Category: Baseball

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 56-58: Wrong Kind of Sweep

There is an absolutely proven to exist thing called a forum jinx. If you post anything good about your team or a player, the coding somehow reads it and causes bad things to happen to you. There is also a Sasquatch-like reverse jinx that some claim to have seen, where you can post about underachievement and get the luck to change.

I feel like I might have reverse jinxed Jack Bauer Squared into staying off the scrap heap of the season, but it also seems that whenever I write about a little success we are doomed to have a setback.

So it was for our four-game winning streak heading into a series with first-place Steroids Make You Fast, one into which we carried dreams of a legitimate run at the leaders. And the forum jinx laughed, and spat out a three-game losing streak instead, the wrong kind of sweep.

Things were looking good in the series opener at Dodger Stadium (the park I’ve seen the vast majority of my big-league games in), as JBS took a 3-1 lead on Bobby Murcer’s three-run homer and Bert Blyleven’s 7 innings of one-run ball. Then we gave up a homer in the bottom of the 8th to cut our lead to 3-2, left the bases loaded in the top of the 9th, and then with two outs in the bottom of the 9th yielded a tying homer to Milt May.

That sent us to extra innings, and in the bottom of the 10th it was time for their third homer in late innings. Willie McCovey did the honors with a walkoff two-run shot and a 5-3 comeback win for Steroids.

Game 56

The second game of the series followed a parallel script. We took a 3-0 lead in the top of the 1st and ran the advantage to 5-1 in the 6th. That held until the 8th inning, when Steroids pushed across the tying runs on a three-run homer by Tony Gwynn.

We went to extra innings again, and once again McCovey came up with a chance to end it … and did. His two-run homer in the 11th gave Steroids a 7-5 victory, both now on extra-inning walkoff shots by McCovey.

Game 57

The series finale required no dramatics. Steroids busted out to a 4-0 lead in the 4th inning, opened it up to 7-0 in the 7th and sailed to a 4-2 win and a three-game sweep.

Game 58

So that put us 8 games behind in the division and erased all the gains from the previous series. Next up: a three-game set in Yankee Stadium against A Rod, some Wood and a Big Unit, the only team trailing us in the National League West.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 53-55: Another Winning Streak

I know it’s difficult to look at a team with a 25-30 record and feel optimistic, but when that team was recently 16-28 it’s quite exciting to see the progress. Jack Bauer Squared could have been buried before we got through a third of the season, but we’ve flashed potential and have a legitimate chance to be in the hunt now.

We opened our three-game series with 24 Hours at Wrigley with a tight game that required a four-run rally in the 7th to pull out. Bobby Murcer’s two-run double keyed the inning, and we managed to win one of those elusive one-run games, 7-6.

Game 53

Reaching the one-third mark of the season with style, in Game 54 JBS recorded its fourth shutout in the past 10 games. This time it was Burt Hooton going 8 innings for the win, 3-0. Each of our four starting pitchers has been at the fore of one of the shutouts in this stretch, so that’s good to see.

Game 54

Trying for the sweep, we found ourselves in a pitchers’ duel with Mike Cuellar acquitting himself well for a rare treat. Cuellar went 6 innings and allowed 2 runs. 

The game was tied 2-2 into the 9th inning, and JBS put together three consecutive singles in the bottom of the inning. Carlos Delgado delivered the walkoff hit for a 3-2 victory and a fourth consecutive triumph.

Game 55

This four-game winning streak puts us only 5 games out of first place and with a pair of one-run wins now have a 7-12 record in those decisions. Things are starting to even out, and with that our standing is improving.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 49-52: A Pair of Splits

We are closing in on the one-third mark of the season, and thanks to a five-game winning streak Jack Bauer Squared is at least moving in the right direction. We split two interleague two-game series to leave our record at 22-30, 7 games out of first place. 

We have now scored exactly as many runs as we’ve allowed, 236, which usually would indicate we should have a record closer to 26-26. The continuing culprit preventing that is the one-run losses, as we are just 5-12 in those decisions.

In our previous report we had wrapped up a three-game sweep and had won four straight, looking to sustain the momentum (not that code knows such a thing, of course) against 576. (That’s 24 times 24, in case you missed it.)

We were scoreless into the 6th inning of the opener at Olympic Stadium until Carlos Delgado belted a two-run homer, his 8th. Then after giving the lead away, JBS responded in the 8th inning with a two-run homer by Kal Daniels and a grand slam by Garry Maddox.

That was plenty to secure an 8-3 victory, our fifth straight. We headed next to Boston’s historic Fenway Park for our only visit.

Game 49

JBS belted two homers in the top of the 1st, by Daniels and Bobby Murcer, to take the lead. Delgado homered in the 3rd to retake the team lead from Daniels, 9 to 8, and we later broke a 3-3 tie with Daniels doubling in a run and later scoring in the 7th. 

The bullpen couldn’t hold the lead, however. This time it was Todd Burns yielding four runs in the bottom of the 8th, and our winning streak ended at five with a 7-5 defeat.

Game 50

From there JBS packed bags for the single trip to Seattle’s Kingdome, where we’d square off with 24×24 Kingdome Krushers, run by the league’s commissioner, footballmm11. Turns out he knows baseball darn well, too!

The Kingdome didn’t disappoint for Krushing, as each team had a three-run homer in the second inning (ours from Gene Tenace), and the game remained tight into the 7th inning. The Krushers worked over our bullpen to tack on 3 more runs and pulled away to a 9-5 win.

Game 51

That sent us back to Olympic Stadium, where Bert Blyleven joined the club as we recorded our third shutout in eight games after none in the first 44. Blyleven allowed 2 hits in 7 innings to improve to 7-4, and Rafael Ramirez drove in both runs in a 2-0 win.

Game 52

Next up: a three-game home series against 24 Hours at Wrigley. This is the part of the schedule where we start facing teams for the second time this season, and we lost 2 of 3 to these guys the first time around. If we’re going to make that march toward .500 stick, we’ll need to flip that around.

Categories
Baseball Sim Baseball Sim Dynasty

A Sim Dynasty World Series

Meanwhile over on Sim Dynasty, we have something exciting going on. To recap, Sim Dynasty owners guide their teams through drafts and trades and follow players’ careers season by season, trying to build a great team. The players aren’t real, but they perform statistically quite realistically.

I’ve been in the Tony Conigliaro League since it was founded, starting in the 1950 season. We have reached the 2196 World Series, to be played Wednesday. My team, the Brooklyn Blind Bats, is making its first trip to one since 2184. We lost that one attempting our first four-peat, but we reached five WS in six years. 

It’s a long road back in a rebuild sometimes, and this one has not gone quickly for me. I haven’t paid as much attention to my SimD teams lately as I used to. They more or less go on autopilot all season except when injuries occur and for drafts and such. But I don’t trade as much as I used to or follow the storylines like I once did, in part because I do spend much more time micromanaging my WIS teams. 

My Bats have won 33 titles in 62 WS appearances, the most of any owner. There are actually about 6 or 7 of us who have been around since the outset, which is about 15 real-life years by now. The TCL plays nine games per day, so we cycle through about 15-16 seasons in a calendar year, hence our league date being far in the future by now.

My opponent tomorrow is also an original owner, though he took a brief break at one point before rejoining, so the career stats are split in half. The Cleveland Badgers have 27 titles in 228 seasons, and they are three-time defending champions right now. Twice the Badgers have pulled off a four-peat, and no team has managed to win five straight in our 246 years.

It will all be over in one day, a best-of-seven series. Either it’s my turn to climb back to the pinnacle, or Cleveland makes history again with a title. 

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 46-48: OMG, a Winning Streak!

Dear Faithful Reader, perhaps there is finally a reward for sticking with the exploits of Jack Bauer Squared. Possibly even something good could yet come of the season. Because, yes, we actually have a winning streak going!

Fresh off our series win against Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula, we headed to Candlestick Park for three games against Todd Helton??? looking to sustain momentum. And, astonishingly, for the first time all season, we did.

We jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the top of the 1st inning, finding The Stick very much to our liking. Bobby Bonilla’s two-run triple started the scoring, and we went on to a 5-2 victory behind a strong start from Burt Hooton, who earned just his second win.

Game 46

The second game featured more unlikely feats based on how the season had gone so far. Mike Cuellar finally pitched like an ace, going 8 innings for our second shutout in three games after none all season before that. He improved to 4-5 and dropped his ERA to 5.40, still a long way from where it needs to be.

Bonilla continued to be a major lifter on offense with a two-run homer, his sixth, as we cruised to a 5-0 victory.

Game 47

In the final game, we again jumped out to an early lead with a four-run 3rd inning keyed by Garry Maddox’s two-run triple. Ryne Sandberg had a pair of triples and a double as we cruised to a 10-4 victory.

Game 48

The three-game sweep ran our winning streak to four games and gave us five wins in six games. A 20-28 record looks a lot more promising than 16-28 did, and if we can sustain this push we still have a chance to get into the race soon.

Next up: two more interleague series. Hopefully this trend continues.

Categories
Baseball MLB

Two Baseball Treasures

Over the years I have managed to pick up a few items at yard sales, swap meets, and the like that became some of my favorite treasures. Two of them feature famous baseball players and sit on my bookshelves.

One is from 1946 and I believe is a page from Life magazine. I found it in one of those bins filled with old magazine pages, and only recently did it take on an added baseball significance. 

The page shows a “BASEBALL SHIFT” in which the Cleveland Indians employed a novel defensive alignment against Ted Williams, with the subhead, “Indians try to stop Ted Williams by placing six men in right field.”

The page describes how Williams tormented the Indians in the opener of a July 14, 1946, doubleheader, so they went to the extreme shift in the second game. Amazingly, thanks to Baseball Reference, we actually have these full box scores online, and they confirm the facts of the magazine.

Fans of today’s MLB will no doubt recall that such defensive shifts were virtually unknown until just a few years ago, but today they are extremely common. Pull hitters like Williams would face them virtually every time up today, but it was not a normal strategy in 1946 in the least.

Take a look at that photo and note that Williams still managed to hit a double to right anyway! 

The second baseball treasure is from The Sporting News and dates to 1933, when an 18-year-old phenom showed up for the old San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. His name was Joe DiMaggio.

Not that The Sporting News got that right. Their “Minors Worth Watching” feature correctly identified the hitting prowess of the 18-year-old outfielder who set a record for the longest hitting streak in PCL history, 61 games. DiMaggio, of course, would later embark on what remains by far the greatest such streak in major-league history, 56 games in 1941. TSN certainly foreshadowed the skills that would make DiMaggio a Hall of Famer for the Yankees in years to come.

But they didn’t quite get his name right, just a little detail that leaped out at this longtime copy editor. They called him “Joe De Maggio.” 

Some good history in this article from MiLB.com on DiMaggio’s amazing minor-league career. Give it a read.

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 43-45: An Actual Series Win

What’s that saying about a blind squirrel finding a nut every now and then? Maybe that’s the best explanation for Jack Bauer Squared actually winning a series. Until we make a habit of it, that’s all we deserve.

JBS hosted Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula, and the opener featured a not-awful start by Mike Cuellar, one of the few times we’ve able to say that. Cuellar allowed 3 runs in 8 innings, and we actually won one of those 1-run games, 4-3.

Game 43

It’s been a long time since we won two games in a row, and so it’s no surprise we reverted to old form in losing a 1-run game right after winning one. The tiebreaking run scored in the 6th inning when catcher Gene Tenace tried to pick a runner off third base and threw it away. We twice couldn’t get a runner home from third over the final four innings and it finished up 6-5.

Game 44

The rubber game of the series featured an accomplishment we’d yet to achieve in the first 44 games. We didn’t give up any runs. And I’m pretty sure even the most casual of fans can tell you that you can’t lose if you do that.

Teddy Higuera went 8 innings, allowing 5 hits, to even his record at 5-5 and drop his ERA to 3.72. We didn’t score much, but we didn’t need to, taking the final game 2-0.

Game 45

If a sim could possibly comprehend momentum, maybe a win like that could propel us in a good direction. At 17-28 we are only 8 games behind in the NL West and still playing way below expected win percentage (.378 to .466). Granted, .466 still isn’t good enough to win, but it would be a lot more competitive.

Next up we face Todd Helton???, which is tied with Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula at 20-25 pulling up the rear of the NL East. Another series win wouldn’t be too much to ask for, I’d think.

We’ll be playing in San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, where I once had the, uh, privilege to see a game. The ‘Stick was not a great place to play baseball, largely because of wind. And compared with the beautiful park the Giants replaced it with, there’s no reason to have much nostalgia for it. 

Categories
Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 40-42: It’s Not Getting Better

Jack Bauer Squared came home to Olympic Stadium for a three-game series against Piazza Blues, and about the only good news is we didn’t lose any games by 1 run. Oh no. We lost all of them by 2 or 3 runs instead!

After Bobby Bonilla doubled in a run in the 1st inning, our offense went nowhere the rest of the series opener. We managed only four hits in a 4-1 loss.

Game 40

As the second quarter of the season began, we again failed to muster much offense in a 5-2 loss. Mike Cuellar was charged with only 2 earned runs due to a pair of errors. In his 11th start, this marked the first time he didn’t allow at least 3 earned runs. None of that is impressive in the least.

Game 41

Trying to emerge from the final game of the series with some respectability, we at least kept it entertaining. Bonilla doubled in the 6th inning to tie the game 1-1, and then no one scored again until the 15th inning. 

Burt Hooton and the first five relievers to follow him yielded just the lone run and seven hits through 14 innings, but in came long man Orlando Pena for the 15th and things got out of control quickly. After allowing only one run in his first seven appearances, Pena allowed six straight runners to reach base in the 15th and was charged with 5 runs.

We didn’t give up, though. Out of position players, JBS had to send up Bert Blyleven to pinch hit to start the inning, and he predictably struck out. But then two singles and two doubles put 3 runs on the board and we had a little hope. Alas, that was as close as we could get and lost 6-4.

Game 42

The three-game sweep put us at 15-27, 9-14 at home and 6-13 on the road. Worst record in the National League. There are still 120 games to play, though, so we can try to find glimmers of hope that a turnaround remains possible.

Categories
Baseball Hobbies Sim Baseball

Endings and Beginnings

A simulated baseball season played at 3 games per day takes about two months to complete, 54 days for the regular season, plus playoffs. So whether you’re having an outstanding season (as I celebrated in my post on a recent title) or a doomed one (as we are living through with the escapades of Jack Bauer Squared), I have a great deal of perspective on the flow of my various teams.

As of yesterday, the regular season for my six teams in the 2020 WIS Championship concluded, and I have only two of them advancing to the playoffs. Since I won’t be participating in Round 2 (a post mortem on that seems like a subject for a future post), it’s time to get excited about a new group of seasons starting.

A group of five entered in a mini-tournament began play last night, essentially replacing the teams I was managing in the WISC. Counting the two playoff teams remaining, I have 19 active teams for the moment. I check every box score three times a day and adjust lineups as needed. Some teams require constant shuffling, and others basically run themselves, but there is definitely a routine that I manage my day around.

Here’s what that looks like in phone screenshots after a round of games:

I have three more completed rosters waiting for leagues to fill, and all are likely to start within the next week. I’m signed up for a league that’s waiting to fill for its next draft. And inevitably my desire to build new rosters will kick in quickly and I’ll find another intriguing theme or two and enter more. The cycle keeps things endlessly fresh.

I have seven teams entered in Round 2 of a massive five-round tournament put on each year by thejuice6, who runs so many successful themes and tournaments he has his own forum for drafts. His leagues draw a great group of competitive owners and take you on deep dives into baseball history. Last year I made it to the final round and even within one round of the World Series, which is where the good prize money lives. 

I entered seven teams in Round 1 this year and all advanced, and so far I’m on track to have six or seven move on to Round 3. When that round begins drafting, I’ll be able to detail the process behind my drafts and rosters. We are 133 games into Round 2, so that figures to kick in towards the end of the month.

One of my teams in the mini-tournament that just started is entirely made up of players from 1982. If you’ve read my previous post, you’ll appreciate why that was a special draft. I think it deserves a deeper dive soon, in fact, because it connects so many dots. 

The journey here is not a straight line, so enjoy the digressions and tangents as they progress us in a distinctly non-linear fashion. I even have a great story to come about digressions! Maybe two!

Categories
Baseball College Hobbies Sim Baseball

Replaying a Season

Replaying an entire major league season requires several tools, not least of which are time and patience. I started with just the National League for 1982, in part because I was not certain from the outset what would happen. The initial plan was to play a month for each league, alternating back and forth.

Using Statis Pro Baseball, with all the cards provided plus a few I made myself for the limited-use players needed to fill out all the rosters, I followed the league’s actual schedule that I had found in a book I still had from the 1982 season preview the year before. That little paperback The Complete Handbook of Baseball, proved invaluable. The 1983 preview edition had all of the individual statistics from 1982 that I could use. 

I collected the books year after year because finding everything you needed in one place was much harder before we’d even dreamed of the internet. The Baseball Encyclopedia was a revelation, of course, putting all of baseball’s historical data into one volume. I bought the updates every few years, because you had to be current. (I still have all of these books. Because of course I do. I have a few posts coming just on baseball books, you can be certain.)

Life in 1983 consisted of more than just simulating baseball games, however. I was in 7th grade at a college preparatory school with hours of homework each night. I had a bar mitzvah in June to prepare for, and I was fortunate to take a trip with my grandparents to Israel and Italy that summer. Plus, you know, pesky things like doing anything else.

This is to say that I did not spend every free moment replaying the 1982 season, but I made progress steadily enough that I became hooked. At that time the National League had 12 teams, each playing 162 games. So that meant 972 games had to be played in all, and each one took over an hour to set up, play, and complete the scoresheet.

After every two weeks’ worth of games, I would compile all the updated season statistics. Though it may seem incomprehensible in our modern computing era while I play online games that do all of it instantly, I had to do all the work by hand initially. I designed special team stat pages and filled them in manually, going through each of my box scores (using the game’s specially designed scoresheets that I could probably recreate from memory right now), adding everything up, and doing all the math.

Once I had my stat updates complete, I would write long letters (on actual paper!) to my sim penpal Caleb and share all the details of my season in progress. He would send me tomes of his own recapping his 1981 adventures. Life got busier for him, too, eventually. He actually could play baseball well and played through high school.

An amazing invention arrived somewhere in the middle of all this: the home computer. I couldn’t afford one until I was about 16 and the mass market developed, but soon I discovered the wonders of a spreadsheet. The program, Lotus 1-2-3, revolutionized my statistical work, though in those days of floppy disks and minimal memory, it could take hours to enter all the data. Saving would take actual minutes, and if anything failed you had to type everything in again.

On average, I could complete about a month’s worth of games in a year. I played all the time in the summer, when I was essentially home alone all day. I’d bring the game with me for visits to grandparents. (I even remember bringing it to a nudist colony my mother belonged to. Yes, there was a nice indoor clubhouse on whose floor I could spread out my game while people outside did whatever it was they did.)

As the years progressed and I stuck with my challenge, the biggest temptation was to move on to a newer season. By the time I reached high school, I was still barely into June of my replay season, and the pace certainly slowed. I attended a very competitive private school, and studying took up nearly all my time. Eventually there were jobs and even a semblance of a social life. Sim baseball basically sat on the shelf outside of vacations in those days.

By the time all the hard work in high school paid off and I headed to Philadelphia to attend the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1988, I still was only in early September of my replay season. The game stayed in Los Angeles. 

I reached the end of my season in 1990, some seven years after beginning and 10 years after first discovering Statis Pro Baseball. Forget about the American League; this was just to get the NL season done.

Today with an online simulation, you could do it essentially instantly. But where would be the fun in that?