Up / Down

It's been an up and down week so far, ending with the worst possible result in baseball and a record of 16-12, clinging to a position in the Pennant Race before the July 12th deadline for the current season.

Here's a look at how things stood after the last update. The Win/Loss stats only show online ranked games, while the pitching/batting stats reflect all games played, including offline and unranked (which are used for practice).

Signings

Thanks to everyone who is upvoting these post about the team, WE ... your upvotes make you a team owner :) ... picked up some good players this week to help us get through a tough Pennant Race league.

• Chris Sale (Starting Pitcher) : One of the best and highest priced pitchers in the game. We paid a lot for him and in his first game, he got shellacked early. I chalk this up to my inexperience with using him, because in his 2nd game he dominated. There are certain ways to use certain pitchers and it's very effective, but that same pitcher can get lit up if you're using the wrong pitches in the wrong spots.

• Andrew Miller (Relief Pitcher) : Also one of the best and highest priced relievers in the game. A lefty who can also dominate right handed hitters. Throwing up to 98 mph and possessing a wicked slider that makes lefties look silly at the plate and bites in on the hands of righties breaking their bats at times. I use him as our setup pitcher in the 8th or whenever I need out of a big jam late in a game. He can give us two, maybe three good innings.

• Zach Britton (Relief Pitcher) : Our lefty middle reliever. He has yet to yield an earned run.

• Craig Kimbrel (Relief Pitcher) : Our best righty middle reliever. Just as it was with Sale, I got lit up the first game with Kimbrel, but he's done fine ever since.

• Yan Gomes (Catcher) : Buster Posey just did not work out and Yan is not doing much better. I will likely just go back with starting Molina since I can at least get a .260 avg out of him and he's better at defense than both Posey and Gomes. Luckily when dealing Posey his price had risen and we just about broke even.

• Kendry Morales (1B) : Mid priced 1B with big power that so far is not working out. It's not that he's not hitting, he's just hitting it right at people consistently. I'll work on it before I give up hope. It's weird how certain batters you can hit better with than others despite their ratings. I may put Garvey back at 1B since he's a solid bat and little slower in the OF than my other options.

• Dee Gordon (2B) : We picked up Gordon on the cheap for his speed and incredibly, his bat. He won a game for us in the 9th with a homer off the bench. It upset my opponent so much he was sure to mention that it was "bullshit" afterwards. Thing is, I did line that pitch up pretty damn good and hit it to the shortest part of the park, so I disagree. :)

The Good

We picked up a few easy wins in the past few days. The first image was the only win where our opponent finished the game. As you can see below, one opponent didn't make it out of the first inning, despite his cockiness in his half of the inning. :)

Then another opponent apparently decided he didn't like the look of our lineup and he bailed before we could even get the game going. I'll take it! Saves me 45 minutes of playing time.

The Bad

I picked up a Noah Syndergaard legend card for around 15,000 Stubs (the in game currency) thinking it was a steal. Oh boy was I wrong. He was lit up like a Christmas tree in the first inning and I dumped him immediately after the game. His pitches were all over the place forcing me to pipe strikes and my opponent took advantage.

He was out by the second inning and our relievers took over and did a stellar job holding down our opponent so that we could mount our comeback. Unfortunately I came up a little short, despite having an excellent chance to tie or win it in the 9th, I choked and got caught in a run down on a bang bang play and he doubled me up to end it.

This is the game where Kimbrel blew what was a great comeback in the late innings. But, this was not as bad as what was to come.

Then I run into a dominant Lance Mccullers Jr. and an opponent who knew just how to use him.

This was the most frustrating game I've played this year. When I did make solid contact with the ball it was right at someone, every single time. Every line drive, every fly ball, every grounder, over and over. So yeah, I got no hit.

I have no excuse either, I was using a new hitting view and a new plate indicator and was doing better than ever with it, until I ran into this guy.

Needs

It's obvious that we need more power and some better bats in general. I plan on upgrading some more spots "soon". It's unfortunate, but I'm having trouble hitting with Dan Larimer. :) I have him boosted up to around a 98 ranking at 2B, which he plays fine defensively, but he's giving me very little at the plate.

I continue feeding him the useless player cards we earn playing, and he continues boosting his stats, but they just aren't showing up on the field yet. Most players in the current lineup are at or better than a .300 batting avg outside of Larimer and Gomes. So something needs to be done (again) at 2B and C.

Molina seems the obvious choice off the bench for Catcher, but I'm not starting Dee Gordon at 2B. The options for top 2B are expensive so I may just have to wait this out and see if the prices come down or someone ranked in the mid 80's starts outperforming their normal stats and their card gets a boost in the game.

We sit at 16-12 with 10 more days left in the season. I'm hoping we can get lucky and get matched up against some lower ranked opponents this weekend. This week it's been about 50/50 between teams I can dominate versus teams that are dominating us.

Until next time!