrB type guys.

In the pen you have Felipe Pascual and that is about it. Pitching is hard to trade for because everyone wants it and no one wants to give it up. I'd work on defense as well as the pen this season, then see if you can land a 1,2, or #3 starter in the offseason. Should make a BIIIIG difference.

I'm the middle is a bad place to be I'm sure. So your saying to get a real 2B..... Bob Magee isn't a real 2B?? He has 9 plus plays already this season. He's also my best player. I don't think I truly understand the ratings. I think certain ratings are important and some aren't but I must be wrong. What are the important ratings?

Bob McGee also has 6 Errors so far this season. Last season he had 17 errors and 3 minus plays. Kind of offsets the 6 plus plays he had last year.

Up the middle (2B, SS, CF) I won't even dream of a player with range under 80. And the only way I allow a glove under 80 is if the range is really good. A true 'defensive' 2B, and CF will have range and glove over 85. SS you can vary a little bit but no ratings should be under 80 IMO.

Bob McGee will make a very very good LF.

its tough because with your range you have a bunch of guys who belong at at corners, but you can only put 4 people there.

For now I would put McGee at CF until you can get a new one and Moreneo at 2B. The plus plays should offset a little of the damage.

OK, this is where you have to understand that's there is more than one way to play the game. I think McGee is fine at 2B. I've used MUCH worse range/glove. I think 72/67 has been my bottom end. HBD is a plus/minus game. You'd like a better fielding 2B but he has a career OPS of .823. That's going to be hard to find at 2B but not so much in LF. My "goal" at 2B is 75/70 R/G.

OTOH, I try to never skimp at SS. 85 minimum across the board.

Your problem isn't McGee at 2B. But get that 66 range dude out of CF.

Thank you all very much. I appreciate all the info. I thought I understood the game and thought my team had a real chance to compete. I am disheartened and frustrated to learn I still really have no idea what im doing. At this time I have no replacement for my ML CF problem but I will address CF when I can.