Virtual Baseball Season/Franchise Updates

I'm now 0-7 on All-Star, a far worse streak than I've ever had on HOF.  Crazy, but the CPU is hitting me like mad at this level.

I guess there's no two-patch limit on Sony's games?

"My fifth starter..." - That's awesome, I love when lesser players play critical roles in season games.  It's one of the reason my franchise mode has been so fun.

"HH Pitch speed seems crazy slow now, though... is there a slider..."  Yes, there are sliders to change all the pitch speeds.  If you speed them up, it will change how well you hit the ball as well as how often you strike out, which may require some tuning on the Human Contact/Human Power/Human Contact Ease sliders to balance.  Additionally, it may change stolen base percentages, which can be balanced by the Human and CPU Catcher SB Throwing sliders.  Other than that, I think the rest of the game physics should work fine.  (BTW, this is an example of why I don't like to change many sliders -- changing one can affect so many others...)


Anyway, we got in two games last night, both against Tampa Bay at home.

First one: Carl Crawford led off the last of the first with an HR, but it was all downhill from there.  Barry Zito held us to 3 hits and Adam Eaton got absolutely rocked for the second straight time as Tampa won it 9-1.

Second one: Brad Penny gave up a 3R HR to A-Rod early, but was otherwise great through 6.2 innings.  We played small-ball and eeked out single runs in the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th to take a 4-3 lead.   I gave Juan Pierre a random start and he knocked in 2 of the runs.  Then Steve Karsay, Eddie Guardado, and finally new closer Colby Lewis kept them down for the win.  The final batter hit a long fly-ball that looked gone but was caught at the wall to save the game -- similar to the end of the actual A's/Mariners game last night that I saw right before playing HH!! :-)

We're now at 4-10, still 5 GB in the East, one more game with Tampa left before Baltimore comes in.

Brandon Morrow pitches a 5 hit shutout, striking out 10 and walking 1 to lead the Mariners 5-0 over Texas.  We jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the 1st after Brandon McCarthy walked the first two batters, the fourth batter and then gave up two hits.  He recovered and pitched two more innings before the Texas bullpen, for the most part, shut us down.  The final run came in the top of the 9th of an off the wall double by Jose Lopez that scored a run.  The simmed games to finish the Texas series results in an overall record of 19-16 as we return home to face Boston.  It will be Felix Hernandez v. Josh Beckett in our first meeting against an east coast team this season.

That looks cool.  You're definitely right that as of late 2002 when those rosters were finalized players were much different than they are now.  My first Sox team in my franchise had young Josh Beckett and young Jake Peavy, and they both were pretty bad.  I moved them.  Peavy is still bad, but Beckett has blossomed -- and of course now pitches for Tampa Bay, a division rival :-(

In our league: Jones is very good, Beltran is solid.  Ortiz is decent-at-best (kind of like real-life this season so far).   JD Drew beat me with a home run in a game last week and has good stats.  Halladay is very strong, Santana not so much.