OOTP 19 Franchise Progress

[itsmb8]

Is anyone using any specific settings that ARENT default? Just wondering if default really is the way to go for realism, or if someone has found any adjustment that works better.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Carolina Advances to NLCS; Knights to Host Cardinals

The Knights and Dodgers took it to the limit in the NLDS like an Eagles song, and Carolina emerged with a 3-2 series win. Carolina CF Kevin Pillar was awarded the NLDS MVP with his .429 batting average and plethora of doubles, but James Paxton was probably the better choice.

Game 1: CAR 12, LAD 1
The Knights jumped all over Walker Buehler. Buehler gave up 6 runs in 2 IP and threw only 35 of 72 pitches for strikes. The Knights amassed 17 hits and 7 bases on balls. Lead-off man Kevin Pillar tied an NL playoff record with 3 doubles--he also chipped in 5 RBI. Every Carolina position player recorded at least one base hit, with Michael Brantley, Jose Abreu, Max Schrock, and pitcher James Paxton having multi-hit games. Paxton also went the distance with a very economical 87 pitches. The Big Maple struck out 9 and walked 1.

Game 2: LAD 5, CAR 4 (10 innings)
Mike Clevinger didn't dominate for the Knights like Paxton did in the previous game. Clevinger lasted 4.2 IP while allowing 3 runs on 4 hits and 1 BB. The Dodgers struck early with back-to-back 1st inning RBI doubles by Cody Bellinger and Alex Verdugo. Yangervis Solarte evened the score with a 1st inning 2-run homer off of Julio Urias. Solarte would drive in all 4 of Carolina's runs. The game went to the 10th inning tied 4-4 and Justin Turner homered off of Zach Britton to provide the tiebreaker. Carolina can point to loading the bases with nobody out in the 7th inning and only scoring 1 run as why they were put in position to lose.

Game 3: LAD 7, CAR 6 (11 innings)
Pivotal game 3 was a topsy turvy affair as the series shifted to Dodgers Stadium. Yangervis Solarte knocked in Kevin Pillar who doubled to lead off the game. Joc Pederson greeted Carolina starter Tyler Mahle with a lead-off homer in the bottom of the first. Carolina scored again in the 2nd inning on Sandy Leon's solo homer. The Dodgers would soon take the upper hand as they continued to work over Tyler Mahle. Pederson homered again in the 4th inning to make it a 3-2 Dodgers lead. Lefty reliever Aaron Bummer was greeted by a Cody Bellinger solo homer in the 5th and also allowed a run to score on a passed ball after a Yasiel Puig double. Carolina would score the next 4 runs using a bit of small ball and a 2-run Kevin Pillar homer off of Kenley Jansen in the 8th. With a slim 6-5 lead, the Carolina bullpen once again came up a little short. Justin Wilson walked Joc Pederson to lead off, then Joe Jimenez got Justin Turner to ground into a fielder's choice. But, Zach Britton coughed up the lead surrendering back-to-back singles to Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger. The game went to extras and Alex Meyer pitched 2 IP of quality relief before running into a bases-loaded, no-out situation in the 11th. Andrew Toles walked it off for LA with a sac fly against Phil Klein.

Game 4: CAR 7, LAD 0
With elimination in the air and champagne chilling in the home team's locker room at Dodgers Stadium, James Paxton came up big for the Knights. The Big Maple fired 6 innings of no-hit ball before giving up a 7th inning single and giving way to the bullpen. Carolina played long ball against LA starter Trevor Cahill and friends. Carolina catcher Chris Herrmann smacked a 2-run homer in the 2nd inning after getting his first start of the series. Michael Brantley and Jose Abreu delivered back-to-back jacks in the 4th to put the game out of reach.

Game 5: CAR 6, LAD 4
It was a party atmosphere early as the Knights smacked around Walker Buehler for a second consecutive start. Carolina would take an early 6-0 lead. Jose Iglesias got them on the board with a 2-run HR in the 2nd inning. Jose Abreu went deep with a 3-run blast in the 3rd inning. Kevin Pillar drove in Chris Herrmann with a 4th inning sac fly. Then, Mike Clevinger started to lose his edge and the Dodgers closed the gap with a 4-run 5th inning. Yasiel Puig led off with a single and Keibert Ruiz doubled him home. Chris Taylor singled to drive Clevinger from the game. With 1st and 3rd and lefty Aaron Bummer on the bump, the Dodgers put runners in motion to force a Chris Herrmann throwing error, which allowed Ruiz to score from 3rd base. Taylor subsequently scored on a wild pitch and Andrew Toles walked to continue the onslaught. Bummer rallied to strike out Joc Pederson and retire Justin Turner before walking both Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger. Bummer was removed with extreme prejudice and Joe Jimenez gave up an RBI single to pinch hitter Jed Lowrie. Luckily for Carolina, Kevin Pillar gunned down Corey Seager at the plate to maintain a 2-run lead. Fortunately the Dodgers never threatened again and the Knights were able to celebrate at home.

[KBLover]

The Angels save is still going - heading into 2041.

The team just finished it's 23rd consecutive playoff season, winning the World Series.

The Angels' pitching might be in flux. Mukai is gone to retirement. Mavity will likely join him sooner than later. Hatakeyama is now 36 as well.

Other than McGlauflin, who's still looking like a monster power arm as he heads to his 6th major league season and his prime years, the Angels have not developed another high-end starting pitcher. Closest arm to that is Masayuki Nojima, signed during the international FA period. He's currently in AAA and control is among his question marks.

The bullpen is even scarier and might be the first unit to crack.

So far, the Angels offense has been held up by their top of the order phenoms, Maeda, the insane walk-taking CF, and Misato, the extra-bases machine at SS.

Misato was picked up from the Dodgers for four current talents, including a pitcher the Angels could use right now. Misato stole headlines but the Dodgers got several pieces. The trade was made three years ago when the Dodgers were in 4th. They were the Angels' opponents in the World Series last season.

Moulin is still the manager and still doing his thing offensively. It might be paying off more than ever with the team maybe shifting to an offensive, though throwback, style with the hyper-aggression on the bases.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Haven't posted in a while and probably won't do anything formulaic in this regard anymore considering how little traffic this subforum gets, but I've started playing this game again pretty strenuously. To update the cliffhanger from my last post, my Carolina Knights won 99 games in 2019 and advanced to the NLCS only to get swept in 4 games by the Cardinals. It was a painful series that culminated with a Marcell Ozuna walkoff 2-run homer in Game 4 for a 10-9 STL victory. The Cardinals went on to lose to the Indians in the 2019 World Series.

The offseason was pretty interesting as I allowed franchise cornerstone 1B Jose Abreu to walk, where he signed with Cleveland for 5/72.5 and I got a compensatory pick. Abreu went .287/35/100 for me in 2019. To fill his role, I struck a deal with the Detroit Tigers to get a heavily subsidized 37-year-old Miguel Cabrera. To get an idea of just how subsidized, I am paying Cabrera about $5M annually through 2024 (and I also collected catching prospect Jake Rogers in the deal). Miggy is playing ok, .241/.341/.425 with 10 HR 37 RBI in 62 games, and recorded his 3000th hit for me on May 22nd, 2020.

I figure to cut bait in the same manner as Abreu with Yangervis Solarte and James Paxton after the 2020 season, even though they are 2 of my best players. Solarte is batting .282/16/45 in 61 games so far in 2020. After a subpar 2019 season, Paxton is 3-5 with a 3.69 ERA/9.1 K9/2.9 BB9/0.2 HR9 (on pace for 8.5 WAR).

I've signed a few players to team-friendly extensions, with Mike Clevinger, Michael Brantley, and Max Kepler all making $6M/yr for the foreseeable future. Clevinger is in line to perhaps start the ASG this year with his 8-1 record and 2.08 ERA. He got me my first 'throw a Maddux' achievement with a 91-pitch shutout of the Mets. Brantley has been spending a good amount of time on the DL, but has been pretty effective when healthy (that OOTP be realistic tho). Kepler is having another fantastic season (.291, .420 OBP, 8 HR, 31 RBI in 49 games) and might be an NL All-Star for the 3rd straight year.

One of the things I always try to do is build my bullpen into a juggernaut. Which naturally led me to acquire Craig Kimbrel in an offseason trade with the Red Sox. Of course to add him into the mix with Zach Britton, whom I had signed to a 2-year contract the year before. Unfortunately, Britton tore his rotator cuff a few appearances into 2020. So it's all the better that I had a stable of Jake Diekman, Justin Wilson, Joe Jimenez, Daniel Hudson, and Juan Zamora (an OOTP-generated IFA with outstanding stats) also in said bullpen.

Team is 43-20 and just did the June 4th draft. We've been rolling through the National League so far. Five games up on the Braves and things are going well.

[WaitTilNextYear]

A shorter update this time.

Currently in mid-September in 2020 of my Carolina Knights expansion franchise. That 5-game NL East lead over the Braves mentioned at the end of my previous post has turned into a 7-game deficit. The Braves have played godly baseball of late. They went 17-8 in June, 17-12 in July, 21-7 in August (including a 3-game sweep of yours truly), and are 9-3 in September. That's 64-30. My team has been muddling along, still without a losing month, nowhere near as hot as that. After going 21-8 in May, the Knights are 51-43 since. Even so, I still have a 9-game lead for the 1st wild card spot with only 12 games to play.

I did make a mistake in negotiating with my impending FA James Paxton. His asking price had been in the $16-18M range for a 5-year deal and I had negotiated down to $14-15M but I wanted a 3/4 year deal rather than 5/6. The 31-year-old wouldn't budge on that and then he had the audacity to go and have a fantastic season. When I got back around to negotiating, he was asking for about $30-32M AAV. Welp. It was nice having you on the team for 2 years anyway, James Paxton.

[WaitTilNextYear]

Finished season 3 with a 97-65 record. Coming down to the final 10 days of the season, I actually had a chance to catch the Braves for 1st in the NL East as they decided to lose 7 games in a row. Ended up closing the gap to 4 games with 4 to play (the final 3 being head to head), but they broke their losing streak to maintain the 4-game lead. Made the final series academic. And ended up sweeping me again to make it more painful.

Had to play in the Wild Card game, and beat the Mets in an 11-inning thriller at Roy Hobbs Field (my ballpark). Michael Brantley delivered a walkoff single to win 5-4 and advance the club to the NLDS against the 107-win Dodgers. The Dodgers got even for me bouncing them in the NLDS last year and we ended up losing 3 games to 1 despite Walker Buehler (who has developed into the best SP in the NL) being on the DL. In retrospect, not having ace James Paxton ready to go for game 1 (and potentially get 2 starts) was a mistake. Not bullpening another game against their lefty-heavy lineup was probably another mistake. Cody Bellinger, who homered 67 times during the regular season, did it twice more in the NLDS. Gonna have to watch to see if he ends up challenging the HR record (both season and career).

Just getting into the offseason now and was a bit surprised to see that my 1B Miguel Cabrera decided to retire. He was just 37 and under contract until 2024 with the Tigers paying 85% of it, but apparently a 30-HR season with 102 RBI wasn't enough to convince Miggy that he's still got it. He should still be a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. Frees up another $5M to play with in the offseason too.

[TheLastOlympian07]

just caught up on this, was a great thread, too bad it died out in the end but I mean it is close to OOTP 20 so it's understandable

[KBLover]

2041 is in the books.

The Angels won 105 games, lead by a still-solid staff and an old-school style offense of baserunning and driving the gaps.

The team lead baseball in batting average and OBP, and were 2nd in the MLB in runs despite being 15th in HR.

This in stark contrast to the #1 run-scoring team, the Yankees, who relied on prolific power to go with their own stellar on-base percentage.

Most experts had the Yankees and Angels as the favorites.

Then the Tigers happened. Detroit's "okay-but-not-great" pitching staff stormed through the Bronx and Anaheim and shut down the top two offenses in baseball. This propelled them to the World Series where the Dodgers, making a repeat appearance, where thwart 4-2 in by the Tigers.

"Sometimes you get hot and you just start believing you can conquer the world out there. Then sometimes, you actually do, " Tigers starting pitcher Nate Cagnon commented.

The Angels will have to regroup and hope for another opportunity in 2042.