GWJ OOTP League Thread

Small patch announcement today:

'...

Hey guys,

Andreas was doing some maintenance recently, so we decided to release yet another tiny update for OOTP 12, this time it's version 12.5.38.

It fixes the following compared to version 12.5.36:
- Improved the database info page
- Added direct mySQL data dump support on the Mac
- Fixed a few minor cosmetic bugs
- Fixed rare OOTP 11 league importing crash

...'

Take it will wait on that till after tonights upload to make sure everyone has it?

Don't help someone move on no sleep one day, followed by a day spent out of town. Screws your whole schedule up. New file is up though.

3-3 week in Vancouver this time around, and slowly but surely, Miami's catching up in the Power Rankings.

So yes, let's all patch between now and Monday's sim.

I'm too lazy to sift through the thread. What is our league playoff structure? Top team in each division (2 in each league, 4 total?) Or top 2 teams in each division?

Sitting just below .500 and 3rd place in NL East, the Pierogies want to know if we should make a real push or chalk it up for opportunity lost. We need some bats, specifically some slugging percentage. Anyone has some to spare?

Does it matter what the playoff structure is considering I'm going to win everything?

(I don't actually know what the structure is off the top of my head, I assume it's division winners and a couple wildcard teams. I'm doubting it'll be the top two teams considering how small the league is. Assumptions.)

garion333 wrote:

Does it matter what the playoff structure is considering I'm going to win everything?

Grrrr. I hope your Nate Bradley hurts himself in a buffalo wings eating contest, after you sign him to a 10 yr, 1 billion dollar contract!

There's a reason I haven't given him an extension yet. Part of that is the fact he's 31 and wants a 500 year extension. Meh.

garion333 wrote:

There's a reason I haven't given him an extension yet. Part of that is the fact he's 31 and wants a 500 year extension. Meh.

My 31 year old pitcher wants a 9 year extension...no one but the NY Mets would dream of giving someone a deal like that.

Novocain wrote:

I'm too lazy to sift through the thread. What is our league playoff structure? Top team in each division (2 in each league, 4 total?) Or top 2 teams in each division?

At the moment, yes, it's old-timey baseball style, division winners only. That said, I can change it to Division Winners + Wildcards, if enough owners would prefer it.

Prederick wrote:
Novocain wrote:

I'm too lazy to sift through the thread. What is our league playoff structure? Top team in each division (2 in each league, 4 total?) Or top 2 teams in each division?

At the moment, yes, it's old-timey baseball style, division winners only. That said, I can change it to Division Winners + Wildcards, if enough owners would prefer it.

I like the wildcard, as long as it's reasonable (i.e. one per division or something). It gives us cellar dwellers something to aim for :).

Well, we can put it to a owner vote. Do we want to do it here, or should I e-mail everyone?

Another week done, new file and reports are up. The trade deadline has now passed, so any and all trades made now have to clear waivers before they can go through.

Meanwhile, a great week for Vancouver has been horribly marred by injuries to 2/3rds of our outfield and our catcher. They won't be gone for longer than 2-3 weeks, but still, all of the power in our lineup just hit the DL. This'll be Brooklyn and Boston's chance to earn some W's off our backs.

Meanwhile, someone has finally recorded the first perfect Game Score. Juan Ortega of Charlotte is hitting the home stretch of an abjectly ludicrous season (seriously, check out his numbers. He might be underpaid at $24M a year.) but he opted to add "best plate performance of the year" to that list, dominating proceedings as Charlotte annihilated San Diego 26-5 earlier in the month. Ortega only had two hits, but they were both HRs (a 2-run bomb and a 3-run shot), walked five times and scored six runs. Not bad, on the whole.

GAME OF THE WEEK:

Boston 10 - Baltimore 9 in 10 innings. This game was abjectly ludicrous. Boston jumped on Baltimore early, chasing starter George Fuller on sixteen pitches. Just sixteen you say? Well in those sixteen pitches, Boston scored five runs in the form of a single, a single, a double, a double, a triple and a double. Then Baltimore exploded in the bottom of the 6th to take the lead with six. Baltimore held the lead quite well from there on, even going so far as to use three separate pitchers in the top of the 8th to keep Boston at bay (all three pitchers 0.1 innings and got a Hold, funnily enough) before closer Ricardo Gabriel came in in the top of the 9th, and coughed up the lead on a two-out, two strike single hit by LF Roland Heard.

So we went to extras, where Gabriel stayed in (perhaps because Baltimore had used the remainder of its bullpen in the 8th) and surrendered four more runs in the top of the 10th. Baltimore fought back furiously, getting a two-run double and a run-scoring single before Miguel Silva struck out 2B Roger Price to put and end to the silliness.

just a heads up it took me two tries to d/l the file correctly. First time, I could see 20 some new messages, but I had no new games recorded. Also, when I went in to see messages they were all blank. Plus the program crashed every time I tried to look at any team menu except the BNN page. (I tried looking at 'roster', 'line-up', 'pitching' etc. However I could go into reports and see the schedule, but it had not advanced.) Weird, but as I said, I tried to d/l again and it actually did (meaning some files were missing, or it would of said the usual, '...no new file ...' etc.

But again, everything looks fine after second attempt, although I've not done much looking around.

Well, I patched to build 12.5.38 before the sim, so make sure you're up to date.

PITTSBURGH, PA (AP) - The Pierogies, with their 7-3 run, catapulted themselves back into 2nd place NL East, taking advantage of division rivals Baltimore and Brooklyn's 3-7 skid. With a record of 53-53 and 5.5 games behind the first place Bridgeburners, the Pierogies feels positive about its playoff chances.

All-Star 3B Tony Wagner (.336/.426/.535, 20HR, 65RBI, 13SB) was named NL Outstanding Batter of the Month for the month of July. "It's a great honor in my young career, y'know," said the 25 yr old slugger.

When asked about the team's resurgence and playoff hunt, "we gotta play 'em one day at a time," said Wagner. "I'm just happy to be here. Hope I can help the ball club. I just want to give it my best shot, and the good Lord willing, things will work out."

The team's publicist Crash Davis, a career minor league catcher, declined to comment.

Prederick wrote:

Well, I patched to build 12.5.38 before the sim, so make sure you're up to date.

I'm the one who announced it. So yea, I was patched.

Guys, I am withdrawing from the league. I just don't have enough time right now to properly keep up with my team (as horrible as it is) and I'm not finding the game as much fun as I remembered from previous experience with it a few years ago. Good luck and have a fun second half of the season.

p.s. Go Rangers!

Jake, I'm going to team kill you the next time I see you online in RO2.

Prederick wrote:

GAME OF THE WEEK:

Boston 10 - Baltimore 9 in 10 innings. This game was abjectly ludicrous. Boston jumped on Baltimore early, chasing starter George Fuller on sixteen pitches. Just sixteen you say? Well in those sixteen pitches, Boston scored five runs in the form of a single, a single, a double, a double, a triple and a double. Then Baltimore exploded in the bottom of the 6th to take the lead with six. Baltimore held the lead quite well from there on, even going so far as to use three separate pitchers in the top of the 8th to keep Boston at bay (all three pitchers 0.1 innings and got a Hold, funnily enough) before closer Ricardo Gabriel came in in the top of the 9th, and coughed up the lead on a two-out, two strike single hit by LF Roland Heard.

So we went to extras, where Gabriel stayed in (perhaps because Baltimore had used the remainder of its bullpen in the 8th) and surrendered four more runs in the top of the 10th. Baltimore fought back furiously, getting a two-run double and a run-scoring single before Miguel Silva struck out 2B Roger Price to put and end to the silliness.

That game was completely ridiculous. It was the first of 3 extra-innings games I had during this update, and the only one we won....

I've been messing around in single player quite a lot lately, and especially in my league with scouting turned completely off. I'm convinced that's the way to go for online leagues (although it means the PITA of scheduling for a live draft). In one league, I was able to turn around a 50-50 team into a 110 win monster without a scout- the ratings of most of the players involved that season were in the 1-3 range, but statistically they were much better. Ah well, something to consider for the future. If you look at the current rankings, we're all more or less sitting in order of how good our scouts were (mine wasn't even average, and has been replaced).

Yeah, my scout is god-like, but I wasn't playing all that well until I added a couple starting pitchers. So, it's not all just the scout. I definitely started off with good pieces, though.

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, my scout is god-like, but I wasn't playing all that well until I added a couple starting pitchers. So, it's not all just the scout. I definitely started off with good pieces, though.

My scout had players rated as 5-star gods that are now barely clinging to life in double or single A. Without stats, it was impossible to know that in advance- my pitching situation was as bad or worse than the batting one. Like I said- ah well, something to learn from :). At present I feel like I'm in the starting stages of a multi-year rebuilding phase (I've only got 3 batters that are above what I'd call average, wOBA-wise), so I hope we can keep enough human managers onboard to see this thing through.

I can see the argument for no scouts for a online league, but I think the skill level of the league at the moment means it's not something we have to do. What I can do is change the scouting accuracy, but again, that'd be up to a vote from league GMs.

Jake, sorry to see you go. We'll keep a seat warm for you if you decide to come back.

Ugh. Swept by the Pierogies and have gone 6-9 since the break. My quest for .500 keeps going backward.

Also, I seem to remember someone commenting in this thread on the frequency of injuries in the game. Having 3 starters and a SP on the DL with another starter listed as day-to-day, it seems like there are a lot of injuries in the game. Or maybe there are just a lot of injuries on my team.

No, there seems to be too many injuries.

Edit: Oh and guess who forgot to upload. And guess who went 3-7 during that period ...

New File! Sorry guys, i'm in the process of moving, so these next week or so of uploads may happen a day late or so as I get everything settled and put together again.

Injuries are just destroying Vancouver's outfield. There's an entire outfield's worth of men on the DL. What's really worrying though is that Ramon Gomez has suffered his 3rd DL-worthy injury of the season. As a result, he's played 30 games this year. Anyway, we went 3-4 this week, our worst week in a while. We're 14 games up though, so we can spare it. For now.

We can start thinking playoffs now. With only division winners making the playoffs (again, we can still move to a wild card system, but I want to hear a few owners saying they're interested before it comes to a vote), there's contests in every division Vancouver isn't in. Pittsburgh is just two back of Baltimore who've been in a hellacious 7-15 rut since the break. In the SL East, Miami and New Orleans are two games behind Charlotte, and Los Angeles is just two games ahead of Phoenix in the SL West.

The game of the week this week goes to Pittsburgh and Buffalo, who went for maximum drama in a 14-inning tilt. Pittsburgh put up 3 in the bottom of the 5th, Buffalo matched it in the top of the 6th, then both opten to knock in run-scoring singles in the 11th before a seeing-eye grounder between 3rd and short won it for Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh ended up sweeping the series).

Well, if my season wasn't pitiful enough, my best player just got an injury expected to keep him out 3-4 months. It wouldn't have been such an issue if I had worked the trade market like I do in single player, but I need to learn to do it a bit earlier in a human league since this is my first. Anyone who has a series on the schedule against Boston for the rest of the season- you're welcome :).

I'm getting one of my better outfielders back, but lost two more players to the DL. But at least they are the crappier ones!

Glad to see my first baseman Chandler Reed get NL player of the week honors.

Brooklyn's only 8 back at this point. Still a chance to make some noise if we can stay healthy.

New files, new reports!

Another week comes, another week goes. 4-3 for Vancouver, we swept Buffalo, then dropped 2 of 3 to Pittsburgh, so you're welcome.

Performance of the week goes to Miami's Thomas George who threw a 11-K, 3-hit shutout against Phoenix. Dude's had a great year this season, and hasn't given up more than 3 runs in his past six starts. It's because of him that Miami's only 3 1/2 out.

Have I mentioned Juan Ortega's season yet? He's only batting .374 with 23 HRs and 99 RBIs. There's a phrase for this kind of season, and it's "worth at least $24m".

In the meantime, i'm declaring Dallas the "Rob Deer" team for this season. They are batting .254 as a team, have belted a league-leading 149 HRs, and have stolen 26 bases, the least in the league.

PIEROGIES DOOMSDAY AHEAD

PITTSBURGH, PA (AP) - The rollercoaster ride continues for the Fightin' Pierogies as they sit at a record of 60-57, 4-1/2 games behind the division leading Baltimore Bridgeburners. They have a respectable 7-4 record in August so far, but the outlook for the next 2 month is gray and unclear at best.

In the first week of August, the Pierogies lost their best hitter and clubhouse leader Tony Wagner (.340/.429/.552, 22HR, 68RBI) to a fracture rib that will sideline the all-star 3B slugger for 4 to 5 weeks. One week later, staff ace Woody Wallace (10-8, 3.58) was taken out of a game after 70 pitches and diagnosed with shoulder inflammation and will be shut down for the remainder of the season.

"We lost our best hitter and best starter in the span of a week," said CF Bobby Malone. "We've been playing well lately, plus the management has responded to all the setbacks so far." GM Steve Novocain could not be reached for comment, but according to credible sources, has been seen sobbing in the clubhouse.

Prederick wrote:

Have I mentioned Juan Ortega's season yet? He's only batting .374 with 23 HRs and 99 RBIs. There's a phrase for this kind of season, and it's "worth at least $24m".

CHA Juan Ortega, .374/.488/.654, 23 HR, 99 RBI, $24,000,000/yr

vs

PIT Tony Wagner, .340/.429/.552, 22 HR, 68 RBI, $400,000/yr
PIT Craig Peterson, .297/.350/.550, 21 HR, 97 RBI, $400,000/yr

Now tell me who's playing Moneyball here

More on Charlotte -

Randy Newman (hehe), .333/.405/.549, 24 HR, 87 RBI, $440,000
Jorge Vargo, .309/.409/.624, 32 HR, 98 RBI, $440,000 <--this is a monster right here.

Vargo has a .316 for Isolated Power and 60.4 VORP. Although I must say, Ortega has a whopping 94.1 VORP.

ps. Just did about 30 minutes of math, comparing Ortega vs Vargo and the vast gap between their VORP (and Run Create, as part of the aggregate) and I must say, I'm even more confused now than before I started.

Novocain wrote:

More on Charlotte -

Randy Newman (hehe), .333/.405/.549, 24 HR, 87 RBI, $440,000
Jorge Vargo, .309/.409/.624, 32 HR, 98 RBI, $440,000 <--this is a monster right here.

Vargo has a .316 for Isolated Power and 60.4 VORP. Although I must say, Ortega has a whopping 94.1 VORP.

ps. Just did about 30 minutes of math, comparing Ortega vs Vargo and the vast gap between their VORP (and Run Create, as part of the aggregate) and I must say, I'm even more confused now than before I started.

Novocain wrote:

More on Charlotte -

Randy Newman (hehe), .333/.405/.549, 24 HR, 87 RBI, $440,000
Jorge Vargo, .309/.409/.624, 32 HR, 98 RBI, $440,000 <--this is a monster right here.

Vargo has a .316 for Isolated Power and 60.4 VORP. Although I must say, Ortega has a whopping 94.1 VORP.

ps. Just did about 30 minutes of math, comparing Ortega vs Vargo and the vast gap between their VORP (and Run Create, as part of the aggregate) and I must say, I'm even more confused now than before I started.

VORP is a counting stat (so number of PAs matters), and it compares number of outs created vs runs created. Ortega and Vargo both have a similar number of PAs (about 525), but Ortega's higher OBP means he "consumed" fewer outs to create runs than Vargo did. It pretty much comes down to the fact that Ortega has 96 BB and 57 K, while Vargo has only 63 BB and 75 K.