This is probably futile, but does anybody have any tips on jump-starting dead hitting?

I'm in a 255mil league, and I'm loaded with the greatest contact hitters in the history of the game. Real-world stats would give my entire lineup a .400+ average. I'm not new at this (I've had a few dozen teams, some great, some bad, and have been in post season several times), and I know sometimes you just get a clunker, but this is absolutely ridiculous.

After 20 games, my seven best hitters are averaging 200 points below their real world stats. Yep, all seven. These are mostly deadball era guys, but often the Cobbs, O'Neills, Hornsbys and Sislers have great slugging pct. Nobody on this team slugs over .450... I drafted '23 Ruth in case I needed a little power, but he's anemic too: BA around .230, slugging the same. Not a single player is productive.

This league doesn't allow WW or AAA, so I'm stuck with these pansies for the entire season. Does anyone know how to "play" the sim, shuffle the order, or shake things up any way to light these guys up?

Hey Admin, this is the kind of thing that makes me seriously consider not wasting any more money on this. I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!! :)

I've never seen anything like this... this is definitely not fun or entertaining in any way. Please reply if you know any tricks; otherwise I'll soon be abandoning this team.

Chris

I hate to be a Nellie Negative but once it has started there isn't anything you can do.

The high caps are tough, the results are often scewed because the #'s are so far apart from each other.

I think it is easy for the sim to make realistic results when the pitchers OAV is .230 and the batter is .270. It's a lot harder when the pitcher's OAV is .180 and the batter is .410. A lot more variance is possible.

You can reevaluate your lineup and see if there is a "better" batting order. If you made a mistake in your original alignment this may help you score more runs.

On the upside, your hitting will probably come around. The 255 cap leagues are usually very offensive.

This league is definitely very offensive!

Yeah, I figured I was just screwed. I guess I'll hang around and see if it balances out (yeah right).

Thanks anyway for the reply.

Whealdon, I'm in an OL and am having the same issue with my team as you are with yours. 44 runs in the first 15 games, my pitching is performing better than I expected so maybe it'll all even out.

I'm considering pulling a Billy Martin and picking names out of a hat and use that as a batting line-up....

Yeah, this is pretty boring. Maybe the sim screwed up and is using my guys real world ages... most of them would be about 115 today.

I'm wondering if you could fool the sim by playing average guys the first 10 games or so, THEN put in your big hitters. Maybe next time.

Quote: Originally posted by whealdon on 3/07/2010Yeah, this is pretty boring. Maybe the sim screwed up and is using my guys real world ages... most of them would be about 115 today.I'm wondering if you could fool the sim by playing average guys the first 10 games or so, THEN put in your big hitters. Maybe next time.

This is called giving players early rest to avoid fatigue later -- used when your big hitters have low PA.

If you're using deadball hitters, chances are normalization is killing you. As an example, say you have 1894 Joe Kelley, with a .393 RL AVG. His AVG# (normalized avg) is .365. Vastly oversimplified, that means the sim figures that in an all-time average season against all-time average pitching, he'd bat .365. Against pitching you see in that high a cap, I'd expect him to hit around .320-.330 (wild guessstimate) in an average park, because the pitching is so far superior to average. If you're in a pitcher's park (or have played a bunch of road games in pitcher's parks) it wouldn't surprise me to see him hitting under .300. Throw in the small sample size, and a couple of games against 2000 Pedro, 1913 Johnson and 1995 Maddux in Petco Park or South Side Park could have him hitting well below that.

Who are some of the underperforming hitters, and what park are you using?

20 games is a very small sample size. You may not end up leading the league in runs, but give it some time; the odds are quite high that the averages will improve by the end of the year.

The thing about these threads is they always ask a different question than the one they're actually seeking an answer to. They already know why their hitters are underperforming. They're merely interested in seeing if others are as miserable as themselves. Oh how that misery loves its company!

booger with the social commentary... love it!

ps: this was really what made Bill James' works such a great read... great minds booger?

Quote: Originally posted by boogerlips on 3/08/2010The thing about these threads is they always ask a different question than the one they're actually seeking an answer to. They already know why their hitters are underperforming. They're merely interested in seeing if others are as miserable as themselves. Oh how that misery loves its company!

That's a pretty big leap in logic. It would be like saying, "some of the posters don't care what direct question is asked, they just post an insulting comment designed to degrade others and make themselves feel good."

Quote: Originally posted by boogerlips on 3/08/2010

The thing about these threads is they always ask a different question than the one they're actually seeking an answer to. They already know why their hitters are underperforming. They're merely interested in seeing if others are as miserable as themselves. Oh how that misery loves its company!

That's a pretty big leap in logic. It would be like saying, "some of the posters don't care what direct question is asked, they just post an insulting comment designed to degrade others and make themselves feel good."

Trentonjoe, I couldn't have said it better myself. As a relative newbie (12 teams) and having never experiencsed this type of underperformance, I was merely curious if this is just an anomally or if I should cut my losses and use the WW.

Thanks for the input.

What I would do, if I were in your shoes, would be to take a pantomime class at your local community center.

I don't care what ADMIN says but teams definitely slide into slumps. Sometimes I sit my starters for a game and play my bench players when I go into long slumps.

Slumps are nature's way of reminding us to be humble (Boogerlips, of course, has an exemption on that).

Whether RL or WIS, few teams avoid slumps. The numbers just run that way sometimes. Over and over I've observed my teams streaking up or down. Sometimes you can find the cause in the quality of the competition; other times it's simply luck.

And, sometimes, when a team just won't get going, you're screwed, because the nature of the league doesn't fit the team you put on the field. And sometimes that's luck and sometimes it's bad draft design...