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Forum LockedVirtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates

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Slumberland View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Virtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates
    Posted: 04-27-2009 at 11:06am
A little place for people to post about their current season/franchises?  I always like reading about this stuff.

The Show Franchise '09 (Mets): 4-7
Game 11: W, 4-2, over the visiting Brewers.
Johan puts end to four-game skid, Turnbow has successful hold in first appearance after signing as a free agent, and Putz notches his first save, filling in for the injured K-Rod.  Delgado goes deep, sneaking one under the Pepsi Porch, which Ramon Castro comes up big with a pinch-hit, two-run double.

This game is HARD!


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TedSGN View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote TedSGN Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-27-2009 at 7:06pm
MLB 2k9 Seattle Mariners:  14-11

We just finished sweeping the A's and Felix Hernandez will face off against Kevin Millwood and the visiting Texas Rangers.

I only play the first game of each series and sim the rest of the series.  My W-L of the games I played is 4-2.  In my last start we beat Oakland 3-2 in extra innings.  RP David Aardsma tore his achilles and is expected out for 88 days.  Pretty short for a torn achilles if you ask me, but that's ok.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 8:21am
Originally posted by TedSGN

Pretty short for a torn achilles if you ask me, but that's ok.


We can rebuild him.  - six million dollar man

Inijuries are a bitch.  My second baseman Castillo went down for two months diving after a ball I didn't even really have a chance for, and losing my closer to a broken hand, just from throwing a pitch?  Ugh.




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Derek View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Derek Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 9:06am
I haven't started a 'real' season with the Yankees yet, though I have just finished playing every game in spring training.  I can't recall what my actual record was, but my winning % was around 35% and I finished next to last in the Spring League.  (Hall of Fame difficulty)
 
I haven't moved on from there because
 
1) I'm suffering a bit of Roster Paralysis.  Injuries have futzed around with the Bombers current lineup, and I don't know that I want to start the long season with the current crew. (Still can't update rosters in the middle of a season, right?
 
2)I'm still having issues with how the game plays for me.  Not the fact that I am losing, but that I do seem to be experiencing a lot of what seems to be 'fakeness' by the game, both for and against me.  I'm not saying that there is catch up code or anything like that, but there are times when I know from the first batter that THIS is going to be the inning that I do or the computer does well.  Sometimes I feel things are taken out of my hands somewhat.  I may try both Legend and All-Star to see how those feel, though I'm pretty sure pitching will be too easy for me on All-Star.
 
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Post Options Post Options   Quote TedSGN Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 9:21am
D, 2k9 or Show?
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Slumberland View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 9:42am
Derek, aren't injured players still available somewhere in the rosters, either inactive or in the minors?  I believe you could re-jigger them yourself on the fly... I think.

As for the second point, I don't think you'll find anything different on Legend.  In my first go around, just a short season with the Mets while I waited for the opening day rosters to come out, my hitting sucked but I had little problem holding leads.  When I started my real Mets franchise, my hitting vastly improved (mostly because I've finally trained myself not to jam the stick down on every pitch) but all of a sudden my pitchers were guaranteed to have one awful inning, and leads were routinely blown in the 8th and 9th.  So I was winning consistently on the first go around with a batting average of about .230 and then getting swept this time around while hitting .280. 

I'm just going to chalk it up to streakiness, and that things can start to snowball in any given situation.  I let the first two batters on, I get nervous, miss the meter, etc.  I'm trying to take Santana's real life approach into the game now, where no matter what happens, just focus on this batter, even with two on and no out.  Fatigue seems to be a factor too.  Who knows.  The game drives me nuts sometimes and is bliss at others.  I'm hoping that signing Turnbow will help in the pen... he throws in the mid '90's and really seemed to have the Brewers off-balance in his first appearance.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Derek Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 11:09am
The Show for me, Ted.
 
I may rent 2k9 to play some games with you folks if you guys give it high marks online, but after some burnout from going slider-crazy with the game the last two years and then seeing how easy it was to homer in the demo, I decided to give it a pass for 1p play.
 
I haven't looked too hard at roster management stuff yet, Slumber, but I bet you're right.  I can't wait for the day where you have the option to have injuries/rosters/etc sync up with the real club for actual dates in these type of games.  I'd let the Yanks get a few games ahead of me, and then simply go play the games with the same lineups and rosters that they had on that day!  For now, I'll probably wait for the next roster update and then go with that.  (The current one has some oddness like Mo Rivera being a setup man, etc)
 
I obviously still enjoy the game tons, having played through every inning of every Spring Training game.  My difficulty complaint that the game was too easy has been demolished this year, so no issues there, but I just wish I could trace my good and bad performances more to something I was doing well or wrong in the game, be it pitch selection, poor timing, etc.   These things seem irrelevant to the runs me or the CPU tend to go on.  More than anything, there seems to be a very, very powerful 'confidence' or 'momentum' or 'clutch' situation or something behind the scenes that seems to have more impact than it should.  I know for a fact that in the case of pitchers, confidence has far too much of an impact. (IMO)
 
But as you say, for a good portion of the time, what you get out of this game is just Pure Baseball, and it does it wonderfully.
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Slumberland View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Slumberland Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 2:28pm
I would also love to have that option of playing the season with the exact day-to-day replica of that team's lineups for the year.  I think NBA Live is scratching the surface with some of that stuff, but it's an area that the Show devs seemed unable to anticipate, based on some of their reactions at O.S. when people started to call for complete roster control in-season, to that end.  162 games over the course of a year is about the ceiling of what I could put into a game (with some detours and other modes peppered in), and as a fan of verisimillitude, playing alongside the actual season in real time would be the bee's knees.

Speaking of Pure Baseball, one thing the game has gotten me thinking about is how, I don't know, accurate the idea of contact is in the game.  Specifically, my success in the game seems directly linked to my making the opposing pitcher throw a lot of pitches.  And yet it's still relatively easy to make contact, but super hard to make GOOD contact.  I feel like I could easily get up there and put the ball in play, but when I get too aggressive in The Show, it leads to a lot of four or five pitch innings with nothing to show for it.  Do major leaguers feel that way?  That it's not about putting their bat on a pitch, but putting it on the right pitch?
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Mike_S Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 4:34pm
High Heat 2004 Career Mode, started on XBox last summer (when my wife decided she'd start spending at least 2 nights a week trying to trap feral cats).  Playing as Red Sox, Fantasy Draft Rosters, 48-game schedules.  Would have preferred to get in the modern rosters and play with the real teams, but they change too frequently to keep accurate. 

It's the first time I've ever played (for fun) an extended career mode -- no money, contracts, or free agency, but trading allowed including CPU-proposed trades.  The Fantasy Draft rosters element helps with this, since I don't mind trading away guys who aren't "real Red Sox" the way I would with standard rosters.  Anyway, trying to improve your team when you have nobody decent you're willing to give up is quite challenging and fun (when it actually works)!! :-)

Anyway, the background history:

MVP Difficulty, limited slider modifications (mostly making human hitting more difficult and human K'ing more prevalent).

2003 season: 5th in AL East, horrible batting and pitching.  Spent the season re-learning the game and some of the lesser-known players.

2004 season: 5th in AL East, good power, was really charging at the end of the season, but still horrible pitching did us in.

2005 season: 5th in AL East yet again, bad hittting, improving pitching.  Many of our decent guys who did well in 2004 did much worse in 2005, so I started moving a lot of our aging players who weren't productive in exchange for a lot more, younger, and/or better pitchers.

2006 season: 4th in AL East, 22-26, but only 4 games back on division winning Baltimore.  We were legitimately hanging alive in the race until the last 8 games or so, it was super-fun after so many poor seasons.  Great pitching, we led the AL in ERA.  Decent batting average, good team speed, but almost no power (last in HR, runs scored) which was our ultimate demise.

Our current team core is Carl Crawford (RF), Carlos Beltran (CF), Aubrey Huff (3B/1B), and Cristian Guzman (SS).  Current top pitchers are Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson, with strong bullpen of Todd Zimmerman, Eddie Guardado, Steve Karsay.  Added an aging Sean Casey during offseason to hopefully bolster our power a bit, as well as Colby Lewis and Michael Tejera for added pitching depth.  I try to keep mostly real-life players on my roster, but a lot of other teams have developed new stars.  Once in a while I'll bring up some fictional minor leaguers.

So far in 2007: Tough-luck 2-5 start.  Pitching has been great again, power much better so far, but our Batting Average sucks so far.  We took 1 out of 3 in Baltimore (who have a great pitching staff) to open the season, then were swept in Toronto featuring two amazing losses that felt like they should have been wins.  One saw sure-handed Guzman make 2 consecutive errors with one out in the 8th followed by a JD Drew 3-run HR,  and a 3-1 lead became a 4-3 loss.  The other saw a 4-3 lead in the ninth become 4-4 when a throw from RF beat the Toronto runner home but somehow Victor Martinez missed the tag and the run scored -- something I don't believe I have EVER seen in High Heat before --  and we lost it in 11 innings, 6-4.

Finally had a good-hitting game at KC (Central Division defending Champs) last game, won it 6-1 and pounded out 13 hits.  Mulder is now 2-0.  We have one more at KC with Adam Eaton going (who did well for us last season, had about a 3.30 ERA) and then go to Boston for an extended homestand. 

My wife has cat stuff tonight, so hopefully I can get in 3 or 4 more games... :-)




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K_Mosley View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Quote K_Mosley Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04-28-2009 at 8:04pm
Originally posted by Slumberland

I would also love to have that option of playing the season with the exact day-to-day replica of that team's lineups for the year.  I think NBA Live is scratching the surface with some of that stuff, but it's an area that the Show devs seemed unable to anticipate, based on some of their reactions at O.S. when people started to call for complete roster control in-season, to that end.  162 games over the course of a year is about the ceiling of what I could put into a game (with some detours and other modes peppered in), and as a fan of verisimillitude, playing alongside the actual season in real time would be the bee's knees.

Speaking of Pure Baseball, one thing the game has gotten me thinking about is how, I don't know, accurate the idea of contact is in the game.  Specifically, my success in the game seems directly linked to my making the opposing pitcher throw a lot of pitches.  And yet it's still relatively easy to make contact, but super hard to make GOOD contact.  I feel like I could easily get up there and put the ball in play, but when I get too aggressive in The Show, it leads to a lot of four or five pitch innings with nothing to show for it.  Do major leaguers feel that way?  That it's not about putting their bat on a pitch, but putting it on the right pitch?
 
FYI - You can do this in Diamond Mind Baseball, albeit a year later.  And, it's manage only.  And, there's no career mode.  But, you can do it.  Smile
 
PS - Diamond Mind is my favorite replay simulator on the market.  They've moved mostly to online stuff now, though. 
 
Kevin
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