1867 Season Thread (Season 30)

[Young Drachma]

GETTYSBURG GOMERS (97-65, 1ST NL EAST)
The Nationwide League's overall top seed are making their 4th playoff appearance in five years and 3rd time as the NL's regular season champion. The team is two years removed from their last pennant, which they dropped to St. Louis in pursuit of their 2nd title.

This year's edition of the Gomers might boast the best pitching staff in franchise history. The Gomers were always known for strong offense and their pitching was lacking, but on the sly, Gomer has nabbed two of the best international free agents in recent years in Tristan Converse and Tim Zaets, backing them up with a strong bullpen to boot.

Despite the league's best pitching staff, the G's offense is less than stellar. Ramiro Gonzaga is a star and Dave Lewis is solid, but overall if this team is going to win a Series it'll be on the back of its pitching and contributions from guys who come up big at the right moments.

That right there is the definition of playoff baseball anyway, so we'll see if th Gomers have what it takes to claim the 2nd title in club history.


COLUMBUS CRUSADERS (85-77, NL WEST CHAMPIONS)
After being realigned down to the rough and tumble NL West, the Crusaders return to the post-season for the 2nd straight year, after claiming their new home down the stretch. This club's strength is it's young hurlers including Amir Mangum and Braden Boles who combined for 30 wins this year. This team lost in the NLCS last year, so coming back a year later with more experience could bode well. If there's a team in the NL that could go toe-to-toe pitching wise with Gettysburg, it's the Crusaders.

NL MVP candidate A.J. Hoogland will be a key cog in this wheel and Dave Bohannon is no slouch either. I like these guys to claim their first NL pennant in franchise history, as among the three clubs in the NL, they've got the most balance.


BROOKLYN TITANS (88-74, NL WILD CARD)

The defending champs are back. Despite being the most anonymous squad of champs in recent memory, the Titans did what they needed to do, to get themselves back into the playoffs. What this team lacks in star power, they make up for in structure. The real key here is offense, as the Titans have one of the worst pitching staffs in the NL.

Offensively, they have lots of weapons like defending NL rookie of the year Chris Hadden, 3B Tristan Farrell was dominant this year and if the team can produce the run support they're accustomed to, you could see this team back in the Series defending their title.

Will do the AL tomorrow.

[robster1225]

Glad we made the playoffs, but that certainly is not enough.

[jimedrice]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

Brooklyn stole 2 bases this year. 2

Yeah I know. 2 too many. We'll keep working on that. At least our steal percentage was 100%. We're the most efficient base stealing team in the league!

[Gomer]

Woo Hoo!

[Young Drachma]

ST. LOUIS AVIATORS (108-54, AL WEST CHAMPIONS)
The Flyboys had a rough September, but had already clinched en route to tying the franchise record for most wins in a season at 108. The AL's latest power club has claimed 3 of the last 4 league pennants, but only has one title to show for it. They simply won't be happy with anything less than a title this year.

Four pennants in 5 years have been achieved by three previous clubs. Carolina (1848, 1850-52) and Memphis (1843-44, 46-47) and in both cases, those teams won two titles in a four year stretch. San Diego (1849-51, 1853) did it, but only claimed one title.

The trade of Willie Leon to Vegas leaves this team a bit less deep in their rotation, but a breakout year from Jamie Henkel (26-7, 3.41 ERA) helped matters quite a bit. The X-Factor will be Tony Llamas and whether he'll be strong enough as a starter this post-season.

Offensively, the Aviators have an all-star team's worth of weapons including three former MVPs (D.J. Maul. D.J. Struchen and Jimmy Speegle) and six different players over 100 RBIs this year. If their offense is on all cylinders, they'll be hard to beat.


CUYAHOGA SPIDERS (90-72, AL EAST CHAMPS)
The Spiders have emerged into a solid AL ballclub. They're now heading into their 5th straight playoff appearance and are two years removed from their first title in franchise history.

Despite all of the talk of strong pitching in St. Louis, Gettysburg and Columbus, it's the Spiders who probably boast one of the Top 3 staffs in all of baseball this year. The frontline starters of Diego Carrasco and the emergence of 22-year old Jack Keddy and his 18 wins has helped considerably.

Offensively is where this team will have problems. Outfielders Fred Bottom(.307/20 HR/106) and Mel Jimenez are probably the best hitters on the club. Despite home field advantage, the AL East champs are going to be at a disadvantage against their ALES opponents, but given the two teams split the season series, it'll likely be a battle of who can get ahead and stay there.


LAS VEGAS ACES (91-71, AL WILD CARD)
In their 3rd season in Vegas since moving from San Diego, the Aces have finally returned to the post-season, after boasting one of the best off-season rebrands we've seen in a while. Ownership was aggressive in picking up players that could make an immediate impact and given the team's farm system was depleted, the moves they made were the smartest especially in a new market.

During the mid-season break, the team made the boldest moves of any team in an attempt to put themselves in a wild card position and maybe to catch St. Louis for the AL West title, but despite not catching the high flying pilots, they surpassed the AL East's title.

"St. Louis West" has a very Aviators flavor, boasting seven former members of that club on their 25-man roster. New arrivals Dave Ribic who came over from Washington had a much stronger second half, going 6-4 with a 3.62 ERA in his return to the AL. Willie Leon fared worse (5-7, 5.20 ERA) but it matters less about the regular season and more about the playoffs.

It's the reason they intended to do it. If there's any team that you have to designate with the Dark Horse label in this post-season, it's this Las Vegas team. They've got the right elements of the title team, but they'll need to be firing on all cylinders. Still, outside of the two top seeds, I'd say that Vegas has the best shot at title glory this year.

So there you have it. All six playoff teams. Only one will come out triumphant.
We'll see how it goes!

[CleBrownsfan]

I love these kind of write-ups - thanks YD for taking the time to do so!

[Young Drachma]

PLAYOFF ODDS
---------
St. Louis 3-1
Gettysburg 4-1
Las Vegas 7-2
Brooklyn 6-1
Columbus 11-1
Cuyahoga 13-1

[CleBrownsfan]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

PLAYOFF ODDS
---------
St. Louis 3-1
Gettysburg 4-1
Las Vegas 7-2
Brooklyn 6-1
Columbus 11-1
Cuyahoga 13-1

I changed my mind

[Young Drachma]

Fear not, I'm putting down $1000 on your team to win it all.

[Young Drachma]

LOSERS CUP QUARTERFINALS
BEST OF THREE
Lake Tahoe def. Washington 2-0
Carolina def. Wyoming 2-0
Kauai def. Portland 2-0

Cleveland def. Rio Grande 2-1
Winnemucca def. San Diego 2-1
New York def. Chicago 2-1

LOSERS CUP SEMI-FINALS
BEST OF FIVE

Lake Tahoe def. Denver 3-0
Kauai def. Carolina 3-2

Cleveland def. Memphis 3-1
Winnemucca def. New York 3-2

LOSERS CUP LEAGUE FINAL
Kauai def. Lake Tahoe 3-1
Winnemucca def. Cleveland 3-2

LOSERS CUP
BEST OF SEVEN
Winnemucca def. Kauai 4-0

[HerbD]

So we are the best crappy team in SLOP. That's gotta be good for something, right?

[mavericktango]

I can't believe that Skyliners actually got through a round

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by mavericktango

I can't believe that Skyliners actually got through a round

Almost two!

[Young Drachma]

All post-season exports are in, so...I'll be running the post-season here at some point shortly. Internet at my house is down, so I'll have to do it from here.

[robster1225]

Sounds awesome.

[Young Drachma]

Ok here goes. Good luck to everyone. Afterwards, we'll talk financials as there are some modest changes ahead.

[Young Drachma]

NLES GAME 1: Columbus 8, Brooklyn 3
ALES GAME 1: Cuyahoga 9, Las Vegas 0

[Young Drachma]

ALES GAME 2: Cuyahoga 7, Las Vegas 5 (CUY leads series 2-0)
NLES GAME 2: Columbus 6, Brooklyn 4 (CLB leads series 2-0)

[Young Drachma]

NLES GAME 3: Columbus 10, Brooklyn 4 (CLB leads series 3-0)
ALES GAME 3: Las Vegas 7, Cuyahoga 5 (CUY leads series 2-1)

[Young Drachma]

NLES GAME 4: Columbus 9, Brooklyn 3 (CLB wins series 4-0)
ALES GAME 4: Las Vegas 2, Cuyahoga 1 (Series tied 2-2)

[Young Drachma]

ALES GAME 5: Cuyahoga 7, Las Vegas 4 (CUY leads series 3-2)

[Young Drachma]

ALES GAME 6: Las Vegas 4, Cuyahoga 0 (Series tied 3-3)

[Young Drachma]

ALES GAME 7: Las Vegas 7, Cuyahoga 3 (LAS wins series 4-3)

After never leading in the series, the Aces win the pivotal Game 7 on the road behind Jimmy Wesolowski's complete game 6 hit performance giving 3 earned and striking out 4. Josh Allen had a HR and 3 RBI for Vegas in the win. Marcello Piccinini was 1-3 with a HR and 2 RBI in the loss for the Spiders.

[Young Drachma]

NLCS GAME 1: Columbus 3, Gettysburg 0
ALCS GAME 1: St. Louis 3, Las Vegas 2 (Teams combined for 4 errors in this one.)

[Young Drachma]

ALCS GAME 2: St. Louis 6, Las Vegas 2 (STL leads series 2-0)
NLCS GAME 2: Columbus 2, Gettysburg 1 (CLB leads series 2-0)

Crusaders off to a 6-0 post-season start.

[Young Drachma]

NLCS GAME 3: Gettysburg 7, Columbus 4 (CLB leads series 2-1)
ALCS GAME 3: St. Louis 5, Las Vegas 0 (STL leads series 3-0)

[Young Drachma]

NLCS GAME 4: Columbus 5, Gettysburg 2 (CLB leads series 3-1)
ALCS GAME 4: Las Vegas 7, St. Louis 6 (STL leads series 3-1) (Las Vegas scored in the bottom of the 9th to break the tie and keep their season alive. Former Aviators 3B Clifton Marshall was 3-4 with a double, HR and 3 RBI in the win.)

[Young Drachma]

NLCS GAME 5: Columbus 3, Gettysburg 2 (CLB wins series 4-1)
The Crusaders win their first league title in franchise history, preventing the Gomers from winning their 3rd NL pennant in 5 years.

ALCS GAME 5: St. Louis 4, Las Vegas 1 (STL wins series 4-1)
Meanwhile, the Aviators claim their 3rd straight AL title and 4th in five years. The Aces's last title appearance came while the club was still in San Diego back in '61.

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES XXX
GAME 1: St. Louis 3, Columbus 0

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES XXX GAME 2: St. Louis 7, Columbus 0

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES XXX GAME 3: Columbus 16, St. Louis 11 (STL leads series 2-1)

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES XXX GAME 4: St. Louis 9, Columbus 8 (STL leads series 3-1)

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES XXX GAME 5: St. Louis 7, Columbus 0 (STL leads series 4-1)

[Young Drachma]

SUNSET SERIES GAME 6: St. Louis 4, Columbus 1 (STL wins series 5-1)

The Aviators win their 2nd title in franchise history and 2nd in 4 years. They still trail Chicago, Memphis, San Diego and Carolina with 3 titles and Winnemucca with 5. Kauai, Gettysburg and Cuyahoga are the only other active clubs to win titles.

[Young Drachma]

AWARD WINNERS
-----
AL MVP: J.D. Frieden, Rio Grande
NL MVP: Jaime Daughtry, Kauai

AL POY: Jamie Henkel, St. Louis
NL POY: Alex Rojas, Gettysburg

NL ROY: Tristan Converse, Gettysburg
AL ROY: Osamu Tamai, Cleveland

[Young Drachma]

The game does a terrible job of highlighting playoff performers, but I've filtered in an effort to ferret some out (and it's more interesting than doing work at the moment..)

Dave Secrest CUY (.400/2 HR/7 RBI)
Jimmy Speegle STL (.385/5 HR/12 RBI)
A.J. Hoogland CLB (.367/1 HR/9 RBI/12 R/16 BB)

Speegle had the most post-season HRs (5) and Dave Bohannon and Alex Ortega (CLB) were 2nd with 4. Bohannon had the most post-season RBI (16), with Ortega (13) and Speegle (12) behind.

Pitching...well....it'll illustrate the post-season as it was.

Jamie Henkel STL (3-0, 0.70 ERA, 14 K, 9 BB, 1 CG, 1 SHO)
Tony Llamas STL (3-0, 0.35 ERA, 22 K, 5 BB 2 CG, 2 SHO)
Pat Samons CLB (3-0, 6.10 ERA, 9 K, 6 BB)
Braden Boles CLB (2-0, 3.91 ERA, 18 K, 11 BB)
Diego Carrasco CUY (2-0, 1.35 ERA, 12 K, 4 BB)
Erik Pearson CLB (4 SV, 7 K, 0.00 ERA in 7 Games)
Geoff Long STL (0-1, 4 SV, 2.08 ERA, 5 K, 0 BB in 5 games)

[Young Drachma]

I never realize how slow my internet at home is until I upload the file from work.

[Young Drachma]

The newest file is up. We'll run the draft and sim to the start of FA on Monday night.

[TurnerONU22]

Wow, can't believe we made it to the big game. Looks like my move of Ortega to full time for the postseason paid off, as well as my move of Pearson to the closer role.

Hoogland was a wonderful find. A former 5th round pick who had good potentials when I drafted him for hitting (94) and eye (61), but blew up to have ratings of 120 and 94, respectively.

[Gomer]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Us Gomers embody what this league is all about:
S(ore) L(osers) O(f) P(ennsylvania).

and if I forgot to say it,
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by Gomer

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Us Gomers embody what this league is all about:
S(ore) L(osers) O(f) P(ennsylvania).

and if I forgot to say it,
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

That went better than I anticipated.

[jimedrice]

Originally Posted by Young Drachma

The Aviators win their 2nd title in franchise history and 2nd in 4 years. They still trail Chicago, Memphis, San Diego and Carolina with 3 titles and Winnemucca with 5. Kauai, Gettysburg and Cuyahoga are the only other active clubs to win titles.

Don't be disrespectin' Brooklyn now!

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by jimedrice

Don't be disrespectin' Brooklyn now!

Sorry. That's a huge omission, too. Can't forget Titans Nation and their 53/54 back-to-back fecta.

[robster1225]

Well, not the outcome I wanted, but still a successful season considering how bad the team was the last couple years. With most of the team coming back next year, and a full offseason for them to gel, expect big things out of these guys in the next couple seasons.

[CleBrownsfan]

Congrats St. Louis!!

Quick question: I'm trying to re-sign a couple players for the first time. I have never proposed a contract offer until now and the player is not letting me offer a contracts saying: "Sorry, but I will no negotiate any further. We seem to be too far apart". Any thoughts why???

[claphamsa]

also, im still selling

[Young Drachma]

PLAYOFF POOL
I'll explain the relevance of this on a separate thread, as starting this coming year we're going to try to make the salary cap situation work better. Guaranteed contracts helped, but this new system should work even better.

Anyway, the playoff pool will be determined by taking 1/2 of average team payroll and adding it to average gate revenue times $10 to give us a figure of $67,511,399.

SUNSET SERIES WINNER: $32,405,471
SUNSET SERIES LOSER: $15,865,179
LCS FINALISTS: $5,907,247 (each team)
ELIMINATION SERIES LOSERS: $3,713,127 (each team)

In CPR years, since there are more teams, the figures are different. That's all accounted for, though.

Anyway, that's the playoff bonuses. Something we can begin to look forward in future years.

[Young Drachma]

Originally Posted by CleBrownsfan

Congrats St. Louis!!

Quick question: I'm trying to re-sign a couple players for the first time. I have never proposed a contract offer until now and the player is not letting me offer a contracts saying: "Sorry, but I will no negotiate any further. We seem to be too far apart". Any thoughts why???

Umm...I think the only idea I can think of here, is that it's the game saying "I want to test the market," but for whatever reason, they took that text out of the negotiating code for whatever reason. It used to do that a few versions ago when a guy didn't want to re-sign, but wanted to test the FA market.

[Young Drachma]

The '67 draft will be tomorrow night. Here's the draft order reminder:

1. Cleveland
2. Carolina
3. New York
4. San Diego
5. Washington (via Las Vegas)
6. Portland
7. Lake Tahoe
8. Rio Grande
9. Denver
10. Wyoming
11. Kauai
12. Cuyahoga
13. Gettysburg
14. Memphis
15. Denver (via Chicago for RFA compensation)
16. Washington
17. Columbus
18. Winnemucca
19. Washington (via St. Louis)
20. Brooklyn

2nd round
2.5 Washington (via Las Vegas)

3rd round
3.16 St. Louis (via Washington)

5th round
5.19 Las Vegas (via St. Louis)

[Young Drachma]

In the minors, the Little Rock Smokers won their 10th AAA title defeating the Scranton Gomers. The Louisville Smokers won their 11th AA title knocking off the Williamsburg Grays. In A-ball, the Mooresville Smokers won their 9th Single-A title by beating the Galesburg Hornets. It was only in Rookie ball, that the Smokers didn't win, as the Taos Crows claimed their first title by beating the Grand Forks Hornets.