Off Topic
Taking a Look Around the Krill System
April 8, 2063 – The news that every team in the Bikini organization jumped out of the gate with some positive vibes brought a surge of both joy and relief to hearts of Bikini fans across the globe (meaning me). Being at the helm of this gang has been a strange and fun and crazy trip full of ups and downs, but over the past three years (call them the v25 years?) it’s been considerably frustrating.
My goal in 2057, my first season at the conn, was to begin to be competitive in the BBA, but to focus on building from the bottom up. In other words, the Seattle minors were an odd mix of a couple of interesting prospects, but pretty routinely horrible teams. To cap it, those prospects were mostly already heading into the bigs—but were not the mega-prospects one would expect from an organization that had been drafting in the upper ranges, and the one discovered star that was moving through the ranks was a pitcher who never grew up.
Sigh.
Cutting to the chase a bit, here is a table that displays how the “plan” has yielded to date.
Wins by Season
Let’s look at this in groups of two seasons:
2057-2058:
I think it’s common wisdom that when a new GM takes over a struggling franchise, the first ten win bump is the easiest. I think that’s totally fair. Often you can get that kind of improvement just by removing a few guys who should never have been playing to begin with. Though we picked up only six games at the big league level, 2057 pretty much showed that to be true up and down the table. The organization as a whole won 48 more games than they had won the year prior.
2058 was a second round of the same—with the organization picking up an additional Adams worth of victories (42), with the Big League club posting 17 of them. 78 wins ins nothing to crow about, but we were on our way. It’s perhaps notable that Ogden, our R-level squad did not budge, and in fact regressed a touch. A lot of this is (I think) due to drafting 16 and 17 year old players, and brining up IC kids—all of whom are still under-developed for a league that often starts 20 and 21 year olds. It’s all good. Variability at the R-level is high, and tied to a team’s draft strategy…as we’ll maybe see.
I should note that (I think) this was the year I began to change my tune on coaches. For much of my OOTP career, since I couldn’t find a good way to test their value, I had come to the conclusion that any impact they had was slight. To be fair, that’s still probably right. But even a slight impact is an impact, so I began clearing house in phases, replacing cheap coaches with better ones every time I could stomach releasing a guy. This took me about three seasons to finally get to the point where I basically like my staff…though improvement is always possible.
Did it matter?
I don’t know. Bikini’s minors are pretty good, but to humble brag, I managed to have some pretty deep minors back in YS9, and I rarely paid much attention to coaches. So, your mileage may vary. Either way. I’ve had fun assuming they will make a difference.
2059-2060:
2059 was a pivotal season for the Krill, and maybe not in a good way. The Parent Klub added a pair of wins, getting to the edge of .500, but somehow managed to luck into to the playoffs, and even win a series. It was my view that the team was better than it performed—though I’m not sure everyone believed that until maybe that series victory. If then. But the big deal was that we made two deadline acquisitions, adding both Arturo Meza and Jon Brown to the rotation.
We gained another 29 wins across the organization, most of them in the lower three levels, and we were raising up in Bob’s most amazing minor league rankings, suggesting the system was now getting stable and perhaps productive. For the first time, the organization as a whole rose over the magical .500 line. Bottom line, anticipation was high for the team entering 2060. The rotation was now pretty stout, the bullpen was solid, and the kid position players were growing up into their prime. The Krill were ready to hit the accelerator, right?
Well…hmmm….
Enter v25.
Let’s just say that I did not react well to the changes, and the random generator in OOTP 25 was not particularly good to me. 2060 saw the Bikini pitching staff essentially implode for what seemed to me to be no particular reason. It also saw our bats' BABIP crash to the floor. Bikini had not been built on contact before, and the poser side was not strong enough to compensate for whatever combination of system change and my error you want to apply. And the pitchers...don't get me started.
The first v25 season saw us drop 17 games across the organization and fall back to lick our wounds with only 76 wins. And it was system-wide. Only Kamloops in AA saw a rising win total. Worse, that fadeout came at a time when we had decided the financials were looking better. Not anticipating the shredding we (and v25) did to our Fan Interest, the Krill spent more than we should have, and had to pour even more PPT into cash. (Aside, I literally hate spending PPT for cash. Though necessary, it’s nowhere near as fun as funneling it into players).
Still, to be honest, I thought we were a much better team than 76 wins showed us.
2061-2062:
So I was not MASSIVELY surprised when the Krill made a big bounce back to win 89 games in 2061 and hit the post season again. Yes, 89 felt a little high, but not so high that I felt overly giddy. Especially since we went out and got Takashi Nakamura, who meant our rotation depth was made of now much stouter stuff.
The annoying bit here is that despite winning at the parent level, the organization had another 9-game step-back—which was surprising since Bikini was still climbing in the prospect rankings overall. Scanning the results were interesting. Yes, my kids were growing pretty well overall. A few misses here or there, but my take on things right now is that I was promoting players relatively quickly, hence again, my teams tended to be young for their levels.
That’s on me, of course. It’s my decision where to play prospects.
The one thing I’ll say that I did in reaction to the 2060-2061 overlap was to start looking at the draft in two ways: (1) to find interesting prospects, but (2) to make my R, SA, and A level teams better. Especially in the last ten rounds.
Anyway, after a very fun and successful 2061, I once again got complacent in my assessments, and brought a large majority of the team back for 2062. And why not? We were still “young” in the lineup, and the bullpen was now fully Winston Morris and Enrique Villarreal’s. We won 89 last year. If we regressed to 85, maybe that would still be good, but if the kids are still growing, and 90+ season wasn’t impossible to envision.
Sigh.
The Krill dropped 11 games, down to 78 wins. Admittedly we were better than that, but once the playoffs became impossible to wish ourselves to, we cut bait, traded the only center fielder we had ready to play, and brought up some kids to see what happened. What happened was meh.
The silver lining to 2062 is that I did focus on the lower minors once again, and it showed. Even with the Krill dropping 11 games, the organization was five games better—most of that being in R-Ogden and SA-Port au Prince.
So, What’s the Plan In 2063?
OOTP’s BNN picks the Krill to win the division. I don’t think that’s in the cards strong enough to go put any Brewster Bucks on it, but it’s not out of the realm of feasibility. The offense has been retooled since the beginning of 2062, and our corners can actually play defense. We’re still a question mark at center field, but that answer could still be positive, and the rotation is interestingly good but not particularly deep. I’ll be juggling relievers into staring slots at moments, I figure.
Maybe it will all work out.
But mostly what I want to see now is another ratcheting up of winning in the minors. Note, I’m not focused on post season appearances there. Maybe I should, but really what I’m trying to create is a steady stream of players flowing over a foundation of winning. If that happens, then post season appearances should follow.
We’ll see.
All I can say for certain is that I’m having a lot of fun fiddling with the whole organization.
Oh, and I can say one more thing, too … welcome aboard v26! May your arrival wash out the taste of defeat that your predecessor and I conspired to make happen.
April 8, 2063 – The news that every team in the Bikini organization jumped out of the gate with some positive vibes brought a surge of both joy and relief to hearts of Bikini fans across the globe (meaning me). Being at the helm of this gang has been a strange and fun and crazy trip full of ups and downs, but over the past three years (call them the v25 years?) it’s been considerably frustrating.
My goal in 2057, my first season at the conn, was to begin to be competitive in the BBA, but to focus on building from the bottom up. In other words, the Seattle minors were an odd mix of a couple of interesting prospects, but pretty routinely horrible teams. To cap it, those prospects were mostly already heading into the bigs—but were not the mega-prospects one would expect from an organization that had been drafting in the upper ranges, and the one discovered star that was moving through the ranks was a pitcher who never grew up.
Sigh.
Cutting to the chase a bit, here is a table that displays how the “plan” has yielded to date.
Wins by Season
| 2056 | 2057 | 2058 | 2059 | 2060 | 2061 | 2062 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BIK | 55 | 61 | 78 | 80 | 76 | 89 | 78 |
| AAA-PAS | 57 | 68 | 76 | 73 | 68 | 64 | 78 |
| AA-KAM | 60 | 74 | 81 | 71 | 78 | 74 | 65 |
| A-LCL | 41 | 52 | 62 | 82 | 77 | 66 | 62 |
| SA-PAP | 26 | 32 | 35 | 38 | 35 | 31 | 39 |
| R-OGD | 26 | 26 | 23 | 32 | 25 | 26 | 33 |
| Total Wins | 265 | 313 | 355 | 376 | 359 | 350 | 355 |
| Games Delta | 48 | 42 | 21 | -17 | -9 | 5 | |
| Organization Win% | 0.363 | 0.429 | 0.486 | 0.515 | 0.492 | 0.479 | 0.486 |
Let’s look at this in groups of two seasons:
2057-2058:
I think it’s common wisdom that when a new GM takes over a struggling franchise, the first ten win bump is the easiest. I think that’s totally fair. Often you can get that kind of improvement just by removing a few guys who should never have been playing to begin with. Though we picked up only six games at the big league level, 2057 pretty much showed that to be true up and down the table. The organization as a whole won 48 more games than they had won the year prior.
2058 was a second round of the same—with the organization picking up an additional Adams worth of victories (42), with the Big League club posting 17 of them. 78 wins ins nothing to crow about, but we were on our way. It’s perhaps notable that Ogden, our R-level squad did not budge, and in fact regressed a touch. A lot of this is (I think) due to drafting 16 and 17 year old players, and brining up IC kids—all of whom are still under-developed for a league that often starts 20 and 21 year olds. It’s all good. Variability at the R-level is high, and tied to a team’s draft strategy…as we’ll maybe see.
I should note that (I think) this was the year I began to change my tune on coaches. For much of my OOTP career, since I couldn’t find a good way to test their value, I had come to the conclusion that any impact they had was slight. To be fair, that’s still probably right. But even a slight impact is an impact, so I began clearing house in phases, replacing cheap coaches with better ones every time I could stomach releasing a guy. This took me about three seasons to finally get to the point where I basically like my staff…though improvement is always possible.
Did it matter?
I don’t know. Bikini’s minors are pretty good, but to humble brag, I managed to have some pretty deep minors back in YS9, and I rarely paid much attention to coaches. So, your mileage may vary. Either way. I’ve had fun assuming they will make a difference.
2059-2060:
2059 was a pivotal season for the Krill, and maybe not in a good way. The Parent Klub added a pair of wins, getting to the edge of .500, but somehow managed to luck into to the playoffs, and even win a series. It was my view that the team was better than it performed—though I’m not sure everyone believed that until maybe that series victory. If then. But the big deal was that we made two deadline acquisitions, adding both Arturo Meza and Jon Brown to the rotation.
We gained another 29 wins across the organization, most of them in the lower three levels, and we were raising up in Bob’s most amazing minor league rankings, suggesting the system was now getting stable and perhaps productive. For the first time, the organization as a whole rose over the magical .500 line. Bottom line, anticipation was high for the team entering 2060. The rotation was now pretty stout, the bullpen was solid, and the kid position players were growing up into their prime. The Krill were ready to hit the accelerator, right?
Well…hmmm….
Enter v25.
Let’s just say that I did not react well to the changes, and the random generator in OOTP 25 was not particularly good to me. 2060 saw the Bikini pitching staff essentially implode for what seemed to me to be no particular reason. It also saw our bats' BABIP crash to the floor. Bikini had not been built on contact before, and the poser side was not strong enough to compensate for whatever combination of system change and my error you want to apply. And the pitchers...don't get me started.
The first v25 season saw us drop 17 games across the organization and fall back to lick our wounds with only 76 wins. And it was system-wide. Only Kamloops in AA saw a rising win total. Worse, that fadeout came at a time when we had decided the financials were looking better. Not anticipating the shredding we (and v25) did to our Fan Interest, the Krill spent more than we should have, and had to pour even more PPT into cash. (Aside, I literally hate spending PPT for cash. Though necessary, it’s nowhere near as fun as funneling it into players).
Still, to be honest, I thought we were a much better team than 76 wins showed us.
2061-2062:
So I was not MASSIVELY surprised when the Krill made a big bounce back to win 89 games in 2061 and hit the post season again. Yes, 89 felt a little high, but not so high that I felt overly giddy. Especially since we went out and got Takashi Nakamura, who meant our rotation depth was made of now much stouter stuff.
The annoying bit here is that despite winning at the parent level, the organization had another 9-game step-back—which was surprising since Bikini was still climbing in the prospect rankings overall. Scanning the results were interesting. Yes, my kids were growing pretty well overall. A few misses here or there, but my take on things right now is that I was promoting players relatively quickly, hence again, my teams tended to be young for their levels.
That’s on me, of course. It’s my decision where to play prospects.
The one thing I’ll say that I did in reaction to the 2060-2061 overlap was to start looking at the draft in two ways: (1) to find interesting prospects, but (2) to make my R, SA, and A level teams better. Especially in the last ten rounds.
Anyway, after a very fun and successful 2061, I once again got complacent in my assessments, and brought a large majority of the team back for 2062. And why not? We were still “young” in the lineup, and the bullpen was now fully Winston Morris and Enrique Villarreal’s. We won 89 last year. If we regressed to 85, maybe that would still be good, but if the kids are still growing, and 90+ season wasn’t impossible to envision.
Sigh.
The Krill dropped 11 games, down to 78 wins. Admittedly we were better than that, but once the playoffs became impossible to wish ourselves to, we cut bait, traded the only center fielder we had ready to play, and brought up some kids to see what happened. What happened was meh.
The silver lining to 2062 is that I did focus on the lower minors once again, and it showed. Even with the Krill dropping 11 games, the organization was five games better—most of that being in R-Ogden and SA-Port au Prince.
So, What’s the Plan In 2063?
OOTP’s BNN picks the Krill to win the division. I don’t think that’s in the cards strong enough to go put any Brewster Bucks on it, but it’s not out of the realm of feasibility. The offense has been retooled since the beginning of 2062, and our corners can actually play defense. We’re still a question mark at center field, but that answer could still be positive, and the rotation is interestingly good but not particularly deep. I’ll be juggling relievers into staring slots at moments, I figure.
Maybe it will all work out.
But mostly what I want to see now is another ratcheting up of winning in the minors. Note, I’m not focused on post season appearances there. Maybe I should, but really what I’m trying to create is a steady stream of players flowing over a foundation of winning. If that happens, then post season appearances should follow.
We’ll see.
All I can say for certain is that I’m having a lot of fun fiddling with the whole organization.
Oh, and I can say one more thing, too … welcome aboard v26! May your arrival wash out the taste of defeat that your predecessor and I conspired to make happen.
