What Should I fix?

[CHARLESBELL]

Got another sweep last night. Team has made it to .500 at 54-54 and is four games back of the division leader.

Also picked up my second Finals Championship of 2005 in another league!

[cummings2]

Super cool 8) !

Congrats on the great patience and moves! Will keep following The Horde...maybe I should post you a team I am having a really hard time waking up the ofense...pick your brain a bit!

[cummings2]

Mad seems to keep getting pounded in you league...maybe it's time for the plug to...

I am and have been quite patient with my pitchers and I STILL believe that Mad has a better chance of getting better results (in the only team I am playing him he is giving me a 2.31 ERA 9W 5L 1.10 WHIP 116 IP after 91 games) BUT the point of this message is...in case you are running out of patience who is available (SP -FA)

If you still want to give him a break I am all with you

but of the cheapies I have had some good luck with Moulder. Sabathia, Capuano...given some of the parks in your division I'd probably think twice about Cappy but...

SO far the Horde has made a pretty good run...maybe it's time to stay pat 8)

[CHARLESBELL]

Madman gave me four straight good starts (winning 3) before this latest reversion back to his old ways (9 runs in 5 innings). I'm going to stick with him the rest of the way and we'll see how it goes.

Despite a 55-56 record this team is in contention, 4 games back of the division leader and 6 games ahead of the 3rd place team. I've tweaked them as much as I can, and at this point I am just going to let them play.

Be happy to take a look at your team. You should post it, others might have advice too.

[cummings2]

Saw that you are inching closer to first place! 3B seems to still be a bit unproductive but the guys will come around...quite cool to be in the position you've manouvered into still with enough games left to make it interesting.

BTW Here's the team I told you I have that is struggling mightily in Offense. I haven't made any moves on offense...stuck with the guys so far...maybe a bit too long. I knew from the begging that the team would have a hard time in offense but I thought I'd be able to generate enough runs to have me in contention. Pitching and Defense hasn't been the problem it's just the horrible offense. What'cha think?

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/team/team_other.html?user_id=18708

[mfsleeze]

Cummings2, I only looked for about 3 minutes and I'm sure you've spent a lot of time analyzing your team, but here are my thoughts:

1. You need OB in Petco, and you only have two guys with OB real life higher than .360, and they are both high injury guys. So you need to find some more guys who can get on base consistently - you are giving up too many outs with the hitters you have.

2. Awesome rotation, which in my opinion renders BJ Ryan overpaid. I'd drop him or trade him if you can (maybe to a Shea team) for an offensive upgrade. You might be able to trade him. I assume you have all 4 starters set to Slow Hook, right? You can probably get by with Shields and Donnelly, and maybe pick up a cheapie closer eligible guy.

3. I'd drop Mientkiewicz and Neifi Perez - that's about a million and a half of dead weight on your roster, since you only need 13 hitters and you have other guys who can be backups at those positions.

4. My primary focus would be on upgrading your offense at 1B and LF. I think Erstad and Finley can go (you can platoon Dejesus in CF with a number of options).

These moves should all give you somewhere in the area of 11-12MM to play with for a reliever, 1B and LF, which should translate to a couple better hitters. I'd definitely get one of them to be RH who hits lefties well because you are so left-handed.

How many clubhouse objects has Jason Schmidt broken? Poor guy.

[CHARLESBELL]

Let's see, it looks like you are playing Schneider (c), Morneau (dh), Erstad (1b), Chavez (3b), Everett (ss), Finley (cf), Dejesus (lf), and Reese(2b) pretty much full time (when not injured) and platooning Nixon/Ordonez (rf). That about right?

Great SPs, decent pen, strong defense in Petco are the positives. You've built a very strong pitching and defense oriented team and that is where your wins should be coming from.

High injury risk, maybe too much pitching, and I believe too much emphasis on defense over OBP are the main issues.

Injuries - You have an all injury infield with Erstad your most durable at an inj 2. That puts a lot of pressure on your bench, which is big on defense but can't hit. Everett's defense can be worth the risk, but I don't like Reese, and I really don't like like both of them anchoring your infield. Add Chavez and your infield is going to spend a lot of time on the DL.

OBP - Way not enough OBP. I'm trying to guess your lineup. If it were me I would try to get as much OBP at the top as I could, even if it hurts me GIDP-wise, as you have a serious shortage there. So, vs RHP:

erstad
dejesus (though everett would be best bet if you HAD to go with low DPs)
nixon
chavez
morneau (I like good clutch and high TB there)
finley
and the rest don't much matter

That's at least 6 lefties in a row and 7 lefties vs RHP. Smart teams will be throwing lots of reverse righties at you. LHP lineup scares me. At best you have 3/4 righties in that lineup (everett, reese, ordonez), only Ordonez knows how to hold a bat, and only Chavez among the lefties can hit lefties well, making your team very vulnerable to LH pitching too.

It is not surprising that in Petco, with this offense, that your OBP is below .300, and I don't know too many teams that will win with that.

You are going to have to improve that OBP IMO. You have something like $42M invested in pitching. Some of it needs to go. My suggestion is to get rid of one of your 3 high cost starters for a 500k s/r (hard lefty preferred) and live with colon as your 4th if you have to. I'd also suggest looking at a cheap, high C closer (frasor or the like) and replace ryan with him. See what that would generate for you in salary and look at what you can get to upgrade your OBP (1st priority) and balance all those lefties with a couple of RH hitters (2nd priority). Replacing reese would be my first choice, then just see what is the best you can get. Build up the OBP, use your new closer in only closer situations, use the s/r as your lefty specialist, and keep/put your best 3 SPs on slow hook to keep your pen from getting overworked.

My two cents.

[CHARLESBELL]

PS - As always, try making deals first before the FA pool. That 20% cut will hurt.

[cummings2]

Thanks guys, you made great points, I am going through rosters in other teams trying to figure out possible trades and looking at FAs.

LOL! How many objects has Schmidt broken?...By now I think he's taking it out by running around Petco naked with a paper bag over his head yelling and screaming and kicking and punching...not a very pretty sight as you can imagine.

So will try to set on my OBP targets, I may have to just go with Colon and use the entire salary of a SP to upgrade offense. As far as my lineup vs LHP yep...it's scary bad...my only righties are Ordonez, Reese and Everett...however my only RH BATTER is Ordonez...but the reason why I haven't changed this and allocated some money to my lefty platoons is because I only face 5 lefties in my division and one is Pettite L 8R and the other one is Lowry L 9R. The other one are Ho. Ramirez, Oliver Perez and R. Wolf...Pens are all RHP with a couple of LH scrubbies.

Either way I'll have to act fast on this one if I intend to make a run for WC or something. BTW parks in division are Wrigley, Fenway and Angels.

[CHARLESBELL]

Don't disagree with your logic on the LHP lineup, but the problem is that that lineup hits lefties so poorly it doesn't much matter whether the pitcher's an 8L or an 8R. Chavez and to an extent finley can protect against the reverse lefties, but they don't have any help against lefties in general.

Seems a little strange that both teams we are talking about have Schmidt as our ace. As you know he floundered parts of the season for me, started 8-8 and we were both very unhappy. Luckily he's won his last 5 decisions so there is hope for him still with your team.