2038.6 Make Love, Not War

[ae37jr]

Make Love, Not War
War..Huh..Yeah… What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Uh..ha...haa...ha

Well, opening day has just passed and you know what that means....the media guide was published! Don't let my sarcastic post take away from the hard work that those folks put into it. It is truly a piece of art and distances our league from all the other ham and egger OOTP leagues out there. No matter what this post says I appreciate all that work.

But once again, like every other year... The Brooklyn Robins were shown no respect in the previews. This year they say we are the worst team in the BBA. The main argument is that we lost a totally insignificant amount of WAR this offseason. I forget how much. Maybe one or two games, it could have been as high as 34 WAR. I dunno.

But this just goes to show another gaping hole in the WAR system. Brooklyn traded away the whole damn team. Along with that goes every at bat and inning pitched of the player leaving. I don't have the time, nor the patience, nor the actual chip on my shoulder to look up the exact data. But I can do some napkin math to figure out that Flores, Ruiz, Andres, Bates, Perez, Young, Cambell, and Coujoe pitched at least 700 innings, probably closer to 8, maybe as high as 9. There are approximately 1,450 innings in a season. So at the bare minimum half of our innings pitched vanished off the face of the earth. Most of the replacements we brought in are rookies who have no track record. Some of them do suck, I admit it. But not all. To automatically call them replacement players is not fair.

Plus we have to take into account players who will have added playing time. Take Jose Campos for example. Last season he had .3 WAR in 200 at bats. If he gets 600, you'd have to think his WAR would be near one. That sounds minimal, but for a team that lost their entire roster, it adds up. .6 WAR x 15(9 hitters 6 pitchers) would be an added 9 WAR. And that's not even considering players entering prime or buy low players.

Bottom line. Brooklyn is bad, but we don't suck. I could name 6-7 teams that will be worse then us this season. if we could manage to get two halfway decent staring pitchers, I'd be talking about playoffs. So take that WAR. I'll show you and your -34 wins what a .500 team looks like at the end of the day. Uh..ha...haa...ha

[Ted]

I get the enjoyment of being salty about predictions, but I did say you'd be 86-78 with a second place finish last year. I mean, every year isn't that accurate, right?

[RonCo]

Half the fun of the guide is drawing angst.

[7teen]

Half the fun of the guide is drawing angst.

If you guys good, please pick something out every year I disagree with so I can ride it out for a bunch of TNs and angry posts.

I have nothing this year.

As for Brooklyn, I've been keeping my eye on you. Madison's pitching philosophy has turned into "Wilson trying to figure out what Brooklyn does" That may be bad! haha

[ae37jr]

As for Brooklyn, I've been keeping my eye on you. Madison's pitching philosophy has turned into "Wilson trying to figure out what Brooklyn does" That may be bad! haha

By all means, don't try anything we are doing this year. My pitching staff is really bad and it's not part of a master plan. I'm focusing more on the minors/stock piling of young players for a while and my BBA team is just holdovers who nobody wants to trade for and stop gags.

I do reccomend leveraging your bullpen as much as possible. OOTP online league GM's usually grossly overvalue SP and equally undervalue RP as a rule. And in 2038 BBA talent distribution... there aren't enough good starters to go around. My gameplan last year was to have 2 really good starters(cause you need them come playoff time) and build a great bullpen. Then do what Stephen in LB is known for. Quick hook the mediocre starters and use lefty righty matchups to your advantage. In the end it didn't work cause I ran into an all time great team in Rockville in the playoffs. But I still believe in that game plan and think MLB is moving in that same direction.

[7teen]

My plan last year was similar to the start. Ride 2 solid starters every 5th day and then hybrid the innings out after that. Rather than give a mediocre at best starter 150-200 innings, spread those out more among other relievers. I'd start relievers with low pitch counts, use "starters" as middle or long relievers (I think those guys are more effective out of relief roles) and try and keep 6-7 guys at 100 IP rather than 2-3 at 200 and the other guys at 50. It worked last year. Not so sure this year.

But that "idea" was somewhat modeled on what I was picking up from Brooklyn.