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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 142-144: Every Game Counts

Fresh off that surprising sweep of Hitmen 24×24, the Jack Bauer Squared squad headed to Atlanta Fulton County Stadium for another huge series against Piazza Blues. When you’re tied for the division with 21 games to go, every loss starts to sting. Not to mention those 21 one-run losses we’ve racked up through the season.

Piazza Blues jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the 5th inning of the series opener, and we never really had a decent look at the game. The 7-2 loss put us a game behind in the division race and kept us from hitting .500 on the season. 

Game 142

We came out in the second game with a run in each of the first three innings, and Mike Cuellar put up another strong start. Cuellar allowed 2 runs and 3 hits across 7 innings, which normally would be good enough to win.

Alas, the home squad tied it in the bottom of the 8th, and we went to extra innings. We broke it open in the 11th with a four-run inning, keyed by Bob Bailey’s two-run single, and went on to win 7-3. 

Game 143

Coupled with a loss by Steroids Make You Fast, we moved back into a first-place tie and again just one game below .500. The rubber game of the series would be yet another shot at reaching the even mark.

Things started off exceedingly well. Joel Youngblood homered to lead off the game, and Carlos Delgado hit a solo shot two batters later for a 2-0 lead. We added 3 more in the 3rd inning, keyed by Bobby Murcer’s two-run homer. (Fun fact: Delgado and Murcer both with exactly 24 HR and 97 RBI.)

Two can play at that game, unfortunately. Piazza Blues kept going deep, and going deep, and going deep … to the tune of six homers in all. We wound up losing 9-6 to slip yet again to two games under .500 but remained in a first-place tie. 

Game 144

JBS and Steroids are tied at 71-73, with our division opponents only 4 and 6 games back and still with a chance to get in there, too. The wild-card leader is at 75-69, which means there’s even some chance still of making the playoffs that way. 

With 18 games to go, we get a bit of a schedule advantage with back-to-back three-game series against the NL’s two worst teams. After that it’s four games each against our three division opponents, and that’s all that’s left. The playoffs are in sight, and you never know what can happen if you make it.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 139-141: A Wholly Unexpected Sweep

Do you believe in miracles? This Jack Bauer Squared team that seemingly had no business being in a division race enters the final 24 games of the 24×24 season just a game out of first place. But with 6 games on the road against the NL’s top two teams, would we just tumble back out of it?

Of course we started off against our nemesis, La Marr Hoyt, the not-so-worthy 1983 Cy Young winner I jokingly disparaged during the draft and then noted he’d probably beat me every time I faced him. First two times out, he did. Here in the heat of the pennant race came No. 3.

Pick your cliche. Third time’s a charm? Sure, why not? 

Kal Daniels opened the game against Hitmen 24×24  with a leadoff homer, his 17th, and Garry Maddox added a 2-run shot to back 7 scoreless innings from Bert Blyleven. That would be the Blyleven I drafted because I didn’t want to get stuck with Hoyt! 

For what it’s worth, Blyleven is 16-11, 4.74, and Hoyt is 16-13, 4.25. Joke is definitely on me, but at least we finally beat him. The 4-0 win kept us a game back and moved us one step closer to .500.

Game 139

Side note: Maddox has hit 6 homers for me, matching his real-life total, though his average of .271 is quite off his real .330 in 1976. I drafted him largely for his glove, however, his famously extraordinary range in center field for the Phillies matching his impossibly huge hair. I grew to admire his graceful loping through the outfield when his Phils met my Dodgers in the 1977 and 1978 playoffs.

The great quote about Maddox is still one of my baseball favorites: “Two-third of the Earth is covered by water, and the rest by Garry Maddox.” Yup, the man tracked down everything out there, it seemed. 

So far for me he has notched 19 “plus” defensive plays, which is definitely worthy though it ranks only 5th in the league among center fielders. And his 10 errors match the most of any CF, while his range factor ranks just 13th. … But I digress. The man could play mean defense, and I’m sticking to it regardless.

In the second game at Oakland Coliseum, Mike Cuellar gave up a run on two hits in the 2nd inning, and then he didn’t allow anything the rest of the way. Definitely the time to pitch like an ace, Mike!

Bobby Murcer swatted his 23rd homer, and Gene Tenace hit his 18th, and Cuellar went the distance in a 3-1 win. I’ve ripped Cuellar’s inconsistency, but I can’t complain about this outing in the least.

With a loss by Steroids Make You Fast, suddenly this JBS squad is back in a first-place tie. 

Game 140

In the series finale, no one scored until the 4th inning, but then the bats got going. Tenace hit his 19th and 20th homers as we built an 8-3 lead. Rod Beck came on in the 7th and gave up a pair of two-run homers to put Hitmen squarely into it again, however.

It stayed 8-7 into the 9th, and Bob Woodward came on in pursuit of his 33rd save and promptly put two runners on. But he retired the final three hitters in a row to close out a rare one-run win for us and a very surprising three-game sweep of one of the league’s top teams.

Game 141

The wholly unexpected sweep put us at 70-71, still tied for first, so close to .500 and yet with another daunting series ahead of us and no time to enjoy it. We need to keep it up against Piazza Blues next as we hit the home stretch of the season.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 136-138: Fighting for First

Dear Reader, I failed you in maintaining a real-time running story of this sim season and fell a bit behind. The present drama, however, argues for catching up when I can and keeping you informed to what is unfolding down the stretch. So the posts might not fit chronologically, but I’ll get it all here eventually.

So, with the miracle of getting into a first-place tie duly noted, we have to be realistic about where this Jack Bauer Squared team stands now. We have a 9-game road trip that includes the league’s two best teams coming up, and a slip back is certainly to be expected soon. 

That puts a premium on winning against anyone else as the season starts to run out of games. This home series against Royal Gamers definitely fit into that category. 

Teddy Higuera was up to the task in the opener, extending a run of strong starts with 1 run allowed in 7 innings. Higuera improved to 4-2 with a 2.92 ERA across his past 10 starts.

Bobby Murcer tied the game in the 2nd inning with his 21st homer, and then he drove in the go-ahead run on a 6th-inning single. That proved enough for a 2-1 victory and keeping pace atop the division. That made us 15-21 in 1-run games now, which still isn’t good but it’s closer to even anyway.

Game 136

The second game was the opposite of the opener, a true slugfest. The Mr. Hyde version of Mike Cuellar showed up for this one, as he allowed 8 runs in 5.1 innings. 

There is just no pattern to Cuellar’s runs totals recently. Working backwards, here are the runs he’s allowed: 8, 1, 5, 0, 7, 5, 0, 0, 3, 7, 2, 6. Sometimes he’s really good, sometimes really bad, and rarely in the middle.

Nonetheless, JBS rallied from a 9-4 deficit to tie it in the 7th, keyed by a 3-run double from Garry Maddox. Royal Gamers jumped ahead in the top of the 10th with 3 runs, and we threatened in the bottom of the inning before stranding two runners and losing, 12-10.

Game 137

That dropped us a game behind Steroids Make You Fast heading into the series finale. The Gamers jumped out to a 6-2 early lead, however, and we couldn’t put a good rally together until the 9th. 

Down 3, we loaded the bases with one out. But we failed to score and dropped the finale 7-4 and remained one game back in the division and just one game ahead of third place. We may be only 67-71, but if you get into the playoffs anything can happen.

Game 138

The toughest remaining piece of schedule looms now, a series at Hitmen 24×24 (85-53) followed by one at Piazza Blues (84-54), the two other division leaders in the NL. We have gone 4-5 against Hitmen thus far, and we need to get a win or two to keep from slipping.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

A Little Foreshadowing

My running recaps of the Sim League Baseball season are behind by a few days, but I’m working on catching up to the live schedule. In the meantime, here’s a photo of the division standings from earlier today.

Yup, this sad-sack team I gave up on early in the second half is somehow tied for first place. So at least now you know where the plot is headed.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 91-93: A Little Bit Better

At 38-52 through our first 90 games, Jack Bauer Squared isn’t looking like much of a contender at this point. We had a little run to get close to a wild card at 34-39, but then we dropped 13 out of 17. 

But the best medicine for teams in the league has been playing Todd Helton???, so at least a series at home against the league’s other big disappointment was an opportunity. Not that we took full advantage, alas.

We opened the series at Olympic Stadium with … a one-run loss, of course. It was another close game throughout that we just couldn’t pull off, a 5-4 defeat. Burt Hooton dropped to 4-11 despite a decent 4.14 ERA.

Game 91

In the second game, Mike Cuellar had one of his rare good starts with 6 innings of one-run ball as we put up a 3-1 win. Bob Woodward earned his 18th save without a blemish and kept his ERA at 0.00. The deeper it gets in the season like that, the more you wonder if he can do it all year!

Game 92

The rubber game was again close and low-scoring. Bert Blyleven kept us in it with 2 runs in 6.2 innings, Carlos Delgado hit his 15th homer, and Woodward earned his 19th save in a 3-2 win.

Game 93

Yes, a one-run victory! And a series victory! This is what we’re reduced to at this point, improving to 4-8 in the second half.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 85-90: Interleague Struggles

Jack Bauer Squared took a 5-game losing streak into a set of three interleague series, our only look of the season against three more AL teams.

We opened with Scarlett Saguaro, who came into Olympic Stadium with a bang. They roughed up Bert Blyleven for 8 early runs, and Fernando Valenzuela threw 7 scoreless innings en route to a 10-1 victory.

Game 85

That took us on our lone trip to Milwaukee County Stadium, where our Teddy Higuera pitched like he used to when that was his home field for the Brewers. Higuera allowed two hits in 7 scoreless innings, and we ended the six-game losing streak with a 5-0 win.

Game 86

I’ve mentioned there is no momentum in sim baseball, so of course we couldn’t parlay the win into anything more. Did you have “1-run loss” on your bingo card? You’d be winning a lot this season if you did.

We traveled to Yankee Stadium to meet Gooden’s Marauders for the first time. The Marauders scored 3 in the 6th to take a 5-4 lead and shut us down the rest of the way to finish like that.

Game 87

Back home, we opened a 3-1 lead in an attempt to right the ship. Alas, the Marauders tagged Mike Cuellar for 2 in the 6th to tie it, then got to the bullpen in the next two innings and won 5-3.

Game 88

That made it a 1-6 start to the second half and a 3-13 stretch we’re mired in. We headed to Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium looking for any positive signs.

Instead Baltimore Bile jumped all over Bert Blyleven for four homers, two of them 3-run shots by Willie Stargell, and 9 runs in the first 4 innings. The 9-4 loss added another to that recent ledger of struggles.

Game 89

Game 90 was another chance for Higuera to shine. He threw 8 innings and allowed just 1 run, while Rafael Ramirez homered and tripled in an 8-1 win. 

Game 90

That wrapped up our interleague struggles, as the final 72 will all be in our league. We went 9-15 against the AL teams, so I don’t think we’ll be too sad to be done with them. 

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 82-84: Bad Start to Second Half

After finishing the first half with a disappointing 2-7 stretch and dropping 7 games out of 1st place, Jack Bauer Squared opened the second half needing some good news. We didn’t get it.

In fact, things got so discouraging this blog lost momentum for a couple weeks. But let’s catch up on what we missed now.

Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula came out swinging at Tiger Stadium and took a 7-0 lead after 4 innings and cruised to a 7-3 win. A couple late homers by Kal Daniels and Rafael Ramirez were all we could muster.

Game 82

The second game looked a lot like the first one, as we fell behind 5-0 in the second inning. We made a game of it when Gene Tenace hit a 3-run homer in the 6th to close the gap, but we wound up with another one-run loss, 5-4.

Game 83

The series finale was back and forth early, but Tigers took over with runs in five straight innings and cruised to a 12-5 victory and a sweep.

Game 84

Next up: three more interleague series.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball Sim Dynasty

Quick Updates

Dear Reader, I apologize for a few days’ hiatus in posts as my work schedule and other responsibilities took me away. Here are a few highlights and I’ll try to get us caught up soon.

As of this writing, my Jack Bauer Squared team that I’d basically left for dead early in the second half has somehow managed to crawl within 2 games of first place with 31 games to go. Our division leader is under .500, so that certainly helps!

Another Sim Dynasty season recently wrapped up. We had a furious wild-card race in the National League, and I held off Montreal by just 1 game to make the playoffs. 

But a return to the World Series was not in the cards, as the Chicago Street Hounds showed why they were the better regular-season team and survived a 7-game series to beat us and then went on to win the World Series. We’ve made a big offseason trade to try to make up some ground and get revenge on the Hounds next season, though.

And today is the MLB trade deadline. The Padres are making huge moves to give the Dodgers reason to worry in the NL West. Could we have an all-SoCal championship series played in Texas? Oh, we have to talk about that!

More to come soon!

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Baseball MLB Sim Baseball Tournament

My “Juice” Tournament Teams

I’m taking a look at the teams I drafted for Round 3 of thejuice6’s annual tournament for Sim League Baseball. I had seven teams advance to this round of eight leagues, so I had one pick in seven of the leagues, three in the National League and three in the American. Each league includes 15 seasons of baseball history, so this round covers 120 seasons in all from 1899 to 2019.

These are the years and teams I drafted. I can build my 25-man roster out of anyone from these three teams for that season:

  • League 1: 1906 Chicago White Sox / New York Highlanders / Cleveland Naps
  • League 2: 1920 Cleveland Indians / Chicago White Sox / New York Yankees
  • League 3: No team
  • League 4: 1950 Philadelphia Phillies / Brooklyn Dodgers / New York Giants
  • League 5: 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers / San Francisco Giants / Pittsburgh Pirates
  • League 6: 1985 St. Louis Cardinals / New York Mets / Los Angeles Dodgers
  • League 7: 1993 Toronto Blue Jays / Chicago White Sox / New York Yankees
  • League 8: 2013 Boston Red Sox / Oakland Athletics / Detroit Tigers

I picked 9th out of 12 in League 1’s American League draft (1899-1914) and went with 1906 for a strong combination of starting pitchers in Doc White, Addie Joss, and Ed Walsh along with the best lineup combination among the remaining teams when it came my turn to pick. My hitting star will be 2B Nap Lajoie (as in, they named the team for him in Cleveland back then). Don’t expect many home runs on this team, as no one hit more than 3, and the whole league is deadball-era pitching.

I picked 2nd in League 2’s American League draft (1915-1929) and had a very difficult time selecting. The only team off the board was 1927 (of the famed Murderer’s Row Yankees), and the trick is that the league divides between one division of deadball teams (1915-1919) and two once Babe Ruth showed how to excite crowds with home runs (1920-1924 and 1925-1929).

Though some excellent pitching could be found in those teen years, those offenses really were painfully weak. In 1920, I landed a lineup with four sensational hitters: Ruth, Tris Speaker, Joe Jackson, and Eddie Collins, all of whom hit at least .370 that year. Ruth hit 54 home runs, about as many as the rest of my team combined, and it’s hard to turn down that firepower. There’s a bit of decent pitching to go with them, but offensive numbers will be big for most of this league. 

I picked 4th in League 4’s National League draft (1945-1959) and narrowed it down to a few times pretty quickly. The 1950s were pretty awful for pitching, and some of the 1940s hitting was nothing to get excited about either. In this draft, it seemed the teams with a few decent arms lacked any good bats. 

My 1950 group will have good power throughout the lineup, though it slants too far to right-handed hitting and lacks speed. Fortunately this league uses a DH, because I have two second basemen worth putting atop the lineup in Jackie Robinson and Eddie Stanky.

I had the 5th choice in League 5’s National League draft (1960-1974) and had some very good pitching seasons to choose from in 1966, 1968, and 1969. I went with ‘66 for the twin ace starters in Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal, which should be as good or better than anyone else can field in the league.

That was not a great era for baseball offenses, and few of the teams will have even one truly elite hitter in their lineups. So for me the ‘66 group will have some depth with sluggers Willie Mays, Willie Stargell, Willie McCovey, and Roberto Clemente. My coworker once told me to name my son Willie because it’s the best way to end up with a baseball star in the family, and maybe he was onto something.

For League 6’s National League draft (1975-1989), I had the top choice. In fact, I initially had the top choice of which of all the 16 drafts I wanted to pick first in, essentially making this the top pick of the entire round. That’s actually a lot of pressure, and I didn’t have time to analyze every draft before I made it. 

I did look through historical ranges of pitching excellence and found that the three teams offered in this 1985 grouping (Cardinals, Mets, Dodgers) allowed me to put together a significantly better pitching rotation than anyone else in the era. With Dwight Gooden, John Tudor, and Orel Hershiser, I have three of the four best starters available in the entire range of years. I’d almost call it unfair, but I still have to find a way to build a team around them and win with the burden of expectations. That said, anything less than a World Series with this team would be disappointing.

I traded leagues with another owner who wanted to be in the AL, so I picked third in the League 7 NL draft (1990-2004). This was a really difficult choice, because the great temptation is to take one of Greg Maddux’s insanely great seasons from 1994 or 1995 even if the rest of the team were weaker. I went with 1993, however, because I still get a solid Maddux season to top the rotation along with several good arms right behind him for depth.

With ‘93 I also get a solid lineup top to bottom that stars Mr. Barry Lamar Bonds in his smaller head phase, when he was “just” an MVP but not yet shattering records. We can back up his power with the likes of Fred McGriff, Matt Williams, and Ron Gant to give the lineup plenty of strength.

For my final team in the League 8 AL (2005-2019), I had the 10th pick out of 12, which meant only six possible groupings left by my turn. I went with 2013 because it had the best single SP available in Max Scherzer and a super closer season with Koji Uehara. I also got the best remaining offensive season with Miguel Cabrera, who was actually a little better in 2013 than in his Triple Crown season the year before.

Overall, though, it’s not a great team. Drafting low means if you wind up being competitive that’s a bonus. My hope is just to steer this team to enough wins to advance to Round 4. The more teams I move on, the more chances I have at getting to the final Round 7 where the prizes are. I managed to get one team there last year and made the LCS, so I’d really like to have two shots at least this year. 

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball Tournament

Back in Business with Tournament Talk

The start of the second half for my Jack Bauer Squared team was anything but what was needed. Instead of a push toward that playoff spot, we started 1-7 and tumbled into last place. I had a plan to keep updating that season, but I got busy and the losses piled up and I fell a few series behind.

I may still go back and catch up on that season drifting away, but what had my attention in the sim world over the past week primarily was a series of short drafts for a tournament I’m in the middle of.

Each year a longtime owner named thejuice6 puts on a multi-round tournament that draws so many owners the site puts up prizes in the form of site credits. Juice has a forum just for his tournament because it’s such a big undertaking, and he changes up the details every year.

Round 1 this year included 12 leagues of 24 teams each. Owners could select historical franchises with a particular set of two seasons for each. You had to build your whole roster from those two seasons of your team, plus two drafted free agents. The goal is to qualify your teams for Round 2 and keep moving forward.

I entered seven teams in Round 1, and all of them advanced. I had two reach the World Series, with one winner. So that meant I had seven spots in Round 2, which comprised 10 leagues of 24 teams this time. We drafted from five-year ranges this time, and somehow I ended up with four of my seven teams from the Cleveland Indians franchise history.

All seven of my teams advanced once again, and one had the best regular-season won-loss record of all 10 leagues at 104-58. Alas even that squad was felled in the first round of the playoffs and none of my three playoff teams from the round made a World Series.

But because I kept all seven of my spots, I had to draft in seven of the eight leagues that comprise Round 3. My 104-win team earned me the right to choose any league to take the first pick in, and I hope I chose wisely. This round divided up so that each league included a range of years, and for each year you have to build your roster out of three selected teams.

So here are my seven entries in Round 3 as selected in the draft for each league:

  • League 1: 1906 Chicago White Sox / New York Highlanders / Cleveland Naps
  • League 2: 1920 Cleveland Indians / Chicago White Sox / New York Yankees
  • League 3: No team
  • League 4: 1950 Philadelphia Phillies / Brooklyn Dodgers / New York Giants
  • League 5: 1966 Los Angeles Dodgers / San Francisco Giants / Pittsburgh Pirates
  • League 6: 1985 St. Louis Cardinals / New York Mets / Los Angeles Dodgers
  • League 7: 1993 Toronto Blue Jays / Chicago White Sox / New York Yankees
  • League 8: 2013 Boston Red Sox / Oakland Athletics / Detroit Tigers

I’ll break down my picks in another post soon.