Fri Jul 22, 2016 1:30 am
I went looking at four last 1-run losses. For each game, I saw things that could have been handled differently. Let me add that for sure a string of unlucky rolls happened for a 1-16 record to occur.
Your last 8-7 lost. Perceval was running out of gas, he was on the mound at F1 when He gave a 3-run double that put the other team at 8-3 or 8-4. BTW, the man who scored from first was on base thanks to a free intentional walk. You come back bottom of 9th with a Sisler homerun but you come up short by one run. perceval shouldn't be on the mound anywhere below F7. I'm sure that Garber at F9 is better than Perceval at F5, let alone F1. I'm not 100% sure what settings you should use but It must be more agressive or on quicker settings than your current settings. You might feel unease with being agressive with your current bullpen that only has 4 true relievers, in my opinion, you should have at least 5 relievers available if you use your bullpen agressively, not counting a Sp/rp that is used as a starter. As for the free pass, in 200M, you should be very conservative before yielding one.
In the other 8-7 loss, I saw this sequence.. Speaker hits a single, steals a base, Bonds walks, Then a quick out and G.Brown hits in a double play.
What I see here is that the stolen base had no effect. You would have been in the same situation had Speaker not stolen a base. I see that Speaker is your leader with 16 SB. I wonder how many of those SB were followed by a Bonds' walk, or a Bonds homerun, which in both case nullifies the value of the stolen base. And in 200M leagues, with starting pitchers allowing just about nothing, walks, homeruns and outs are the only things Bonds will give your team. So I would be tempted to use someone who won't steal a lot of bases as lead-off. Personnally I like Bonds 2nd, tons of onbase, ARod 3rd (thus yes I conceed using the Earl Weaver strategy, but only for your top three hitters, and besides, ARod horrible clutch almost forces your hand to have him there), and then have Speaker 4th and really have your speedsters take full advantage of your single hitters that are following (Jeter, Sisler, the catcher etc). In that scenario, It seeems to me that perhaps your best option is to use McGraw instead of G. Brown as lead-off, McGraw can't produce rbis, but that's a lesser problem behind Bonds.
Your two other losses, including a 2-1 loss, the tying run got on base bottom of the 9th, and in both occasions, a stolen base was quite reachable, in one case Gossage was the opposing pitcher (hold = +5, combined with Molina still gives a +1, -1 with the hold). In this case I think Sisler was the runner, so perhaps he didn't get the lead. In another case, Brown was the runner, and I was quite flabbergasted to see that no pinch runner in either case was brought in. I know from experience that the more players on the roster, the more moves Hal likes to do. So I would pack the lineup to 17 players, I would hire a Moreno or a Coleman and perhaps a cheap first baseman (I see there is no bench player for Sisler currently, which could be another reason why Hal remained still). Of course, I would set Moreno as pinch runner and I would pray that Hal listens to the strat gods!!
