I had a lot of success in San Diego with home run hitters.  Figured it was hard(er) to string more than 1-2 hits together, and we scored enough to win a bunch of games.

Great D and your park will make good pitchers great.

It's the great hitters you'll need to succeed in scoring runs at home.

However, as always, you play half your games elsewhere.  You need to win there, too.  Don't get too hung up on your home park.

I think I am going to try going with 11 pitchers in this park. I've always gone with 12. I'll use the spot for an extra pinch hitter or pinch runner.

Posted by bjschumacher on 10/12/2012 7:16:00 PM (view original):
I think I am going to try going with 11 pitchers in this park. I've always gone with 12. I'll use the spot for an extra pinch hitter or pinch runner.

+1

It's the one thing no one else has mentioned yet. Your pitchers won't fatigue as easily as a typical park.

Pay more attention to how fast the pitchers you do have bounce back, and less on how many pitchers you have.  In other words, look at how many innings your staff can give you, not how many bodies you have laying around.

Not sure that's the best way to look at it. Your pitchers will recover at the same rate they always have, however they will throw fewer pitches to get through an inning, so you won't necessarily need as many to reach that staff target of 1460. For example, that stud with a STA of 12-15, DUR of 60+ might be a LH/RH specialist in another park, could be a closer in TAC.

You just repeated me, but used more words to do it.  Good job.

All great info guys. Thanks

Not much to add to what's already been said, but I did win a few titles with a Tacoma team.  Defense is the most important thing not to skimp on IMO.  While I go with a lot of more hitting oriented catchers in other leagues now, it would be much harder to make up the gap offensivley to make it worth it in Tacoma.  A great pitching staff is important anywhere, but I would definetly advise you not to go crazy spending on a 4th/5th starter.  You can get away with some pitchers that other teams can't.  You still need those frontline starters, but you can get away with a 5th starter with a pretty poor GB/FB and not so great splits.  Keep the control high still to cut down on the walks, but if your defense is solid, you can all but ignore GB/FB and get some lower rated pitchers cheaper to fill out your staff.  And don't be afraid of good hitters.  Really good hitters still hit well in Tacoma.  You still have to score runs so don't always go after the pitcher cause your in a pitching park and building a team around pitching and defense.

I've been playing in my just finished 4th season, all in Tacoma. From my experiance, as some have already said, I got there with strong starting pitching and strong defense. One thing I didn't have the last few seasons was a VERY strong closer...I had a servicable one, but not top notch. If you have a decent enough offense, you will notcie you are going to be in a lot of close games.....a stronger closer and I may have won 10 more games. I played a lot of close games at home and had a winning record....one the road I had a winning record but just barely. Start with strong pitching and defense....at least that gives you a good chance to start. Oh....I won the division with no batter over 20 hrs or 100rbs.....although my 3b had 19 & 99.