I don’t recall doing an OOTP dynasty but I want to write up this one since it's what I am spending time on and to show the critical decision-making elements of OOTP5. It is such elements is why I play OOTP (and other games as well) which to me, the most important (and fun) element is the series of decisions one have to make and the consequences of those decisions on the results. Instead of throwing up a bunch of charts and numbers, I will minimize that but instead focus on evaluation and decision-making points along the way (mainly FAs, trades, drafts). Also, I will be reporting progress month-by-month which is the way I do things (except when injuries or trades force stopping the monthly sim). Hope it makes sense.

This historical league career starts at 1961 with the St. Louis Cardinals, using the Lahman 5.0 database of course. The important league settings are as follows:

Manager Mode: No
Talent: Remaining
Ratings: Reduced
Minors Option: Enabled
Coaches/Scouts: Disabled
Arbitration: Enabled
Cash Max: $20m with revenue sharing
Salary: None

One of the great things about OOTP5 is the much less need for personal house rules. I have experienced much better AI decision making, thus eliminating the need to force them to spend money. The only house rule I have pertains to my Team Salary Cap. My cap will be set at 80% of the top payroll in the NL or no higher than the 4th highest payroll (which ever is higher). However, the caveat is that I cannot have a loss no more than 10% of my revenues. This becomes critical in that the St. Louis Cardinals will still be in the small Sportsman Park (30,500 seats) until 1967. As you will see, while under the cap rule, I could have had payrolls over $70m but with revenues only coming at around $55m, this becomes one of the key critical decision making elements.

1961 Off-Season

The game starts out with full rosters with the regular season about to begin. The starters are as follows:

C Carl Sawatski (6/7/7)
1B Bill White (5/5/6)
2B Red Schoendienst (6/3/6)
3B Ken Boyer (7/5/6)
SS Alex Grammas (3/2/6)
LF Stan Musial (5/5/6)
CF Curt Flood (7/2/6)
RF Joe Cunningham (5/3/8)

SP Ray Sadecki (6/6/4)
SP Bob Gibson (6/6/4)
SP Larry Jackson (4/6/4)
SP Ernie Broglio (4/6/5)
SP Curt Simmons (4/5/4)
MR Lindy McDaniel (3/6/6)
MR Al Cicotte (3/4/5)
MR Bob Miller (4/7/4)
MR Mickey McDermott (3/6/5)
CL Craig Anderson (4/5/4)

I see that I need a better SS and good MR, as well as backup 1B. I trade one of my many backup C (1-star) to the Kansas City A’s for IF Klimchock (1-star) which can play backup to other IF positions as well.

I receive two emails informing me that both Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst will be retiring at the end of the season. I need to keep an eye on their productions this season to see if 2B or LF will be problem positions.

The team payroll is currently at $45.090m with the top 3 NL teams being:
Cincinnati $78.585m
Milwaukee $64.419m
Los Angeles $56.008m

With projected revenues about $56m, I am well under the team cap with about $10m available for trades and free agents. I doubt I will be contending this season so I may not spend up to my cap but instead, save for the 1962 off-season. Cincinnati and Milwaukee look really strong, anchored by F. Robinson and Aaron, respectively. Remember, in 1961, the NL consists of 8 teams in one division with only the top finisher winning the pennant. (It gets more challenging next season when two more teams are added in the NL). The AL currently has 10 teams with the addition of the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators (the old Senators became the Minnesota Twins).

The only other note before we begin the season is that the Cardinals have the #1 prospect in the ML: SP Ray Washburn who is sitting in AA right now.

1961 Season

April

Record: 7-18 (7-18 for month), 8th place, 10 gb

Lost 9 out of last 10. Good OBP but lousy SLG. Pitching, both SP and MR very weak.

Musial rapidly losing ratings and performance. A backup OF, Don Taussig (6/4/5) will now start in LF.

Pitching staff (esp. SP) is young with good talent potential and ratings. They are getting overmatched right now but replacing any of them will be more costly with questionable performance gains. I do, however, need to keep an eye on the bullpen because I have no good setup or stoppers.

May

Record: 22-30 (15-12 for month), 7th place, 11 gb

Bullpen is near totally failing. CL Anderson so far has 11 saves which is good, but too many leads have been blown. I need to trade for good MP help.

Also, we are the worse in the NL in fielding, esp. at 2B (Schoendienst) and 3B (Boyer).

In looking for what I have to trade, I do have the trump card in the #1 prospect, SP Washburn. While top talent young SP are hard to come by (unless you have a top 3 pick), my current crop of SP (at least four of them) are all young and will hopefully get better with more experience. Additionally, even though C Sawatski is rated as the best hitter on my team, his numbers so far doesn’t show it and the backup (Schaffer) will not be bad.

With these two in mind to trade, I go looking for some good MRs (preferably two of them) and I make this trade with the Baltimore Orioles:

Cardinals get:
MR Hoeft (8/8/6) (5-star)
MR Stock (8/8/6) (5-star)

Orioles get:
C Sawatski (6/7/7) (4-star)
SP Washburn (4.5-star)
MR McDaniel (3/6/6) (3-star)

This instantly improves our bullpen in a big way with Hoeft becoming the closer and Stock in at the MR1/SU1 positions. C Jimmie Schaffer (4/2/3) now becomes the starter.

The biggest effect this trade has is the team payroll reduces from $45.090 to $40.322. This means more money for next year.

June

Record: 37-44 (15-14 for month), 6th place, 12 gb

Both SP Jackson and SP Simmons are coming around. The two new MRs, Stock and Hoeft, are doing okay. We are still a very weak SLG team but our OBP is still among the best in the league. RF Cunningham, CF Flood and SS Grammas are the weak links in the lineup. Of the 18 teams, the Cardinals are ranked 12th in OPS and 16th in ERA.

July

Record: 47-60 (10-16 for month), 7th place, 18 gb

The All-Stars for the St. Louis Cardinals are:
SP Larry Jackson
3B Ken Boyer

Basically stopped hitting this month with the team OPS rank dropping from 12th to 16th.

To top it all off, MR Wes Stock had a very bad month.

August

Record: 60-75 (13-15 for month), 7th place, 16 gb

Still stuck in 7th place with no sign of improvements. SP Bob Gibson is now a 20-game loser, with SP Ray Sadecki at 17 games lost. MR Stock had another poor month but at least CL Billy Hoeft had a great month.

September to end

Record: 76-86 (16-11 for month), 7th place, 14 gb

Not a bad month. SP Bob Gibson managed to go 3-0, 1.80 era to show his potential. CL Billy Hoeft continued to shine going 3-0, 0.00 era. This biggest surprise was SP Larry Jackson going 5-0 for the month to reach 20 wins!

Overall, the team’s weaknesses are 1) lack of sluggers and 2) lack of speed, not to mention the worse pitching staff in the majors. The only real good news is that team pulled off about $16m in profits, giving us the maximum cash of $20m giving us about $30m to (hypothetically) spend in the off-season.

Extensions and Arbitrations

The needs going into the off-season are many. There are five current starting players that are up for Extensions:
3B Ken Boyer
CF Curt Flood
LF Joe Cunningham
SS Alex Grammas

3B Boyer has been the best hitter on the team once C Sawatski left for Baltimore. He did .800 OPS, leading the team with 20 HRs. Ken had a salary of nearly $7m and was looking for only a small raise. I managed to lock him up for four years right at $7m per year.

CF Flood was one of those decent OBP, low SLG guys that I’m looking to upgrade. However, he did supply the only speed for the team with 18 SB and I cannot afford to lose that. As with Ken, Curt was willing to sign a four year extension for about the same salary as before.

LF Cunningham has good defense and is an okay hitter but he is requesting about a $2m raise so he will go to FA. SS Grammas sucks, no bat and no glove.

The starters up for Arbitration include:
SP Ray Sadecki
SP Bob Gibson
SP Ernie Broglio
MR Wes Stock
MR Bob Miller
MR Al Cicotte
1B Bill White

I figured that SP Gibson will be the only one getting a large raise since he is currently at the $300k minimum. All the others (except for MR Miller) have been through arbitration before so I don’t expect any large increases. Of these players, SP Broglio and MR Ciccote will be released since they ended up being demoted to the minors, thus they will avoid arbitration. MR Stock ended up 4-1, 4.12 but his ratings point to much better results. Since his arbitration will likely cost very little, he is worth keeping around.

Awards

Cincinnati Reds held off both the Dodgers and Braves to win the pennant, while the Detroit Tigers easily held off the Yankees to win the AL. Cincinnati dominated the Tigers in the World Series, 4 games to 1.

NL Rookie of the Year: LF Billy Williams, Chicago Cubs (.304, 33-102)
AL Rookie of the Year: SP D. Schwall, Boston (17-11, 4.04)

NL Cy Young: Bob Purkey, Cincinnati (23-6, 2.17)
AL Cy Young: Don Mossi, Detroit (23-8, 3.31)

NL MVP: RF Roberto Clemente, Pittsburgh (.366, 29-109)
AL MVP: 1B Jim Gentile, Baltimore (.346, 58-130)

Musial rapidly losing ratings and performance. A backup OF, Don Taussig (6/4/5) will now start in LF.

GAH! What have you done??? Stan the Man should get to play until he literally falls apart!

It's unfortunate that you only get Musial at the end of his career, but you have Gibby just coming into his own and Kenny Boyer in the middle of his prime. It could be worse.

Don't release Broglio. I hear the Cubs may be willing to part with a youngster by the name of Lou Brock for him. :)

BTW if you let Brock remain a Cub in this dynasty I may have to hunt you down. You have been warned. :)

primelord: Thanks for your comments! Stan the Man was 40 years old and in the 1961 season, I watched his ratings plummet from 5/5/6 to 3/2/3. He clearly was a shell of his former great self.

I think Gibson will be good. One of the indicators is that his BB/K ratio is extraordinary, despite his poor record. Stay tuned.

I actually tried to find in my logs what I did to Broglio but I don't think the game would be stupid enough to trade Brock for him. ;)

As much as I would like to build a high OBP and SB team (with Brock and Flood), that is not what I need to do to compete with Reds and the Braves.

Since I am lazy, what year did Musial retire in real life. Same with Schoendienst

Todd

Both in 1963.

Its too bad Musial's ratings dropped off like that. IRL he hit over .330 in 1962.

I will be reading this one A to see what you do to my beloved Cards. :)

I am still kind of on the fence about using historical players. I think the idea of seeing how things would have turned out had Brock not been traded etc are intriguing, but I guess what bugs me is it happens for what I guess I feel is the wrong reason.

IRL Brock was dealt because the Cubbies didn't think he had much upside. In OOTP his outcome is kind of predetermined so thats why they wouldn't deal him. I am not sure how I feel about that. Sorry to threadjack your dynasty A. :)

I would differ on the predetermination of historical players. I have played seasons from 1946 through 1987 and I have seen wide variations from expected results (as it should be). While some known superstars do have great careers, I have seen more what were minor stars have superstar careers. In this career, while Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Mantle, are all quite good veterans, Whitey Ford and Roger Maris didn't do much of anything in 1961. And instead of winding down to mediocracy, Robin Roberts went 19-7, 1.65 for expansion Colt 45's in 1962. I will take a look at Lou Brock and report back on how he is doing.

1962 Off-Season

The big news at the start of the 1962 off-season is the addition of the New York Mets, playing in the Polo Grounds and the Houston Colt 45’s, playing in Colt Stadium. Both teams will have their minors completely filled and the $20m cash.

The results of the arbitration were not surprising, fortunately. SP Sadecki, 1B White and MR Stock all had no raises while SP Gibson had a $3.059m raise (which will make primelord happy).

As I do at the beginning of every season, here is a position-by-position evaluation and off-season plan:

C: Schaffer really performed poorly in replacement of Sawatski, much worse than I anticipated. His OPS was .518 with no average or power. The main reason was an 8 weeks injury I forgot to mention and he had lost quite a bit in his ratings upon his return. He will be released. With Tim McCarver still in the minors (not ready yet) and C Smith an average backup at best, I will go after one of the prizes in FA this season, C Battey, a slugging, high OPS player.

1B: Bill White (5/5/6) returns, with a salary of $3.23m for .772 OPS hitter.

2B: With Schoendienst retiring, backup 2B Javier (5/2/5), a good OBP player, should be able to step in and start.

3B: Ken Boyer is the best hitter on the team and with his new four year contract, will hold down 3B. I am looking for a better backup 3B/SS and see that Free Agent IF Bressoud can fill that role nicely.

SS: Alex Grammas was kicked off the team and we will be looking for a good hitting SS in the FA. The best available is Woodie Held who is the rare combination of a slugging SS (4/5/6).

OF: Last year’s LF, Joe Cunningham is now a FA and with CF Flood and RF Taussig decent at their positions, I am looking to get the best Free Agent OF available – LF Wes Covington (5/5/6). The only other need is for a backup OF and believe it or not, former Cards, Joe Cunningham, can best meet that need.

SP: I am happy with my four SP and will be looking for a spot starter. A good one is SP Terry but he may command good money.

MR: I have two options to fill one hole in the bullpen, either to draft a MR or to call up someone from AAA/AA.

Free Agency

My current payroll is at $37.401m with about $30m to potentially spend but realistically, about $20m for free agents/trades. I will not be able (as is always the case) to go after all of the FA I want. Here are the targets and gameplan:

C Battey will want about $7m, at least. Great hitting C are hard to come by and he will be in demand. I will aggressively pursue him since C is one of the three key positions I need to fill.

SS Held is the best IF available and along with Battey, the player that I really want for the Cardinals. My guess he will start out at around $3-4m but I will aggressively pursue him as well.

3B/SS Bressoud wants about $4m and while that is a bit high for a backup, he will be my fall-back SS in case I do not get Held.

LF Covington is the best OF on the market (which is somewhat shallow). He had really good stats last season and will hopefully be my high OPS, #3 hitter that I really need. I am thinking between $5m and $6m.

OF Cunningham, to bring him back in as a backup OF (assuming I get Covington), it will take about $3m (which was more than I could have signed him to an extension).

SP Terry will command good money (about $7m) which may be too much for a spot starter and injury fill-in.

Adding all that up will be close to $30m, so I can put in a bid for all of them with the available funds. I will not, however, attempt to land all of them but instead the priority will be 1) C Battey, 2) SS Held and 3) LF Covington, which should come to about $16m.

Here’s how it went:

C Battey was started out at $4.1m for 5 years but New York Mets started bidding on him. I kept in there until my offer of $13.15m/5 years was still short. This huge bidding war for a high-demand C ended up at $14.36/5 yrs, making him the 2nd highest paid player after Mickey Mantle. Yikes.

SS Held was started at $3.51/4 yrs but it become obvious that others also saw him as the best IF available. I stayed in the bidding until my $7.68/3 yrs offer was accepted. I look to SS Held to be the Cardinals’ cleanup hitter.

3B/SS Bressoud was started out quite a bit higher than Held, $4.6m/3 yrs but when it become obvious that I would be in a bidding war for both Battey and Held, I had to withdraw this offer, gambling that I would land Held.

LF Covington was also started out at $4.6m but for 4 years and after one increase to $6.1m/4 yrs, I was able to hold that bid steady until he accepted. At 5/5/6, he will become my high OPS guy in the #3 spot.

OF Cunningham was low-balled at $1.8m/2 yrs and since it was obvious that was insulting to him, I didn’t pursue him any further. He ended up signing for $4.35m/4 yrs.

SP Terry was started at $4.61/5 yrs but knowing that he wanted good money, I didn’t engage in anymore bids and let him get signed for $6.1m/4 yrs.

The results of the FA period show that I got my SS and LF that I really wanted but not my C. Held and Covington signed for higher than I estimated so to keep within budget, I only have about $5m or so to spend. Neither Smith nor McCarver will be good enough to start at C, so stay tuned for some team-shattering trades.

Ah, I love the Cardinals history.

1962 Off-Season cont.

At this stage, I do have a couple of positions in which the backups are not noticeably worse than the starters, namely CF (Flood), RF (Taussig) and 2B (Javier). At all of the other positions, esp. SP, the depth is very shallow or non-existent. I am looking for a C with ratings of at least 5/5/5 that is not too expensive (which rules out trading for Battey). The best candidate I found was Washington’s Gene Greene. They needed OF saw I managed this trade:

Cardinals get:
C Greene (6/5/5) (3-star)
CF Tasby (4/4/6)
CF Ashburn (1-star)

Senators get:
CF Flood
RF Taussig

I get my good C that I wanted plus some OF replacements to go along with a couple of existing OFs. The net effect is a payroll increase of only a couple million to $53.7m and 3-4-5 hitters of Greene-Held-Covington. Now I am hoping that my pitching improves enough to challenge for the upper division.

Draft

The Cardinals draft in the 7th spot with the Mets and Colt 45’s entering in at the first two spots. With the predicted trend of pitchers (SP) going early, the left me with some of the top hitting prospects available when it came our turn. The best available (which is how I typically draft), we grab:

1B/OF Willie Stargell (5/2/5, A/B/A) and immediately place him in AAA.

The 2nd round pick nabbed 1B/OF Joe Pepitone (3/6/3, A/G/F) who will fill in beautifully as the backup 1B and in the OF positions.

The 3rd pick was MR Tom Butters (6/6/4, G/B/F) who will be on the active roster.

The remaining picks include IF Jim Kennedy (in AAA), OF Ed Kirkpatrick (in A), MR Don Gallagher (in AA) and IF/OF Rod Kanehl (on active as backup 2B).

With the drafting of MR Butters, along with the callup of MR Tiefenauer, the pitching staff is set.

The CF and RF positions, with the platooning, still is suspect and the thought is to trade some of them for an upgrade. I will also consider upgrading 2B Javier if I can, esp. since now I have a decent excess MR to trade. Going back to the Orioles on April 1:

Cardinals get:
RF Lee Maye (5/4/6) (2-star)
2B Tony Taylor (4/2/6) (2.3-star)

Orioles get:
OF James (2-star)
OF Ashburn (1-star)
2B Javier (2-star)
MR Miller (4/7/4) (3.5-star)

As the season begins, the 3 highest payrolls in the NL are:
Los Angeles $73.344m
Cincinnati $70.201m
Milwaukee $64.360m

St. Louis’ payroll is at $53.362m which is less than allowed by rule and enough to make a profit.

The expectations for this season is the hitting will be much improved, esp. SLG and with the hope that the four SP can have decent outings with the bullpen doing as good as their ratings show.

1962 Season

April

Record: 10-16 (10-16 for month), 8th place, 8.5 gb

A little better start than last season. I expected the hitting to be improved but not this much. Currently, the Cards leads the ML in HRs and is 2nd in Runs. The overall OBP, SLG and OPS all rank about 4th in the league. And on top of that, we lead the league in SB. Whereas our two major weaknesses last season was SLG and SB, we have turned that around.

But..

Our pitching is abysmal, esp. SP Simmons and the MR/SU positions. Also, we are the worse fielding team, esp. at 1B (White), LF (Covington) and 2B (Taylor). I feel we need to sacrifice some of the good hitting just to improve the pitching, so another call to Washington produced this trade:

Cardinals get:
SP Ben Daniels (7/7/6) (3.5-star)
MR Mike Kutyna (6/8/6) (4-star)

Senators get:
1B Bill White (2.5-star)
C Gene Greene (3-star)
MR Bob Tiefanauer (3.5-star)

This trade seems to be a bit of a reach in giving up a solid (if not error-prone) 1B and the good hitting C that I wanted. But we have 1B Stargell and C McCarver waiting in AAA and while they may not be ready yet, the improvements in the pitching staff should make up for the reductions in hitting. The net effect of this trade reduces the payroll down to $51.141m. SP Daniels becomes the ace (hopefully) and MR Kutyna gets slotted as the MR1 and SU1.

May

Record: 26-27 (16-11 for month), 6th place, 10 gb

The hoped-for improvements was evident this month. We lost a little in SLG with Greene and White gone but surprisingly, SP Gibson and SP Jackson, along with MR Kutyna picked up the slack.

June

Record: 38-41 (12-14 for month), 6th place, 13.5 gb

Holding steady this month but losing some close games. I noticed that the team errors are creeping up again. The Cards are still in the top 4 in the league in OBP, SLG and OPS and holding at 6th out of 10 in ERA and OAVG.

July

Record: 54-50 (16-9 for month), 6th place, 14 gb

A really good month which brings the team at over .500 for the first time. The front-running Milwaukee Braves are blowing a double-digit lead. On the Cardinals, the errors are still getting too high. On a positive note, LF Covington is the first Cardinals hitter that appeared in the Top 3 League Leaders, placing 2nd in OPS. Also on the Top 3 leader board, SP Gibson and SP Daniels are ranked #2 and #3 in Wins!

August

Record: 63-70 (9-20 for month), 7th place, 22.5 gb

...and then it fell apart. The team pretty much stopped hitting, falling from 4th to 7th in the NL in OBP and to 6th in OPS. The team’s pitching is holding steady.

September to end

Record: 12-17 (75-87 for month), 7th place, 27 gb

A disappointing ending. The team overall is a little below average but not to the level of the last two months’ performance. One of the key indicators is that the Pythagoran results shows 80-82, so the –5 difference accounts for a bit of bad luck. The core of the pitching staff (SP and MR) is quite good, I believe and the lineup is not bad at all, despite the drop off the last two months. We turned a profit of $5.4m this season but with next season’s payroll starting out at close to the break even point, decisions will have to be made how to improve the team to reach the next level.

Awards

Milwaukee Braves was able to rebound from its slump to capture the pennant over the Dodgers by 7 games. In AL, the Detroit Tigers once again cruised to the pennant, over the Yankees by 10 games behind another 23-game Cy Young winner, Jim Bunning. In the World Series, Detroit got its championship it sought last season by beating the Braves, 4 games to 1.

NL Rookie of the Year: LF Don Lock, Milwaukee (.255, 24-81)
AL Rookie of the Year: SP J. Hamilton, New York Yankees (16-5, 3.23)

NL Cy Young: Robin Roberts, Houston (19-7, 1.65)
AL Cy Young: Jim Bunning, Detroit (23-5, 2.42)

NL MVP: RF Hank Aaron, Milwaukee (.328, 33-105)
AL MVP: 1B Harmon Killebrew, Minnesota (.305, 55-130)

(Extensions and Arbitrations will come tomorrow)

primelord: To jump ahead a bit, you will be very happy to know that, as of July 1, 1963, Lou Brock officially joins the Cardinals roster as the backup CF. A trade with the Cubs simply swapped backup CFs. Lou's ratings are 4/2/3-G/F/F but A range in CF as well as speed.

Been home taking care of a sick family so I'll continue this writeup very soon.

Extensions and Arbitrations

There are three players up for extensions at the end of the 1962 season:
SP Ben Daniels
C H. Smith
OF B. Nieman

30 yr old SP Daniels is one of the better pitchers in the league and after a 19-13, 2.78 season, he definitely is worth keeping around to improve the starting rotation. He currently makes about $4m and I am able to negotiate a 4 yr, $5m deal for him. Just a $1m increase to keep him.

Both C Smith and OF Nieman are marginal backup players and are not needed.

The following players are up for arbitration:
SP Gibson, SP Sadecki, MR Kutyna, MR Stock, C McCarver, 2B Taylor, RF Maye, CF Tasby, and IF Klimchock.

All but Klimchock are worth keeping around with only RF Lee Maye looking for a decent raise since only makes about $800k now. The results show that RF Lee Maye got a $2.137m raise while the others very little or none.

Can you provide a link to the Lahman 5.0 database?

Good writeup so far, I will be following.

1963 Off-Season

Financially, we are in good shape. We currently have a $54m payroll with $20m in cash and $30m available for free agents. The third highest payroll is still around $70m so we can bump up if need be (as long as we end the year with not more than a 10% of revenues lost).

Here’s where we stand position-by-position and what our needs areas are:

C – McCarver was the starter but clearly he belonged in AAA. Backup Smith was released to avoid arbitration. This, again, becomes one of our critical needs area. In the FA market, there are a couple of good C available, Brown and Triandos, who can provide some slugging spark.

1B – Willie Stargell would probably be better suited as a backup or perhaps more time in AAA (to get the SLG up to his potential). His .638 OPS is not good for a 1B. Fortunately, a good 1B is available in the FA, 1B Siebern. He is only a 2.5-star player but his 1962 stats show over .800 OPS with 20+ HRs.

2B – Tony Taylor is okay at 2B with a .690 OPS and 19 SB and we will be looking to draft a good backup.

3B and SS – Both positions (along with the backups) are very solid with 3B Ken Boyer and SS Woodie Held, both with OPS around .750.

LF – Free agent LF Covington had a fairly monster year, as hoped for, leading the team in HRs at 27, .312 BA and with an OPS of .869.

CF – This, along with C, is a critical need area. We desperately need a high OPS player in this position. CF Tasby is clearly only a role player as backup (low average, good slugging). Wouldn’t you know it, CF Roberto Clemente is the star of the free agent market and he will command very big money ($10+m).

RF – RF Lee Maye is good in this position with a .730 OPS and decent speed (21 SB).

SP – There are several really good SP available in the free agent market, Carl Pasqual and John Jay, but they will command really good money as well. Either of these players will be pursued if the higher priority needs at CF and C fall through. We will also be looking to draft a good Spot SP.

MR – We’re fine, just continue to hope that the performance catch up to the ratings.


Free Agency

Here are our target free agents (and their estimated demands):

C Brown ($4m)
C Triandos ($3m)
1B Siebern ($6m)
CF Clemente ($10m)
SP Pasqual ($12m)
SP Jay ($10m)

The Cardinals currently has a $54m payroll with an estimated revenue of about $57m. This would mean a payroll of about $60-62m at best so therefore, just a C can be afforded. However, the needs at C, 1B and CF are great and with these fine players available, they’re too good to pass up. The approach is to try to land the players in these three positions (with a SP as fall-back) and then look to reduce salaries afterwards to get it at $60m or under.

Here’s how it went:

C Triandos seems to be the better choice since he is younger than C Brown. A bid of $2.1m/2 yrs was entered for Triandos while Brown was ignored for now. A somewhat bidding war was engaged for Triandos and our last offer was for $5.1m/3 yrs was entered, only to be superceded slightly at $5.25m/3 yrs. The joys of blind biddings. Meanwhile, C Brown agreed early on to sign for $2.6m/4 yrs, which was much less than the $4m that I estimated. I really struck out at C so I’ll be looking to trade for a good starter.

1B Siebern’s bidding went much easier. I started him at $7.1m/2 yrs and after taking several weeks, he agreed to this contract. I now added another good OPS player to go along with Boyer-Covington-Held.

CF Roberto Clemente was a player I would love to have on our team. He was the NL MVP in 1961 and his high average .800+ OPS would really boost our lineup. I put in an initial bid of $10.1m/5 yrs for this young superstar and no other teams matched that. After 20 weeks of thinking about it, CF Roberto Clemente has become a St. Louis Cardinals.

Since the bids for 1B Siebern and CF Clemente were hot, no bids were entered for either of the two great SP, Pasqua and Jay. They both ended being signed for over $10m.

This unfortunately puts us at a payroll of about $71m with no decent starting C. We have to be under $70m at the start of the season for the top 3 payrolls in the NL are:
Cincinnati $72.2m
Milwaukee $71.2m
Los Angeles $70.4m

But more importantly, we need to get down to under $60m fairly soon in the season if we are to minimize the loss to under $6m for the season.

The first step is to find a C though. Since C Brown signed for Cincinnati for $2.6m, I thought that was a good bargain for them. So, checking what they need, I found that they really need a SP. I have a spare one, SP Simmons who last season, pitched a limited spot role. He has decent ratings and is a 3-star pitcher but Cincinnati wasn’t picky and not only did I get C Brown from them, but a fairly good backup, C Edwards (also 2.5-star), as well. I needed a C (or two) and they needed a SP, a match made in heaven. This reduced our payroll by a whopping $1.8m. C McCarver can now move his butt back to AAA where he belongs.

Draft

The draft was interesting, esp. the first pick. With the 7th pick and looking for a good IF, the best ones where available after the most of the early picks went for SP. And wouldn’t you know who was on the board? 2B Joe Morgan (2/2/5, G/G/B) and IF/OF Pete Rose (5/2/5, G/F/G). Deciding between the two was hard. Morgan comes in at 4-star, same as Rose, but he can only play at one position, 2B; Rose can play 2B/3B and OF, and has much better initial ratings than Morgan and can be on the active roster right away. I ended up drafting 2B Joe Morgan, however, because I can go with others at backup 2B to let Morgan develop up to his really good talent potential.

For the 2nd round pick, I found my spot SP – the venerable Tommy John (5/6/7, A/G/G). The remaining draft includes a potential starting CL and four more IFs.

The expectations for this 1963 season is to reach the upper division. We have a good enough OPS lineup and if the pitching can come through, we can do it. I doubt we can be competitive to the defending pennant winner, Milwaukee, but we shouldn’t be well under .500 again. But also, we still need to make a trade or two to reduce payroll without losing our effectiveness.

Marm: Lahman 5.0 comma-delimited database (http://baseball1.info/statistics/lahman_50-csv.zip)

"Lahman 5.0 - It's The Only Way to Play Solo OOTP (tm)" :)

Thanks. Nice Slogan. I didn't know there was a way to play solo OOTP. ;)

1963 Season

April

Record: 10-15 (10-15 for month), 9th place, 10.5 gb

Same kind of start as last season, but with losing 9 of the first 11. It didn’t help that the powerful Milwaukee Braves went 21-5 for the month.

In looking at the Cardinals’ performance the first month, it really wasn’t too bad. Our hitting, as expected, is really good. We lead the league in OBP and is 2nd in OPS. Leading the way is OF Clemente, April’s Batter of the Month, with the best BA and third best OPS. Even the pitching is good, top four in the NL in ERA and OAVG. So what went wrong? Well, bad fielding for one but also we were 1-7 in one-run games.

Before we get too far into next month, we really need to reduce the payroll if we want to minimize our losses. The weakest performances for the month are at 1B, with our supposed star Siebern; OF Lee Maye, esp. when compared to Clemente and Covington; and 2B with Tony Taylor. We can look to upgrade any of these positions but cannot reduce our four SP, unless we get one back. So after spending considerable time and effort, we managed to pull off two great trades:

Cardinals get:
SP Denny LeMaster (8/7/6) (4-star)

Athletics get:
1B Siebern (2.5-star)
RF Maye (3-star)

I hadn’t targeted LeMaster but as I went through each team, the KC A’s were the only team that was weak at both 1B and RF. It just so happens that LeMaster is off to a great start (4-1, 1.83 – leading the league in ERA) and comes very cheap ($300k). This trade makes one of the existing SP expendable for a replacement for Maye at RF or Taylor at 2B. With that in mind:

Cardinals get:
OF Jim Hickman (6/5/7) (5-star)

Mets get:
SP Ray Sadecki (4.5-star)

This was another one of those trades where a team had a severe weakness at SP (staff ERA over 5.50) and they were willing to give up a lot to get help in that area. Hickman, who currently leads the league in OPS will complete the trio of the Cardinals’ great OF. We say goodbye to long time Cardinal, Ray Sadecki but with Hickman also making only $300k, these trades not only gives up a formidable pitching staff and lineup, but reduces our payroll down to $56.9m!

Without a starter at 1B, Willie Stargell gets another chance to start, so he was called up from AAA.

May

Record: 25-27 (15-12 for month), 4th place, 14.5 gb

The jump from 9th to 4th place is deceiving in that we lost more ground to the Braves and the teams from 4th to 9th are all very close. For the month, the team ERA remained steady but all of the NL teams (except the Mets) have fairly exceptional ERAs as well. The SP staff is doing good with the quartet of LeMaster, Daniels, Gibson and Jackson (with T. John spotting), but the bullpen (except the CL Hoeft) is hanging above 4.00 era.

June

Record: 40-41 (15-14 for month), 4th place, 20.5 gb

Another mediocre month that keeps up around .500 while yet more ground to the Braves. At least it appears that the Cardinals are an upper division team, which was the goal anyways.

It was at the end of this month that we decided to bring in what could be a long time player for us, CF Lou Brock (4/2/3), from the Chicago Cubs in exchange for CF Tasby (4/4/6). In effect, this trade just swapped backup A-defensive CFs.

July

Record: 55-50 (15-9 for month), 4th place, 18 gb

Finally the St. Louis Cardinals reach above .500! The Milwaukee Braves are dominating the league with their best pitching staff (#1 ERA) as well as the best lineup (#1 OPS). But we are showing signs of improving, esp. with our pitching staff. SP LeMaster had a phenomenal month going 7-0, 1.39 while winning the Pitcher of the Month award.

The All-Stars from the Cardinals include:
SP LeMaster (14-4)
SP Jackson (13-4)
CF Clemente
3B Boyer

Right at the trade deadline, we looked to make another trade. Believe it or not, two of our star players are just not performing that well this season: SP Daniels (who we acquired in a big trade with Washington last season and who was the ace of the staff) is now 8-15, 3.65; and LF Covington (who was the big FA acquisition before last season) is now has only a .687 OPS and making lots of errors. With top-flight players on the SP and in the OF, these two players really stick out as the weak links. So we call up our old friend, the Washington Senators to see if they want Daniels back as well as highly rated LF.

Cardinals get:
SP Sturdivant (7/7/6) (3-star)
CF Curt Flood (7/3/6) (2.5-star)
SP Chris Bouldin (2/4/5, A/G/G) (3.5-star)

Senators get:
SP Daniels (3.5-star)
CF Covington (3.5-star)

SP Sturdivant, while only a 3-star SP, is having a really good year going 14-7, 2.82. CF Curt Flood leads the majors in OBP at .425 and will be the great lead-off hitter that the Cardinals never had. SP Bouldin is a good young prospect that will be placed in AA. We get a better replacement for both players traded away and this reduces our payroll even further to $53.6m (our estimated revenues will be lower than expected with poor attendance and fan interest and higher player expenses due to earlier salaries).

August

Record: 76-58 (21-8 for month), 4th place, 13.5 gb

A great month for the Redbirds! Superb pitching by each of the four starters that helped the team ERA to climb to 2nd best in the league. Even spot SP Tommy John, while a 1-3 record, his ERA is under 2.00.

September

Record: 92-70 (16-12 for month), 4th place, 14 gb

Another good month which brought the Redbirds all the way to 92 wins, much more than expected. We are clearly an upper division team along with the Reds and Giants but nowhere near the elite status of the Braves. However, that may change in the near future for the best ERA in the NL and all of the baseball now belongs to the Cardinals at 2.93!! With SP Jackson signed to an extension (we did this early on) for $1.8m less than he was making this season, we return our entire pitching corps next season which includes three 20-game winners (LeMaster 27-7, Sturdivant 23-10, Jackson 21-7) and Gibson (17-17) who could have been the fourth if he had not lost his last 4 starts. The weaknesses are still not enough speed and walks. Fielding is about average.

The team lost about $5.2m on lower than expected revenues of $53.8 due to lower attendance and fan interest.

Is this dead? :(

No, it is not. For some reason, I took a little detour back to Civ2. OOTP is one of those rare games that I can easily pick up, put off and then pick back up - all year long. Thank you for your interest and I promise to get back into this in the next couple of days.

By the way I wanted to say nice job on getting Brock. I don't have to hunt you down now. ;)

I spent some quality time this weekend with this fun career and have progressed to the start of the 1965 season. Wait till you find out what happened in the 1964 season. :)

1963 Post-Season and Awards

Before we get to the league awards, let’s highlight some of the team’s leaders. In OPS rank for all of the majors by position, C Brown, SS Held, LF Hickman, CF Flood and RF Clemente were all in the Top 5 for their position. For the pitchers, the three 20-game winners were in the Top 5 for Wins for the NL and CL Hoeft finished 6th in Saves. LeMaster, of course, led the NL in Wins and ERA to anchor the best pitching staff. Among the NL leaders for the batters, only Hickman’s .307 BA and .845 OPS is of note.

For the AL Pennant, the New York Yankees somehow held off the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers to win the pennant by 1 and 2 games. Both the Twins and Tigers went into a 4 game losing streak at the end of the season, thus preventing them from leaping over the Yankees. In the World Series, the lucky Yankees face the dominating Milwaukee Braves who won the NL by 11 games and repeats as the NL pennant winner. Just like in the 1962 World Series where the loser of the previous series (Tigers) returned to claim victory, the Braves predictably beat the Yankees, 4 games to 2.

NL Rookie of the Year: SP Nick Willhite, Houston (12-12, 3.75)
AL Rookie of the Year: SP Bob Sadowski, Chicago White Sox (17-5, 2.04)

NL Cy Young: Denny LeMaster, St. Louis (27-7, 1.97) (23-6, 2.12 for the Cardinals after the trade from Kansas City)
AL Cy Young: Ralph Terry, Los Angeles Angels (20-6, 1.94) (This was the SP that I thought about in the FA for spot starting but he really is an ace)

NL MVP: RF Hank Aaron, Milwaukee (.328, 28-88) (repeats as NL MVP)
AL MVP: 1B Harmon Killebrew, Minnesota (.314, 49-131) (also repeats as AL MVP)


Extensions and Arbitrations

SP Jackson, as mentioned, had already signed his extension, saving about $1.8m. Backup IF Spencer also wants a raise over his $1m salary but his poor OPS makes that not worth it. Starting 2B Taylor really shouldn’t be a starter but would be worth coming off of the bench in the merry-go-round that is 2B. A $950k raise for him is not out-of-line bringing his salary to $1.5m.

As far as the arbitrations, C McCarver will be released, he is just not any good. SP Bob Gibson is up for this final year of arbitration, as with MR Kutyna and MR Stock. We don’t expect any increase in their salaries so they will return and after next season, we will make the decisions on extensions for these. In looking ahead, two key players will be entering their arbitration years, LF Hickman and SP Sturdivant. They will likely be eligible for a substantial increase over their $300k salaries.

1964 Off-Season

At the start of the 1964 off-season, we will likely not be too active in the FA market. We start off with a payroll of $51.6m and with our 1963 revenues falling to about $54m, we have to hope to get our Fan Interest up substantially in order to return to clear profitability.

Here is how we stand in each position:

C – C Brown is one of the better C in the league and C Edwards is a very able backup. Both are under 30 and we are set for quite a few seasons in this position.

1B – 1B has always been a problem position for us since we never had a true star in this position. Willie Stargell has great potential, esp. as a slugger, but has not shown it yet. He really should be in AAA. Last season’s callup, 1B Dees posted decent numbers and is rated fairly highly. He will likely be given the starting job with the reliable Joe Pepitone backing up.

2B – With 2B Taylor really better suited as a backup, we will again have to see about getting a decent hitting 2B from the FA market. There are two interesting choices available: Adair and Zimmer. Adair (6/4/6), a 4-star 2B is 27 yrs old but with D-range and weak OPS. Don Zimmer (4/5/4), on the other hand, has a much better OPS with A-range but he is 33 yrs old. Both 2B can hit about 20 HRs so that will be an upgrade. It is Zimmer that we will likely pursue since I suspect that he will be cheaper.

3B – 3B Ken Boyer continues to hold down the corner with decent OPS of .714.

SS – Likewise, SS Woodie Held is a really good hitting SS (.788 OPS). He is up for extension following this season.

OF – The three starters, Hickman, Clemente and Flood are all the three best hitters on the team (Flood for being the high OBP lead-off batter). We will be looking to procure a FA backup. In looking at the market, the choices basically comes down to getting a good starter for the backup role. FA Alou and Callison can fill that role with their .800+ OPS but either one may be too expensive for the backup role. On final note, LF Hickman appears to be expecting about $4m in arbitration, quite a large raise over his $300k salary.

SP – We excitedly return all of our fantastic pitching staff and hope that they can repeat last season’s performance. As with LF Hickman, SP LeMaster – last year’s Cy Young winner – is expecting over $4m in arbitration.


Free Agency

This season’s FA market looks weak over all with the only true superstar being available is 1B Norm Cash (8/9/7). With only about $6m to spend for a 2B and a backup OF, we submit a low bid for 2B Don Zimmer at $2.1m/2 yrs. For the backup OF, we submit a bid of $3.1m/4 yrs for Callison (6/4/7) and $4.1m/2 yrs for Alou (5/6/4).

2B Don Zimmer really didn’t like our low-ball bid so we raised it to $4.1m/3 yrs. Both Pittsburgh and Houston were interested in him and we ended up getting 2B Zimmer for $4.6m for 2 yrs. Incidentally, what we thought was the more expensive 2B, Adair, ended up signing for $3.7m/4 yrs. We hope 2B Zimmer will be a substantial improvement at 2B.

OF Johnny Callison initial bid of $3.1m was not anywhere close so we stopped pursuing him. He ended up signing for $7.2m/3 yrs, the salary of a true starting OF. OF Alou’s initial bid of $4.1m was likely going to take a little more, which we did offer $4.7m/2 yrs. However, after we signed 2B Zimmer, I felt we couldn’t afford over $9m in extra salaries so we withdrew our offer. It turned out that OF Alou signed for only $3.4m/3 yrs, proving that his agent was yanking our chain. We will be looking for the draft to get us an able backup OF.


Draft

And boy did we ever find a backup OF in the first round – and with the 17th pick no less. Of the first 16 picks, 14 of them went for pitchers, leaving us with the best choices available in what appears to be a very deep draft. The player that best fits our need at backup OF was 19 yr old, Tony Conigliaro, already at 6/7/5! Tony will be the primary backup in RF and LF with CF Lou Brock being the backup to Curt Flood in CF. Our OF looks really good with five players that can start.

The 2nd round pick was also a gem. 17 yr old Larry Dierker came in as a MR but he has SP potential with 5/6/4-G/A/G ratings already at his young age. He will be slotted as a SP and will look to be the future ace for the Cards. In continuing with this deep draft class, the 3rd round pick went to 2B/OF Chico Salmon, 6/3/4-A/F/F. Chico will be switched to a 2B in AAA, given us a much needed depth in that position while we wait for future superstar (hopefully) 2B Joe Morgan develops out of Single-A. The final two picks went to MR D. Sutherland (2/7/5-A/B/A) and IF H. Lanier (5/2/4-F/P/F).

The expectations for this season are the highest that it has ever been. If the pitching staff can maintain its dominating performance from last season to go along with one of the best outfields in baseball, we may contend – that is, challenge the great Milwaukee Braves. The minimum expectation is for us to start winning to build up our Fan Interest. With the potential free agents and two high arbitrations after the season, we will be needing to turn a good profit (as oppose to losing $5m like we did last season).

1964 Season

April

Record: 16-9 (16-9 for month), 2nd place, 3 gb

Not wanting to get off to a losing start like we had the previous two season, the Cardinals certainly came out of the gate running. What is surprising is that the third-year Houston Colt 45’s are in first, helped by their phenomenal 1.87 team ERA. Lurking behind in the third place though, are the mighty Braves. Over in the AL, a curious thing is that all 19 teams are within 3 games of each other!

The primary for our good start solely lies with SP Denny LeMaster. He went 7-0 with a 1.21 ERA to easily win Pitcher of the Month. He obviously is keeping the momentum going from his Cy Young season in 1963. The other SPs, however, are sporting an ERA over 4.00 with newly extended Larry Jackson in at 6.06. Other than MR Stock, the rest of the bullpen is very solid.

As far as the hitters, there are two weak spots that are becoming apparent. We had thought that 1B with Dees would be weak but his numbers are holding up. The weak positions are, not surprisingly, 2B with Don Zimmer and surprisingly, CF Curt Flood. 2B Zimmer is only hitting .148 so far so unless he improves drastically in May, he will be traded for we cannot afford a high salary weak hitter. CF Flood is our leadoff hitter but currently has an intolerably low OBP. However, our rookie OF Tony Conigliaro is showing really good numbers in his backup role, leading the team in OPS with his limited AB. I have decided to get him into the starting lineup, in place of CF Flood and trade Flood to get a backup OF replacement and maybe another SP prospect, which we seem to constantly need. A look at the good teams shows that Detroit Tigers are the only ones needing a CF, so:

Cardinals get:
OF Flynn (4.5-stars, 4/4/6)
SP Boswell (3.5-stars, 6/6/4)

Tigers get:
CF Flood (3-stars, 7/3/6)
SP Nitta (3-stars, 3/6/4)

This trade does not improve our starters except that Conigliaro now can start in CF. SP Boswell will be placed in AAA which was just a swap of SP prospects. Our payroll reduces from $55m to $53m with this trade.

May

Record: 32-21 (16-12 for month), 2nd place, 0.5 gb

Despite playing a little over .500 for the month, Houston’s pitching came back to earth but Milwaukee went on a tear, winning 15 of the last 20 to move into first place. By the way, Pete Rose, who we considered drafting but took Joe Morgan instead, is Milwaukee’s starting 1B and current .300 hitter.

For the Cardinals, the pitching improved with Tommy John making the most of his spot starts and SP Bob Gibson getting his ERA under 3.70 while still maintaining is usual high K rates. It does look like the Cardinals have the best bullpen and closer in the majors. But on the other hand, we appear to have one of the worst fielding teams, esp. with 2B Zimmer. Zimmer is just not working out at 2B and the only choice is to start 2B Tony Taylor again. Not wanting to continue to pay 2B Zimmer’s overpaid salary, we shop him around to all of the teams (thanks, Markus). The best player, regardless of position, we can get for 2B Zimmer is from Minnesota:

Cardinals get:
C Bill Freeehan (4/2/4-G/G/A)

Twins get:
2B Don Zimmer (4/5/4, .536 OPS)

C Freehan will be assigned to AA which gives us a good future backup/starter and most importantly, reduces our payroll to $48.6 which will help immensely for the upcoming arbitrations and extensions. 2B Chico Salmon is called up from AAA to backup 2b Taylor.

June

Record: 49-31 (17-10 for month), 1st place, +0.5

Great news, the Cardinals for the first time in this career, finishes a month in first place (barely). Most of the month was in a see-saw battle with Milwaukee with the Cardinals winning 10 of the last 12 to counteract the Braves hot streak. The Cardinals defense is still pretty bad (no one position stands out) but we are now 2nd in the majors in SB. Additionally, every pitcher on the staff now has an ERA under 3.70, giving us the 2nd best pitching staff in the NL. Incidentally, the Cardinals have by far and away the best Minor League system with five of the top 20 prospects.

July

Record: 62-43 (13-12 for month), 2nd place, 1.5 gb

On July 6, it was one of those events that can be viewed as a turning point. On that day, 2B Taylor went on the DL with a 5 weeks injury. In his place, we started 2B Chico Salmon, our second rookie starter. He was placed in the leadoff spot and responded extremely well. At the same time, our other two young players were moved into prime spots in the lineup with CF Conigliaro now batting third and 1B Dees now batting fifth. The results of these changes was a substantial improvement in team OPS, second best in the NL and third best in the majors. The reason for mediocre record is due to SP Gibson and SP Jackson getting their ERAs above 4.00 again. In response, Tommy John will now start in place of Jackson to give him time to think. Our only representatives to the All-Star game were SP LeMaster and CL Hoeft.

August

Record: 79-56 (17-13 for month), 2nd place, 2 gb

The Cardinals are still battling the Braves for first and as the result of this pennant fight, the fans are coming. Not are we selling out tiny Sportsman Park every single home game but our Fan Interest is now shooting from the 40s to the 70s. The main news this month is that on the 17th, SP Bob Gibson went down with a day-to-day injury for 3 to 4 weeks. Not wanting to risk further injuries to our fireballer, he will be sitting down and SP Jackson is now back in the rotation.

September 10

With Gibson fully healed and rested and Tommy John doing a good job, we decided to go with a 5-man SP rotation for the first time. As of this date, the Cardinals are 1.5 games behind.

September 17

The new 5-man rotation is performing extremely well with fully healed Gibson, contrite Jackson and eager-to-prove T. John. The Cardinals are inching towards the Braves and the pennant, only a half game back.

September 24

Milwaukee has chosen this most inopportune time (for them) to go on a losing streak. By losing 5 of 6, the Cardinals have vaulted into first place, 2 games ahead with one week remaining in the season.

September 28

The Cardinals win the pennant! The Cardinals win the pennant!

September

Record: 96-66 (17-10 for month), 1st place, +4

The Braves ended up losing 10 of their last 12 games and combined with superb pitching and hitting, the Cardinals won the pennant by an unexpected four games. With five SP on the Cardinals performing well, esp. the past 6 weeks, the rotation for the World Series will have to be given some thought. The opponent for the World Series will be the Los Angeles Angels, which easily held off the New York Yankees and the hard-charging Detroit Tigers. The Angels enter the World Series with by far the best pitching staff with a 2.65 team ERA and anchored by last season’s Cy Young winner, SP Ralph Terry as well as SP Gaylord Perry and SP Gary Bell.

World Series and season wrap-up next.

World Series

It was decided that Tommy John, giving his inexperience despite his good performance, will sit out the Series. The SP rotation is set with Sturdivant, Gibson, LeMaster and Jackson. We always will have our best pitching going third in case of a 7th game.

Game 1 – Sturdivant pitched well for 7.2 innings with CL Hoeft providing the save in St. Louis 4-3 victory. 3B Ken Boyer had a 3-run HR in the 5th while 2B Chico Salmon provided the difference with a HR in the 8th. Cardinals up 1 game to 0.

Game 2 – Gibson duplicated Sturdivant’s performance from Game 1 by going 8 innings (CL Hoeft again saving). The Cards were down 3-0 before Dees and backup OF Flynn hit a double and triple in the 8th for 2 runs and the margin of victory. Cardinals up 2 games to 0.

Game 3 – LeMaster continued the SP dominance by going 8 inning as well (CL Hoeft saving again despite giving up 2 in the bottom of the 9th) in Cardinals 4-3 victory. CF Conigliaro hit a HR as well as SP LeMaster helping himself with a shot. Cardinals up 3 games to 0.

Game 4 – In a classic pitching duel, Jackson pitched 7 innings of 1-hit, 0-earned run ball before MR Stock gave up the only run in the bottom of the 8th. Cardinals up 3 games to 1.

Game 5 – As had been all Series long, the Cardinals SPs proved their dominance over the supposedly better SP staff of the Angels. In this final game, Sturdivant pitched 8 innings with CL Hoeft getting the final out of the 4-3 victory. As in Game 2, the Cards were down 3-0 before Clemente’s 2-run HR in the 7th put them ahead. The Series turned out to be a classic pitching battle between the two of the best staffs in baseball.

In a climactic end to a great season, the St. Louis Cardinals are the 1964 World Series Champions.


Post-Season and Award

The Cardinals put together a winning that balanced good pitching (one of the top teams in the league) and great hitting (the best SLG and OPS team in the NL, third best in the majors). While no true superstar (the Cards were shutout of the awards), the balance from top to bottom allowed us to battle the Braves for the pennant and to hold off the Angels in the Series. Unlike last season where we had several players in the Top 5 OPS, this season shows only three in the Top 2 (2B Salmon, SS Held and CF Conigliaro) while the rest were further on down the rankings. Perhaps the obvious thing to note is the emergence of two rookies, 2B Salmon and CF Conigliaro, among the elites in their positions and perhaps the key difference in producing the winning season. As a leadoff batter, 2B Salmon batted .320 and had an OPS of .791 but perhaps not enough AB to qualify for the Rookie of the Year honors. CF Conigliaro had an outstanding season hitting 28 HRs and .841 OPS, both ranked in the Top 5 in the NL. The strength of the team is evident by seven starters (excepting for 3B Boyer) all hitting .760 or above in OPS.

The pitching staff performed as hoped for (which was fairly high expectations). LeMaster and Sturdivant were both 20 game winners, while Jackson managed to get 18 wins. Bob Gibson did lose 17 games but his clutch pitching in August and September, as well as his fine 3.70 ERA made him a valuable starter. The bullpen all had ERAs under 3.00 with CL Hoeft being one of the best in the game with 41 saves and a 2.77 ERA.

The bottom line financially was phenomenal with over $60m in revenues and $10m in profits. The difference was the great response from the fans in selling out all of the games and boosting the Fan Interest to 80. With this positive bottom line, we will go into the arbitrations and extensions with enough flexibility to keep whomever we wish.

(Awards and financial decisions later)

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
World Series

It was decided that Tommy John, giving his inexperience despite his good performance, will sit out the Series. The SP rotation is set with Sturdivant, Gibson, LeMaster and Jackson. We always will have our best pitching going third in case of a 7th game.

Thats an interesting strategy. I guess you might hear some people argue saving your best until the 3rd game might force you to 7 games. It's an interesting approach.

Congrats on the win. :)

Well done!

1964 Season Awards

NL Rookie of the Year: SP Luis Tiant, Pittsburg (17-11, 2.40) (impressive debut)
AL Rookie of the Year: 2B D. Paulk, New York Yankees (.264-16-75)

NL Cy Young: Juan Marichal, San Francisco (20-8, 1.90) (He edged out St. Louis’ Denny LeMaster, who was going for his 2nd in a row, ending up at 20-8, 2.74)
AL Cy Young: Carlo Pasqual, Minnesota (23-9, 2.56) (Carlo was the big FA acquisition from 1963 for the Twins)

NL MVP: RF Hank Aaron, Milwaukee (.328, 40-104) (Hank’s 3rd NL MVP in a row)
AL MVP: CF Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees (.302, 43-121) (I would have given it to Baltimore’s 1B Jim Gentile who hit .310-44-102)


Extensions and Arbitrations

With revenues about $61m and a current payroll of $50m, we have some unexpected flexibility in accepting the increases in salaries through arbitration and to work on the extensions. Here’s the list of those up for arbitration, their current salary and what they will likely receive:

SP D. LeMaster ($300k) – ($4.37m)
MR C. Anderson ($300k) – ($1.0m)
LF J. Hickman ($300k) – ($3.85m)
MR T. Butters ($300k) – ($1.15m)
1B J. Pepitone ($300k) – ($460k)
C J. Edwards ($300k) – ($460k)

If accepting all of them, the net increase will be $9.49m. Each of these players are clearly worth keeping: SP LeMaster and LF Hickman are among the best players in their positions; MR Anderson and MR Butters are very good MR; 1B Pepitone is a fine backup 1B and OF; and C Edwards could be starter on some teams with his .650 OPS. With an increase of almost $10m just from arbitration, we hope to get some savings in extensions but we probably don’t need to be active in the FA market next season.

The following players are wanting extensions or they will become free agents (and their current salary):

SS W. Held ($7.68m)
SP T. Sturdivant ($5.46m)
SP B. Gibson ($3.36m)
MR W. Stock ($1.54m)
MR M. Kutyna ($800k)

SP Sturdivant and SP Gibson are solid pitchers, even with Gibson’s high number of games lost. He is a fireballer and proved his worth in August-October last season. SS Held and his high OPS is among the best at his position. MR Stock and MR Kutyna are very highly rated MR but their records have not matched their lofty ratings. These players were obtained in trades that just not worked out that well. These two MR will be offered an extension since they each requested at least doubling their salaries.

The negotiations came out better than expected. SS Held, being a classy veteran that he is, excepted a $5.68m deal for 3 yrs, representing a $2m savings. SP Sturdivant also being a classy veteran, excepted a $4.68m, 2 yr deal, a $600k savings. SP Bob Gibson, wanted a slight raise and we happily gave him one bringing his salary for 5 more years at $3.5m. In all, with the savings from the two MRs and the results of the extensions, we will go into 1965 with a payroll of about $55m.

primelord, this also goes along with my strategy of usually batting my 3rd best OPS guy in the 8th spot. I never like having a dropoff at the bottom of my lineup so that's why I have someone with good OBP and more importantly, good SLG batting 8th.

Shag: Thanks.

That certainly is an interesting strategy.

One thing that is interesting in its absence in this dynasty is printouts of stats. For example, seeing what your batting order looks like and the pitching roation.

I could do that, Shag, but I wanted to focus more on the decision making process in this dynasty writeup. But truth be told, I don't care to see printouts/displays of stats myself. I keep the same lineup for both RH/LH and I do constantly adjust the bullpen. I try to micromanage those portions of the game as little as possible. But perhaps to help clarify, I will printout the 4/1 lineup/rotation just so my two readers have a reference point.

1965 nearly completed. I will write up the results soon.

Gives me the motivation to go and type up a dynasty one of these days .

I have the 1965 season completed but did not advance because I have a roster problem that I need advice on solving. This will be presented at the end of the season’s writeup.

1965 Off-Season

The results of the arbitration came out better than expected. With SP LeMaster and LF Hickman not get quite as big of a raise, we ended up with salaries totally $9.7m in arbitration, as oppose to $11.3m. This puts our total payroll at $53.8 with perhaps about $6-7m to spend on FA/trades, if needed.

Here’s how we stand in each position:

C – Both C Brown and C Edwards return. They are not the best C in the league but clearly decent for our team.

1B – The surprising emergence of 1B Dees changes the 1B plans. While 1B Stargell has better ratings (5/7/5), 1B Dees (6/3/4) has shown much better results being in the top 10 in BA and sporting an OPS over .750. This season we will perhaps try to platoon them with Stargell batting against LHP and Dees against RHP. This will be a tradeoff since Dees is best suited in the leadoff spot while Stargell is better in the 5th spot.

2B – 2B Chico Salmon was a very pleasant surprise in this troublesome position. In a little under 470 AB last season, he hit .320 with an OPS of .792. 2B Tadlock will backup 2B Salmon, as well SS Held.

3B – 3B Ken Boyer had held this position since the beginning but is finally showing signs of weakening. His 1964 performance was quite subpar for him (.236-19-63, .670 OPS) and he is in his last year of his contract, being just about 35 years old. IF Taylor, our former 2B starter, will back up 3B Boyer, as well as 2B Salmon as well.

SS – SS Woodie Held has also been a long time member, being one of the key FA acquisitions in the 1962. His 1964 numbers were very good (.276-23-74, .792 OPS) and one of the better SS in the league.

OF – One of the best OF in the majors returns with LF Hickman, CF Conigliaro and RF Clemente, combining for 62 HRs. CF Lou Brock backs up Conigliaro and would be good enough to start, esp. with his .728 OPS and 23 SB in 94 AB. Backing up in LF and RF is OF Ken Flynn, another good OF with a .762 OPS last season.

SP – The SP of LeMaster, Sturdivant, Gibson, John and Jackson all performed well last year for our championship season. There are several good SP prospects waiting in the wings but they will have to wait.

MR – With MR Kutyna and MR Stock leaving for free agency, calling up MR Robertson and MR Sutherland from AAA will replace them adequately (as Lahman always produce a glut of MR). With enough players filling out all of the positions in the minors, we could be looking to pick up a great MR/CL in the draft.


Free Agency

There were no plans to acquire anyone from FA to fill a hole. However, showing up on top of the list is 3B Harmon Killebrew, two-time AL MVP and consistent 40+ HRs and .900 OPS batter. With 3B Boyer in his last year with reduced skills, his $7m contract should be moved. 3B Killebrew will likely command about $14m in FA so if we want him (he would be a great clean-up hitter for the Cardinals), we would have to trade 3B Boyer. As a backup, one of the best SP in the league, SP Ramos, is also available in FA. With SP Gibson and SP Jackson being inconsistent, it might do good to have a solid SP like Ramos in the rotation. We cannot afford both obviously since we would like to keep our payroll no higher than our revenues (with our small stadium, that equals to about $61m in a good year). But if we cannot pick up 3B Killebrew, we hope to at least get SP Ramos.

We started the bidding for 3B Killebrew at $11.6m for 5 years. That was too low obviously but only two other teams entered bids for him. The next bid was a whopping $13.1m for 7 years (he is 28 years old). That was close but not quite close enough. The next bid was for $13.8m for 7 years and that was good enough to get the Killer on the Cardinals. SP Ramos was started out at $10.6m for 6 years but with the bids for 3B Killebrew being competitive, no increased bids for SP Ramos were submitted. He ended being signed for $11.3m for 6 years by the Kansas City A’s.

With 3B Boyer expendable (and desperately needing his salary gone), we made this trade:

Cardinals get:
SP Lovett (3/4/4-G/A/A)

Mets get:
3B Boyer (4/5/5)

SP Lovett is a fair prospect but most importantly, he has a minor league contract.

This brings our payroll to $60.6m, within budget and a very significant upgrade at 3B! Incidentally, our payroll is about average for the league but well under the $80m payroll the Braves has (Dodgers and Reds payrolls are also in the $70-76 range).


Draft

By drafting last in the 1sr round, we will lose out on any decent SP as well as the top batters. That’s fine because we have very solid prospects in all positions and ranked #1 in minor league system. Therefore, we can grab the best MR in the first round and we do so with MR G. Bollo (5/5/5-B/B/A). He instantly was changed to a CL and placed in AAA. With current CL Hoeft at 32, CL Bollo along with the other prospect, CL Landis, we likely will be set in CL and SU pitchers for a while.

In the second round, we drafted Utility-extraordinaire C. Blefary (4/6/9-F/G/G) would could place RF/LF/C/1B. He will start in AAA since both 1B Dees and 1B Stargell are now active. The other picks include MR-turned-SP Buschorne (3/4/6-A/G/G), SS Mark Belanger (4/2/4-F/P/A) and RF Spriggs (5/2/5-P/P/A).

(Note: Starting next season, I will change all MRs who have SP potential into SP so the AI can draft them earlier.)

Heading into the 1965 season, the expectations will be to repeat as the NL pennant winner. Our batting, which was the best in the league last season, will be even better with 3B Killebrew batting cleanup. It is our hope that the SP do perform as well, being one of the top 5 pitching staffs in 1964. Incidentally, after the draft, our minor league system ratings shot up even more and we are now at least twice the ratings as the next best team.

1965 Season

It was decided not to platoon at 1B and C since it makes no sense to even bother with the L/R splits. With that here’s the starting lineup and rotation:

1. 1B Dees (great leadoff)
2. RF Clemente (good OPS with SB speed)
3. CF Conigliaro (ideal as 3rd)
4. 3B Killebrew (prototypical cleanup hitter)
5. SS Held (good power and OPS)
6. C Brown (some power)
7. 2B Salmon (really good OBP)
8. LF Hickman (as usual, third-best OPS batter batting 8th)

SP1: LeMaster
SP2: Sturdivant
SP3: Gibson
SP4: Jackson
Spot: T. John
MR1: Butters
MR2: Robertson
SU1: Anderson
SU2: Sutherland
CL: Hoeft

April

Record: 14-11 (14-11 for month), 2nd place, 2.5 gb

The Philadelphia Phillies started out hot with a 17-9 record for the month. The Cardinals start was both very good and very bad. 3B Killebrew, as hoped for, won Batter of the Month hitting .307 with 8 HRs and 22 RBIs. SP LeMaster and SP Sturdivant combined for an 8-0 record and ERAs under 1.50. On the flip side, SP Jackson, Gibson and John combined for 2-10 and ERAs over 6.00. CL Hoeft had a couple of bad outings and has a 7.56 ERA. The MRs are doing well. The promising 2B Salmon is not hitting but we look for him to come around. And as seems to be typical, we are about the worse fielding team in the league.

May

Record: 28-25 (14-14 for month), 4th place, 1.5 gb

This month saw the Phillies coming back down and causing a logjam in the standings. But the most significant news was the injury to 3B Killebrew, which laid him up for 2 weeks. 3B Bailey was called up from AAA to start at 3B since the current backups, Taylor, Tadlock and Kennedy, need to keep in their positions. With CL Hoeft showing signs of blowing up, we pursue a trade with the Yankees:

Cardinals get:
CL R. Hernandez, 33 yrs old currently 0-0, 0.75 ERA with 10 saves

Yankees get:
2B T. Taylor

With 3B Bailey called up (and doing well), we had an extra IF when 3B Killebrew got off of the DL. 2B Taylor was good enough to start for us but 2B Salmon had the breakout year last season. The Yankees really needed a 2B since they were starting a bad 1-star 2B, which was basically all they had. We got CL Hernandez who will likely only be a one-season solution for us (he is in his last contract year).

Another trade with the Yankees basically swapped MRs:

Cardinals get:
MR Tug McGraw (7/8/5-G/B/A)

Yankees get:
MR Anderson (6/7/5)

With enough good MRs, we placed Tug in AAA, who is just a cool person to have on our roster.

June

Record: 42-40 (14-14 for month), 4th place, 6.5 gb

This month saw the emergence of the mighty Braves to the top of the NL. With another mediocre month, we fall further behind. Perhaps the only good thing to note is that SS Gotay finally gets his shot at the Bigs, replacing IF Tadlock as a backup IF. Not much more needs to be said about this month except that LeMaster went 0-5 despite having a really good ERA.

July

Record: 56-52 (14-12 for month), 3rd place, 10 gb

The good news is that we climbed to 3rd place but fall further behind the Milwaukee Braves. The hitting is now much improved, climbing to the best OPS in the NL and third overall. Our pitching is getting better but our fielding is killing us apparently. Leading the pack is 3B Killebrew’s .899 fielding pct at 3B! By the way, he made the All-Star team along with the unexpected choice of 2B Salmon. Chico is not having as good of a year as last season but probably still better than most 2B in the league.

August

Record: 72-64 (16-12 for month), 2nd place, 12.5 gb

Another climb in the standings but fell a little further behind. The decision to trade for and put CL Hernandez in the closer role, while not bad, was not as good as hoped for. Meanwhile, CL Hoeft had been doing well in the setup role and will be given a chance to close out the season. Callups this month include MR McGraw as the MR behind Butters and hot prospect SP Boswell who will start in place of disappointing SP Jackson.

September to end

Record: 86-76 (14-12 for month), 2nd place, 11 gb

Just a disappointing ending, basically cruising just above .500 all season. Milwaukee Braves, in its last season in Milwaukee before heading to Atlanta, cruised to an easy pennant, despite being -10 in the Pythagorum. In the AL, the Cleveland Indians went wire-to-wire, barely holding off the Baltimore Orioles.

The hitting, anchored by 3B Killebrew, did very well this season, esp. after getting better backups like SS Gotay and 3B Bailey in place. The Cardinals ended up 2nd in BA, 3rd in HR and R and 2nd in OPS in the ML! Leadoff hitter, 1B Dees, again exceeded all expectations in hitting .338 and .838 OPS in 491 AB. 3B Killebrew ended up 2nd in the NL in HR (36) and RBI (95), and 1st in OPS at .913. RF Clemente had an off-year (I hope) despite the amount of money he’s making. SS Gotay ended up having better numbers than aging SS Held, so that will be a decision point for next season.

The pitching ended up about average, clearly not as strong as last season, esp. with the SP. Both SP Gibson and SP Jackson just were too inconsistent to put up good numbers. Combined, they went 15-27 with ERAs above 4.00. The surprise, however, was the September callup SP Boswell going 3-0 with a 1.97 ERA in four starting appearances. There were no 20-game winners but both SP LeMaster (as usual) and SP John posted ERAs under 2.80.

But the real story has to be the horrid fielding. 2B Salmon ranked 2nd in the NL among 2B in errors; SS Held ranked 7th; RF Clemente ranked 1st and CF Conigliaro ranked 2nd. Shockingly, 3B Killebrew by far and away had more errors at 3B than anyone and am not sure if he ended up above .900 fielding pct or not. Whatever win shares he had gained through his powerful bat much have been counteracted by his atrocious fielding. The same may go for the other culprits, though not as extreme as 3B Killebrew. This is the essence of the dilemma I have. Let’s get to the post-season and awards first.



Post-Season and Awards

The Cleveland Indians, with its $45m payroll (on $68m in revenues) shocked the Milwaukee Braves, with its $75m payroll (on $87m in revenues), 4 games to 2 to take the World Series. They did by winning the last three games by a combined score of 21-8.


NL Rookie of the Year: none
AL Rookie of the Year: none

NL Cy Young: Juan Marichal, San Francisco (20-11, 1.87) (Juan’s 2nd Cy Young in a row)
AL Cy Young: Ralph Terry, Los Angeles Angels (21-10, 2.10) (His 2nd Cy Young as well, winning the first time in 1963)

NL MVP: 1B Norm Cash, New York Mets (.286, 37-93) (Norm was the Mets big FA acquisition in 1964 and it paid off for them when he broke Aaron’s three year string of MVPs)
AL MVP: 1B Jim Gentile, Baltimore (.272, 43-109) (Finally Jim was able to win the MVP, esp. after being robbed of it last season)


The Cardinals ended up with a total revenue of $62.4m, thus realizing a profit of little over $1.3m. Fan Interest took a hit, down to 74, but tiny Sportsman Park was sold out for every single game this season.


Arbitration and Extensions

There are only two players up for extensions and they are the closers, CL Hoeft and CL Hernandez. With CL G. Bollo ready to go from AAA, we will not be offering extensions to these two fine CL.

Quite a few players are up for arbitration:

SP LeMaster, $4.2m ($5.0m)
LF Hickman, $3.8m ($4.0m)
MR Butters, $1.1m ($1.1m)
C Edwards, $350k ($500k)
1B Pepitone, $350k ($390k)
1B Stargell, $300k ($2.8m)
SP T. John, $300k ($1.2m)
IF Kennedy, $300k ($300k)
CF Brock, $300k ($2.0m)
1B Dees, $300k ($1.3m)

With the savings from CL Hoeft and CL Hernandez, and the net gain in arbitration coming to $7.2m, the payroll will show an increase by $3.1m (to about $64m). The only players that will not go to arbitration will be 1B Pepitone, while a good player, he ended up about 3rd or 4th on the depth chart. All other players would be worth holding on to.

Here’s the dilemma:

I really need to move 3B Killebrew to 1B. His errors at 3B (D-range) is costing us wins and should be prove to be much less error-prone at 1B (B-range). However, I already have a good 1B in Dees (.338, 6-54, .838 OPS) and a very capable backup, 1B Stargell (.246, 13-52, .712 OPS). Both 1B Dees and 1B Stargell cannot start anywhere else. 1B Stargell is due for a good raise in arbitration (to $2.8m) but he looks like the odd man out. Do I sign and trade him? 3B Bailey will probably make an adequate 3B but I would hate to lose 1B Dees from the lineup. Complicating matters is the lack of budget for good FAs. What would you advise?

Additionally, I don’t know what happened with RF Clemente (.273, 11-43, .670 OPS) but CF Brock had another good year as backup (.323, 0-15, 19 SB). Should I make CF Brock the starter in CF and put RF Clemente as a backup?

As far as the pitchers, what do I do about SP Bob Gibson (7/6/6) (5-10, 4.65) and his $3.5m salary? SP Jackson (6/5/6) is not that much better (10-17, 4.24) with his $2.25m salary. Is SP Boswell (7/6/4) the real thing and worth the risk? When then do I do with SP Gibson and SP Jackson?

bump

1965 season posted

Well personally I would keep Killebrew at 3B and just live with the poor defense. It wouldn't be the firt time a team put a guy in the field just to keep his bat in the lineup. Mo Vaughn comes to mind. I guess what you have to try and determine is how many runs did Kilebrew's fielding cost you, and how many runs would you lose if you had a Kilebrew/Bailey cornerstone combo in the lineup as opposed to a Kilebrew/Dees lineup.

I have a feeling that even though you would save more runs on defense the run production lost on offense would be even greater and you would lose more games. Plus how many leadoff guys have an .838 OPS?

As for the Borck over Clemente question I am having a hard time seperating their real life accomplishments from the game. Obviously in real life you would be playing them both. If you were to sit Dees and you decided to start Brock he obviously could fill that lead off spot for you. I would probably start Brock and platoon Clemente pretty heavily throughout the OF. (I am not certain what positions he can play) He would be a very nice bat coming off the bench and if you rotated him alot could still give you some meaningful at bats while keeping soem of your other guys fresh.

think you would be making a mistake givng up on Gibby. If your going to move a guy I would move Jackosn and stick with Gibby.

Thank you very much for your input. I really needed some fresh eyeballs on this.

No more Cardinals? :(

Cardinals are still there, it's just taking more time than usual to get through the 1966 season, quite a bit going on within the game. After three nights of playing, I am currently right at the trade deadline and still thinking things through. Actually, I had planned on writing up the progress thus this afternoon. Some of the off-season decisions I made paid off while others turned out to be bad. Stay tuned.

1966 Off-Season

Two big franchise moves started off the 1966 off-season. Los Angeles Angels moved out of its co-share arrangements with the Dodgers and relocated themselves in Anaheim and become the California Angels, playing out of Angel Stadium known as the Big A. In the NL, 3-time pennant winner, the Milwaukee Braves took their powerful team to the Sun Belt and now are called the Atlanta Braves, playing out of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

The results of the arbitration came in a little under expected with 1B Stargell and CF Lou Brock getting the biggest raises. The net result going into the 1966 off-season activities is a payroll of nearly $64m, which is a little high considering last year’s revenues of $62.5m. Since Sportsman Park sold out every seat last season, we decided to raise ticket prices $1 to $12 which should bring in an extra $3m. Our expected revenues should be in the $65-66m range. This still does not leave much room for FA acquisitions. But then again, we are fairly set at each of the positions:

C – C Bill Freehan, obtained in a trade with the Twins in 1964 (for 2B Don Zimmer, if you recall), is now the highest rated C for the Cardinals. He will be given a chance to start with either long time starter, C Brown or perennial backup, C Edwards, backing up. Very likely C Brown will be traded since he is pulling down $2.6m per year while C Edwards is still under $500k.

1B – 1B Dees, with his .838 OPS, will continue to start with 1B Stargell backing up. 1B Stargell’s ratings (6/7/5) are quite good (much better than 1B Dees at 6/3/4) but the actual performances does not prove that out. 1B Stargell should break out soon but 1B Dees is more than capable right now.

2B – This is still the most troubling position, never really having a really good player at 2B. Incidentally, 2B Joe Morgan is in AAA and with his ratings stuck at 4/3/7, he may not be the long-term solution as hoped for. A look at the FA market shows no quality 2B available so 2B Chico Salmon (6/4/4) will start again even though his performance dropped a bit last reason. IF Kennedy will continue to backup 2B.

3B – 3B Killebrew will continue at 3B despite his awful error percentage. 3B Bob Bailey will provide able backup.

SS – A change is in order for SS this season with long-time starter, SS Held, dropping alarmingly. He will become backup to SS Gotay who surprised last season with a .744 OPS and .289 BA.

LF – LF Hickman continues to be one of the best OF in the NL with his .800 OPS.

CF – This position will also undergo a change this season. For two seasons, CF Lou Brock has been batting well over .700 OPS and providing much needed speed on the bases. Incumbent CF Conigliaro is an All-Star and he will be moved to RF to make way for CF Brock to start.

RF – RF Clemente, one of the highest paid superstars in the league has lost his starting position after falling to .670 OPS last season. RF Conigliaro will shift over from CF but RF Clemente will serve as a frequent backup in CF and RF. OF Flynn, one of the better backup OFs in the league will backup LF and RF as well, rounding out the compliment of five good to great OF on the Cardinals.

SP – The 1965 starting rotation of SP LeMaster, SP Gibson, SP T. John and SP Sturdivant will again return. Last season’s callup, SP Boswell who went 3-0 with 1.97 ERA, will be the spot starter. That leaves SP Jackson again disappointing with a 10-17 record and 4.24 ERA will be the odd man out and will be traded.

MR – September callup, MR Tug McGraw, will be added to the quality mix along with MR Butters, MR Sutherland and MR Robertson. With both long-time CL Hoeft, as well as CL Hernandez leaving the Cardinals for free agency, CL Greg Bollo will be called up from AAA to be the closer.


Free Agency

The FA market appears to be weak this year with only SP Juan Marichal, winner of the last two NL Cy Young awards, being the only true superstar. He ended up signing for $10.6m for 4 years with the Detroit Tigers.

Before the FA process was started, we traded our two leftover starters to the Kansas City A’s.

Cardinals get:
SP Jim McGlothlin (6/6/4-G/A/B)

Athletics get:
C Brown (5/5/4)
SP Jackson (6/5/6)

The A’s were the only team to have offered a good SP prospect for these two starters. SP McGlothlin, 22 yr old, will be added to mix of young SPs currently in the minors.

As the result of this trade, our payroll goes down to $59.8, well within our budget to realize a decent profit. The top 3 payrolls in the NL continues to be 1. Atlanta ($80.8m), 2. Cincinnati ($73m) and 3. San Francisco ($65m).


Draft

Only a three-round draft this year but loaded with SP (esp. after changing all the MRs with SP ratings to Sp). The first 16 picks of the first round all went to SP and the Cardinals continued that pattern in picking up SP Nolan Ryan (2/5/3-B/A/F). The second round picked up an utility OF Jay Johnstone (4/3/4-A/F/A), while the third round ended up with C George Mitterwald (4/1/4-F/A/A). All three players will start in AA.


Expectations for this season will be undetermined. We never know how the SP rotation will hold up, whether they will perform as well as they did in the championship season of 1964, or just adequate as they did last season. The team’s batting will be among the best in the league, even with two new starters (CF Brock and C Freehan). Whether we can pull it all together to challenge the mighty Braves is what makes the expectations undetermined.

1966 Season

April

Record: 13-13 (13-13 for month), 7th place, 5 gb

We already started the season in a hole with a disappointing mediocre start. The Atlanta Braves, of course, continued their winning ways starting out 18-8. The SP staff is doing okay with only SP Gibson being the weak link at 2-4, 4.45. The bullpen did very well, esp. the two newcomers, MR McGraw and CL Bollo. The experiment to start CF Lou Brock proved to be short-lived. As the leadoff hitter, his OBP for the month ended up at a paltry .211 while OF Clemente got his bat working again with a .946 OPS. So, CF Brock will go back to backing up Conigliaro in CF while RF Clemente resumes his old spot in RF and batting 2nd in the lineup. SS Gotay will now resume the leadoff spot.

May

Record: 28-26 (15-13 for month), 4th place, 7.5 gb

As what seems to be typical as life in the NL, we climb in the standings while fall further behind. Atlanta now has a 5.5 games lead on the Philadelphia Phillies. This month, the Cardinals showed their true colors with most of the SP doing poorly while the batters hit their way to near the top OBP, SLG and OPS in the league. SP Gibson continued to perform poorly and this month, SP John and SP Sturdivant joined him. SP Boswell will move from his spot starter position to start in place of SP Gibson in the rotation. In the leadoff position, SS Gotay is now hitting .336, while 3B Killebrew won Batter of the Month. 2B Salmon is batting .825 OPS in the 8th spot. Another position change will be made with 1B Stargell (.836 OPS) starting over 1B Dees (.670 OPS). Now the lineup resembles much like it had been over the past few seasons. At the end of the month, a trade was made with Detroit:

Cardinals get:
MR C. Butler (8/8/6)

Tigers get:
SS Woodie Held (4/5/6 - .582 OPS)
MR Johnson (from AA)

After signing an extension in 1964 (albeit for less money at $5.68m), former All-Star SS Held has gone downhill. Detroit needed a SS so we picked up one of the many exceptional quality MRs in the league. In place of Held, SS Tadlock will be called back up to backup SS Gotay and to make room for MR Butler, MR Sutherland will be sent back down.

Speaking of the minors, in 1965, we had by far the minor league system (score of 210, 100 ahead of 2nd place). But now after a few trades and calling up several of the best prospects, our system rating has dropped dramatically to 105 leaving us close to 4th best in the majors.

June

Record: 41-39 (13-13 for month), 5th place, 7.5 gb

We don’t lose any ground but a roller-coaster month, losing 11 of the first 14 and then winning 10 of the last 12, puts us no closer to the Braves and the Phillies who are battling it out. Despite average pitching, we are still in contention somewhat because the league as a whole is becoming mediocre. A little shuffling in the SP occurred this month when SP John went on the DL for 5 weeks. SP Lovett (5/4/4) was called up but after one bad start, he too got injured. So SP McGlothlin (6/6/4), obtained in the off-season trade with Kansas City, entered the rotation. SP McGlothlin proceeded to go 3-0, 1.35 for the month and provided some hope after the disappointments of SP John, SP Gibson and SP Jackson. The last of the new starters, C Freehan, lost his job this month after hitting only .642 OPS. C Edwards (.889 OPS) will now start. The only other lineup change was putting 1B Stargell in the 3rd spot with LF Hickman back in his usual 8th spot.

July

Record:

July is not quite done but sitting at the trade deadline, we have to make some changes in the future of the team. SP Gibson (7/6/6) has pitched himself out of a job going 2-10 with a 4.24 ERA this season. The result of this was a change to a 5-man starting rotation with SP LeMaster, SP McGlothlin, SP John, SP Boswell and SP Sturdivant. Therefore on July 30, the Cardinals say farewell to SP Gibson, who had so much promise (but making too much money for what he’s worth):

Cardinals get:
SP Jim Ollom (21 yr old prospect, 5/6/4-G/G/G)

Senators get:
SP Gibson
SP Richardson (2/5/3-A/G/A)

Speaking of trades, the Atlanta Braves traded away 3B Pete Rose who had been their backup to Chicago White Sox for future batter, CF Bob Watson. It’s kind of funny that in the 1963 draft, we debated picking Rose or Joe Morgan. While Rose would have been on the active roster for us, neither seems to be living up to their 1st round hype as of yet.

The All-Stars for this season from the Cardinals were surprisingly numerous: SP LeMaster, MR Butler, 2B Salmon, 3B Killebrew, CF Conigliaro and RF Clemente. 2B Chico Salmon was again a surpise but he does have a .722 OPS which is best among 2B in the NL. It just that with a lineup of great hitters, Chico is holding his own.

With little hope of winning the pennant this season, we may pursue one more trade.

5th place at the all-star break doesn't sound very promising for winning a pennant this year though.

Is there any hope of trading away a defensive liability like Killebrew for a slightly inferior 3B who actually has a glove?

Shag, when I wrote this, I had forgotten how far I had fallen in July. Currently the Cards are in 7th, 12.5 gb. That's the reason why I stopped it at the trade deadline because you're right, maybe it is prudent to trade some bat for some pitching. As far as 3B Killer, I think primelord said it best, his superior bat (he leads the league in OPS, HR, RBI and Top 10 in BA) more than makes up for his lousy defense (currently .911 pct). I need to dig up Bill James' Win Shares formula to calculate the difference. I'll take a little time think this over this weekend. (In the meantime, I got Vikings Invasions to take care of.)

I spent an hour (as I love to do) to see if I could trade for a pitcher. I made a list of the top 12 or so SP (ratings or performance) and tried to work a deal for any of them. I completely struck out because of those that would be willing to trade their ace, I had get give up my star ace (LeMaster) in return plus other starters. The AI teams are being really possessive about their good SPs. I'll get through the rest of the season in the best way possible knowing I have some serious decision makings to do in the off-season. Man, I love this game.

Great read :) A boring morning let me read the whole thing and I'll be following from here on out.

A question: How did you get all the real life ballparks in the game? Are they there by default somewhere that I haven't found or part of the Lahman database or something?

Thanks for reading, Radii. There is a file put together by someone that had all of the parks since 1901. I just replaced the two files (parks and parksconfig, I believe) in the main directory and when I go to the Team Setup screen, I just find the desired park on the list. I'm one of those gamers that makes sure every park and logo and team name are accurate each season.

But didn't you say Killebrew also has E range at 3B?

So he's missing many of the plays even an average 3B would make, and then 10% of the plays he does make he throws away. That's what I'm talking about.

My comment is basically that you have so many talented pitchers, but they seem to be struggling. The reason for that is normally bad defense.

Thanks Shag. Maybe I ought to research this issue more. Can anyone help figure out exactly how many games he has lost for me or probably more accurately, how many runs he has given up?

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
Thanks Shag. Maybe I ought to research this issue more. Can anyone help figure out exactly how many games he has lost for me or probably more accurately, how many runs he has given up?

A coupla friends of mine are big into sabermetric type stuff, I know there are "Runs Created" vs "Runs Allowed" individual formulae, hopefully they can point me to them, I'm curious about this myself.

The response to my question on are there any Bill Jamesian formulae that could compare runs created against runs allowed:

===========================================
He does fielding values for Win Shares, but I don't have the first clue how he arrives at those values. Presumably though, 1 full point of RF is worth at least .052 of OPS, based on some very unscientific number crunching based on 2002 NL. There are probably much better calculations on the marginal value of an out, but I would assume my .052 is about a minimum (it assumes each ball a guy doesn't get to is a single).
=============================================

That doesn't seem to help much, assuming you even understand it all(not sure I do).

Well I would say it is probably pretty difficult to determine exactly who many Runs Kilebrew is costing you at 3rd. If his limited range doesn't allow him to even make a play on the ball then by just looking at stats there is really know way to tell if a good 3rd baseman would have made that play.

But there are a couple of things you could do. One would be to look at the numbers of assists and put outs he has made over the season compared to other 3rd baseman in the league. If he has a comparable number of assists and putouts then he it should be clear he is making most of the plays for you.

I can't remember if OOTP keeps game logs for each player, but if they do you can also go through and look at the games he made errors and determine how often those errors led to runs etc. It's also important to remember that while it is nice to have a good defensive 3rd baseman it isn't nearly as important as having a good defensive short stop, and 2nd baseman. The 3rd baseman just doesn't get as many chances as the guys up the middle. I have a pretty strong feeling that Kilebrew is winning more games for you with his bat than he is costing you with his glove.

I'd agree with that suggestion. Just take a guess at how a 'typical' third baseman hits, how the 'typical' third baseman fields, and see whether Killerbrew's further from the norm with the bat or the glove. My money's on the hitting.

Thank you all, I will do just that and figure out whether the addition of a great SP will offset the loss of the bat plus the difference in runs allowed.

I don't think there is any question.

Killebrew's RC and RC/27 are in the top 3 in all of the majors and tops in the NL.

His fielding stats are:

E: 22
Pct: .911
TC: 247
A: 176
PO: 49

His Total Chances and Assists are fairly low among 3B but his PutOuts number is tied for 8th best in the majors. So how does this begin to translate to Runs Allowed?

By the way, the Team's Errors rank 5th in the NL, so clearly not the worse.

No idea. On the other hand, if you figure that the other team scores a run every time he makes an error or misses a play - which is far, far past the worst-case scenario - that probably still doesn't make that many more runs than he's contributing with the bat. 22 errors is a hideous total, but I'd say that his bat is definitely more significant.

Originally posted by Katon
No idea. On the other hand, if you figure that the other team scores a run every time he makes an error or misses a play - which is far, far past the worst-case scenario - that probably still doesn't make that many more runs than he's contributing with the bat. 22 errors is a hideous total, but I'd say that his bat is definitely more significant.

There is more to it then that though. If you are looking absolutely worse case scenario. Then in addition to just people scoring on the errors he makes you also have to figure the people scoring on the balls he didn't even get to that a good 3rd baseman would have. However I still don't think you want to take his bat out of the lineup.

To be honest I don't think trading Kilebrew should even be an option. If you are really uncomfortable with his play at 3rd I would consider trying to ship Stargell out, and move Kilebrew to 1st base where you said his defense is much better. Perhaps you could swing a decent starting picther and a solid glove man at 3rd base for Stargell. Since Stargell wasn't putting up the offensive numbers that Kilebrew was it seems likely a good glove man and a better SP could more easily over come the loss of Stargells offense than Kilebrews.

Thanks for advice. Tonight, I'll post the batting stats on Killebrew and Stargell, as well as others for comparison. I am really not sure if I can trade for an impact SP without giving up too much. Stay tuned.

Okay, looking at the stats on Killebrew and Stargell, there is no way I should trade either of them. Stargell has finally blossomed in his role in the 3rd spot while Killebrew is among the very best. 1B Dees and 3B Bailey may be really good backups but I feel I would give up too much just to try to get a good pitcher, which may or may not make that big of a difference. I'll continue on with the 1966 season soon.

The 1967 Season is just about complete (need to do the extensions bit). Stay tuned for some significant shaking ups.

Go St. Louis!!!!!!!

Proud to be born and raised in St. Louis....god bless! :)

Where we had left off was at the trading deadline of the 1966 season..

1966 Season cont.

July

Record: 51-55 (10-16 for month), 7th place, 12 gb

The Atlanta Braves are still ahead, barely, of the Phillies and the Dodgers. At this point, without good starting pitchers along with poor fielding, there is not much hope for the season. We really wanted to trade for an ace SP but none can be had without sacrificing too much from the league-leading hitting. ERAs are all under 4.00 but in this age of dominant pitching staffs, we really need to be around 3.00 ERA to not be 12 games back. The Cards have the best hitting lineup, #2 in OBP and #1 in SLG and OPS (and second-best overall in the majors to Baltimore). Financially, our sell-out streak continues but we now have seen Fan Interest slip to under 70.

August

Record: 70-66 (19-11 for month), 4th place, 11.5 gb

A good month puts us over .500 but the story remains the same – the rut of having the best hitting lineup with relatively inadequate pitching. Our ace, SP LeMaster, is now a 19-game winner but no one else on the staff has over 8 wins. It would have been nice to have some better SP to go along with him. As far as some bad news, this is the month we break our sell-out streak that extends back to the 1964 season. In the standings, Atlanta has extended its lead to 6 games. In the AL, Detroit Tigers is just ahead of California and Minnesota.

September to end

Record: 89-73 (19-7 for month), 2nd place, 5 gb

A phenomenal month saw the Cardinals reach as close as three game behind the Atlanta Braves! Between August 20 and September 27, we won 25 of 32 games. This was done by having our hitters perform even better, if that was possible. We finished the season with by far the best OPS in the majors. But more than just great hitting, the pitching staff actually got its act together. SP LeMaster finished his superb season with 22 games won and an ERA of 2.89. SP Tommy John improved to win a few games and our bullpen did excellent, esp. the newcomer, MR Butler.

Team-wise, we had the top 4 BA in the NL with our leadoff hitter, SS Gotay leading with .309, followed by RF Clemente, CF Conigliaro and 3B Killebrew. The club ranked 3rd in HRs and Runs with 3B Killebrew leading the way with 44 HR and the league-leading .950 OPS. CF Conigliaro and RF Clemente also finished in the top 10 in OPS. But perhaps the margin between second and first place was not so much due to pitching but fielding. At SS, 2B, CF, RF and of course, 3B, we had among the worse fielders in their positions. As far as pitching, we finished tied for 8th in the NL (of 10 teams) in ERA. SP LeMaster was already noted but on the other hand, SP Sturdivant and his 36 years, is probably finished after losing 17 games and an ERA over 4.00. Our new rookie closer, CL Greg Bollo, finished with 43 saves, good for second in the league and an ERA of 2.49. The league’s best ERA among relievers goes to MR Butler, who was acquired in a trade on June 1 (giving up our long-time SS Woodie Held). MR Butler finished with a eye-popping 0.69 ERA.

Post-Season and Awards

In the AL, the California Angels surpassed the falling Detroit Tigers to easily win the pennant by games. What this means is that the World Series will be played by the two teams that relocated to new cities this season, the California Angels coming out of Los Angeles and the Atlanta Braves out of Milwaukee! The Braves has now won four of the past five NL pennants while the Angels wins its second (this is the team we beat in the 1964 World Series). The Angels come into the Series with a really good team, #3 in OPS and #3 in ERA in the majors. The Braves, while having a good hitting team (#4 in OPS), their weakness is in the pitching staff (#10 in ERA).

The World Series turned out to be a pitcher’s delight with all games low scoring and close. But it was the Angels’ better pitching that allowed them to prevail, 4 games to 1. Perennial Cy Young winner, SP Ralph Terry won games 2 and 5, both by scores of 3-1.


NL Rookie of the Year: SP Don Sutton, Philadephia Phillies (16-11, 3.14)
AL Rookie of the Year: SP Dick Hughes, New York Yankees (24-6, 2.15)

NL Cy Young: Cal Koonce, Philadelphia Phillies (20-6, 1.68) (Even though Cardinals’ SP LeMaster won more games, Cal’s ERA of more than 1.00 lower gave him the Cy Young)
AL Cy Young: SP Dick Hughes, New York Yankees (24-6, 2.15) (The Yankees picked up a gem as their 5th pick when Hughes had a phenomenal season, winning the Cy Young as well as the Rookie of the Year)


NL MVP: 3B Harmon Killebrew, St. Louis Cardinals (.294, 44-115) (Killer wins his 3rd MVP and first as a Cardinals)
AL MVP: CF Mickey Mantle, New York Yankees (.282, 38-109) (His second MVP after winning in 1964)

The Cardinals ended up with a total revenue of $64.6m on the strength of higher ticket prices, thus realizing a healthy profit of $8.6m. Fan Interest is lower at 68, but tiny Sportsman Park was nearly sold out for every single game this season.

Next season, the St. Louis Cardinals were scheduled to move into much larger Busch Stadium but the powers that be decided to delay that move until the 1971 season when the Reds, Phillies and Pirates have moved into their new flying saucer stadiums. In the meantime, the Cardinals will continue to try to remain competitive as a relatively small market team.

Arbitration and Extensions

There are a slew of players up for arbitration:
SP LeMaster
LF Hickman
1B Stargell
CF Brock
MR Butler
SP John
1B Dees
MR Butters
C Edwards
OF Flynn
SS Gotay
CF Conigliaro
SP Boswell
IF Kennedy
2B Salmon

The biggest raise will, of course, be CF Conigliaro with an expected increase from $300k to over $3.6m. SS Gotay, 2B Salmon and 1B Stargell will see modest raises for being starters. Only OF Flynn and IF Kennedy will not be offered arbitration because backup IF and OF can be easily replaced, esp. with ones hitting under .600 OPS. The effect of arbitration will see an increase in the payroll of almost $7m. The only potential free agent is elderly SP Sturdivant and he will be allowed to leave, hopefully to retire gracefully instead of enduring the in-season FA and Release routine. This will give us a starting payroll of about $54m, which will be enough room to go after FA starting pitchers in the off-season.

A,

Keep in mind you are actually already playing in Busch Stadium. Sportsman's Park was renamed Busch Stadium in 1953. :)

So they added 20,000 seats for the 1967 season then?

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
So they added 20,000 seats for the 1967 season then?

Heh no. There was a brand new stadium called Busch stadium built for the 1967 season. But Sportsman Park was also renamed Busch Stadium in 1953 when the Cardinals bought the stadium from the Browns. The Browns owned that stadium until 1952.

Since the Busch family owned the Cardinals when they bought the stadium they renamed it. And when they built the new stadium in 1967 they just kept the name.

Dola,

And if you want some more little history facts on the stadium. It was actually supposed to be named Budweiser stadium, but the league pressured the Busch family to not name it that. So they went with Busch Stadium.

1967 Off-Season

The results of the arbitration came in as expected, leaving us with a payroll of $54.1m. With revenues topping $67m, we should be profitable with a payroll increase of $12m (as well as not among the top 3 NL payrolls). Even though we have a weak position (Catcher) and in need of a few backups, SP will be our free agent priorities. But more than anything else, we need to get out of the rut of playing a little above .500. Even though we have some of the best players at their positions playing for us, we may need to shake that up.

C – The platoon last season between C Freehan (6/4/6) and C Edwards (4/5/7) really didn't matter much either way. Both ended up with OPS about .640, well below expected for their position. C/OF Blefary was called up late last season and performed very well in a limited roll as a backup OF and we will use him this season as a backup C. C Edwards is probably a little better than C Freehan but he will likely bring in a little more trade value. As far as free agents, our old friend, C Earl Battey is back on the market. Remember, this was the catcher that I engaged in a bidding war a few seasons back. Since then, he had enjoyed constant success for the Cubs as a 5-time All-Star. He may fetch about $8m this season and will only be a bidding choice if in the unlikely event we cannot get any of the free agents SPs.

1B – 1B Stargell (7/7/6) is one of the best 1B and a good glove too. 1B Dees (6/4/4) is, as usual, a capable backup.

2B – 2B Chico Salmon (6/4/4) had another All-Star sesason with a .677 OPS, but a little error-prone. With IF Kennedy, 2B Joe Morgan (4/3/9) will finally reach the Bigs and start out as 2B Chico’s backup.

3B – 3B Killebrew (6/10/9) and his bad glove (.914 pct) will remains at 3B because of the potency of having both 1B Stargell and 3B Killebrew in the lineup. 3B Bailey (6/3/5) is another capable backup.

SS – SS Gotay (6/4/5), with his $1m arbitration raise, returns with SS Tadlock (4/3/4) backing him up.

LF – LF Hickman (6/5/7) is a great bat in the 8th spot as well as a Gold Glove outfielder.

CF – CF Conigliaro (5/7/5) is another great bat (.852 OPS) and much deserving of the $3.3m arbitration raise. CF Lou Brock (6/3/3), while not a capable starter, can be a good backup esp. with his great speed on the bases (29 steals last season despite only 178 AB).

RF – RF Clemente (6/6/4) is a superstar, bouncing back from a mediocre season to hit .795 OPS. With CF Brock just backing up in CF and OF Flynn gone, we need a backup RF/LF and will either sign one in FA or trade for one. In the FA market, there is a really good OF that could serve as a backup, OF J. Callison (7/4/8) but he is one of those OF that could start on most teams. He would be expensive, probably about $4m, but only pursued if nothing else worked.

SP – SP Sturdivant will not be back and we thanked him for anchoring our staff for the 1964 championship season. We need a replacement for him as well as another SP so we can send SP McGlothlin (6/6/6) back into the spot roll. That leaves our ace SP LeMaster (9/7/6) and SP Tommy John (7/7/7) along with young SP Boswell (7/7/5) who turned in a mediocre performance last season (8-7. 4.09). What we would like to get is a SP as good or better than SP LeMaster and one that is better than SP John. That should put our pitching staff into the top 5 ERA and enough to challenge for the pennant.

In the FA market, there is one superstar SP available, SP Cloninger (9/7/7), former ace of the Braves staff and their four pennant winning teams. Did you catch that? He was on the rival Braves and therefore, simply does not like our organization. Bastard. The next two best FA SP are not in the same class as Cloninger or LeMaster but better, performance-wise, than our SP Tommy John. They are SP B. Monboquette (7/7/8) and SP T. Bowsfield (7/7/7). I would guess they would each go for about $5.5m so if we land them both, some salary shufflings would have to occur.

MR – MR, as usual, are always in abundance, even very highly rated ones. The only trick is to find the ones that give superb performances. But more times than not, it is a matter of shuffling them around, even from team to team. Currently on our staff, we have MR Butler, MR Butters and MR McGraw along with CL Bollo. There is no need to acquire any FA MR because a great one can be traded for or at least, picked up early in the draft. Since we know we will be trading C Edwards, a highly rated MR will probably be included.

So, before we hit the FA market for the two SP, we make a trade knowing we need a MR and a backup OF.

Cardinals get:
OF Adolfo Phillips (4/3/5-G/A/G)
MR Danny Coombs (8/8/7)

Cubs get:
C Edwards (4/3/7)
SP Boswell (7/7/5-G/G/G)

It was hard to find a team that need a C and had a decent backup OF available. We threw in SP Boswell to get a MR and a OF as a gamble in assuming we can acquire two SP to fill out our 4-man rotation plus the spot. OF Phillips is one of those young OF with unknown potential. He can backup all three OF spots and will be cheap for a while. MR Coombs fills in our bullpen nicely for peanuts after posting solid numbers in the minors for the Cubs.

Free Agency

SP Monboquette was started out close to what I predicted he would go for, $5.1m for 3 years and it was favored right away. No other bids for SP Monbo topped that, surprisingly. He is only 31 yrs old this season and he has posted some decent numbers for a losing team (Boston). Hopefully being surrounded by better players, SP Monbo can perform at a higher level.

SP Bowsfield was given an initial bid of $4.6m for 2 years, mainly for being 2 yrs older than SP Monbo. He replied that he wanted more years and so it was upped to 3 years. We have no choice because these two pitchers are the 2nd and 3rd best SP available. SP Bowsfield did sign with us for that amount and hopefully he will be good for us.

By the way, SP Cloninger went for big bucks, signing with Houston (and their deep pockets) for $10.1m for 7 years.

C Battey was given a fairly lowball bid of $5.1m for 2 years and it was immediately laughed at. With the two SP responding favorably, we did not pursue C Battey any further. He ended up signing with Cleveland for $7.7m for 5 years.

OF Callison was given a ridiculously low bid of $3.1m for 5 years. He ended up signing with Baltimore for $7.1m for 4 years, much higher than I thought he would sign for. To jump ahead, Callison thrived in the 3rd spot ahead of two-time MVP 1B Jim Gentile and 3-time All-Star, OF Jimmie Hall. This represented one of the best middle of the order lineups in the majors so the money given to Callison was well earned (and we wanted him as a backup).

After free agency, our payroll sits at $63.4m, right at the budget.


Draft

Not sure what the priorities are for the draft, probably Infielders, but picking 18th in each round, we tend to go with best available. In the 1st round after the usual group of SP got picked (esp. changing most of the MR with SP ratings to SP), we chose 1B Rod Carew (6/3/4-G/F/A). Being 22 yrs old, he will be looked at to replace 1B Dees as backup. In the 2nd round, we picked up an interesting project, 3B/1B Graig Nettles (4/1/4-F/G/A). Not sure how he’ll develop. The 3rd round seems to always be a good place to draft MR and we get MR Bill Stoneman (8/7/5-G/A/A). A couple of utility players, LF Tom Shopay (4/2/4-F/P/A) and 3B/SS Ken Poulsen (3/2/4-F/P/P) rounded out the draft.

A few draftees of note. OF Reggie Jackson went to Cleveland as the third pick. SP Tom Seaver went 5th to the ChiSox and the New York Mets picked up C Johnny Bench four picks before us. I really wanted C Bench on the Cardinals and wished we could have traded draft picks.

After the draft, we are now back on top as the best minor league system with the player we got for SP Bob Gibson last season, SP Jim Ollom being the #1 prospect.

The expectations for this season is for our SP staff to pull through with a better ERA. This, I believe, is all we need to win the pennant, esp. now that the Braves might be weakening. The lineup should still be the best in the league overall, as long as the errors don’t get too out-of-hand.

With a season beginning payroll of $63.1m, this puts us close to third with Cincinnati leading the way at $69m, followed by Atlanta at $67m and Los Angeles at $65m.

1967 Season

The Starting Lineups is as follows:

1. SS Gotay (a reliable leadoff hitter)
2. RF Clemente (would even be suited for the 3rd spot)
3. 1B Stargell (but Pops is even better here)
4. 3B Killebrew (the great cleanup hitter)
5. CF Conigliaro (debated whether to put him in the 3rd spot but this would give us a killer 2-5 lineup)
6. C Freehan (just hoping he won’t be a hole here)
7. 2B Salmon (continuing to be the decent hitter)
8. LF Hickman (as usual, one of our top OPS hitters in the second cleanup spot)

SP1: LeMaster (our ace)
SP2: Bowsfield (the first FA pickup)
SP3: Monboquette (and the second pickup, hoping both do well)
SP4: John (seems to be good enough to keep in the rotation)
Spot: McGlothlin (may have been brought up too soon)

MR1: Butler (one of the best relievers we’ve had)
MR2/SU1: Coombs (high hopes for this recent trade acquisition, esp. with his 8/8/8-G/B/B ratings)
SU2/MR3: Butters (usually consistent)
MU1: McGraw (Scrooge not much room to put him anywhere)
CL: Bollo (had a great rookie season with 43 saves)

But as typical, the bullpen gets shuffled around every month so this is just the starting point.

April

Record: 12-13 (12-13 for month), 6th place, 6.5 gb

Definitely not the start that I wanted, esp. after the first nine games, we were 1-8. As usual, the Atlanta Braves are on top with a 19-7 record and it looks like Eddie Mathews will be having a monster year. In the AL, the race between California, trying to repeat and Baltimore is already heating up. The reason for the poor start is that our bats are not warm yet. Also, in a cruel turn of fate, the SP are actually doing fairly well, except for our ace, SP LeMaster, who is off to a horrid start. It looks like we made a mistake with MR Coombs who got shelled in his first three appearances. To add to that, at the end of the month, MR Butler, our star reliever from last season, went down with a 7 weeks injury. To replace MR Coombs and MR Butler, MR Sutherland (8/8/6) and MR Landis (7/7/5) will be called up from AAA.

May

Record: 27-25 (15-12 for month), 6th place, 5.5 gb

Okay, that’s it. I am tired of this rut we have been in and changes will have to be made. We seem to be a few players short to get over the hump. We are not that far out, as usual, but just treading water along with most of the league. Making this more exasperating is the fact that the Braves are showing signs of weakening, esp. after going 14-13 this month. They still have the #1 OPS but next to worse pitching. Our bats have much improved, our SPs are doing better and the bullpen is doing great. We will wait another month before making any significant changes.

June

Record: 40-39 (13-14 for month), 5th place, 6.5 gb

Instead of looking to make changes, we spent most of the month managing the various injuries. First, SP McGlothlin was sent back to AAA for seasoning and to replace him the spot roll, we sign one of our former SP stars, SP Bennie Daniels. He was with us the 1962 season, winning 19 games, acquired in a trade with the Senators for our starting C and 1B at the time. The following season he was traded back to the Senators for recently retired SP Sturdivant and CF Curt Flood. He had put together some good seasons then fell on hard times when he turned 35. Anyway, SP Daniels (6/6/6) returns to us as a spot pitcher. On June 10, SP Tommy John went down with a 7 weeks injury (will he require Tommy John surgery?) and SP McGlothlin gets called back up.

This was the month that the Braves fell hard, allowing Cincinnati (#1 OPS) and Pittsburgh to overtake them for top of the standings. In good news, SP Monboquette has become the staff ace, justify this FA acquisition. The other one, SP Bowsfield is doing okay. The catcher spot is just the weak link as I feared but I don’t see anyway around that.

July

Before we present July’s record, this was the month to make the changes. What our priorities were was just to get a better SP rotation since the team ERA has been in the bottom half of the league, as it had been for a few years now. The batting lineup is very solid (top 3 in the NL) and even the fielding pct is surprisingly not too bad. The first of two big trades...

Cardinals get:
SP Gary Nolan (19 yr old rookie, 8/7/7-G/A/G)
SP Tom Parsons (27 yr old, 9/8/8-G/B/B)

Giants get:
SP McGlothlin (6/6/6-G/G/B, 5-star prospect)
SP Bowsfield (7/7/7-G/G/G)

This trade actually took over an hour to complete, trying to find a couple good, young SP. We believe we found them in SP Nolan and SP Parsons, whom so far showing very low ERAs despite having losing records (with the lowly Giants). We basically swapped pitchers while lowering our payroll to $60.0m. We also tried hard to include 1B Stargell in the deal to get a 3B or a C but was unsuccessful.

On July 12, we make a blockbuster trade...

Cardinals get:
3B Ron Santo (27 yr old, 5/8/9, .809 OPS)

Pirates get:
1B Stargell (27 yr old, 6/7/6)
3B Bailey (24 yr old, 6/3/6)
SP T. John (24 yr old, 7/7/7)

This trade started at the All-Star break when it was noticed that only SP Monboquette made the squad from the Cardinals. A look at the 3B entrants showed 3B Eddie Mathews of the Braves with his monster year and the Pirates’ 3B Ron Santo (a 4-time All-Star), both with OPS higher than our 3B Killebrew. It had always been anticipated that we would move Killebrew over to 1B, where his glove will be much less of a liability. But to get 3B Santo as his replacement, we had to give up not only one of the best 1B in the league but two young stars as well. 3B Ron Santo and his phenomenal OPS will take Stargell’s 3rd spot in the lineup and 1B Killebrew don’t have to worry about the hot corner anymore. The Pirates are aiming for the pennant and to go along their league’s best pitching, they get more bats. To replace 3B Bailey, we call up IF Hal Lanier (4/2/4) to back up Santo at 3B.

Record: 55-51 (15-12 for month), 5th place, 7 gb

The two trades already made a difference, once the newcombers got settled in. The pitching staff is now good, top to bottom, and we have climbed close to the bottom of the league in ERA to the middle, all in a few weeks. This really didn’t show in the standings because both 1B Killebrew and 3B Santo went into bad slumps. By the way, in 120 total chances at 1B, Killebrew did not make a single error! Atlanta continued its drop, now in 4th place 6 games behind and Pittsurgh, with its strong lineups is now in 1st.

August

Record: 70-63 (15-12 for month), 4th place, 4 gb

Despite a record a little above .500, we climb in the standings when surprisingly, the Atlanta Braves surged with a 19-10 record while Pittsburgh (12-15) fell. Added to the mix are the Phillies. In the AL, the California Angels are once again cruising to another pennant, now 5 games ahead of the New York Yankees. Our team ERA is dropping, now close to 3.00 (from a high of about 3.60). Leading the way are SP Monboquette, already a 20-game winner and newcomber SP Parsons, who got Pitcher of the Month for August when he went 4-2 with a 0.36 ERA. SP Parsons continues to lead the league in ERA with 1.38. By the way, as good as the acquisition of SP Parsons was, he is due a $4m raise in arbitration, thus putting some budget pressures on us. As part of the constant bullpen shufflings, MR McGraw has emerged as the ace reliever. As far as the hitters, both the OPS of C Freehan and C Blefary have fallen below .600.

September to end

Record: 84-78 (14-15 for month), 3rd place (tied), 9 gb

At the beginning of the month, we were only 4 games behind but soon fell away when Pittsburgh and Atlanta started battling at the top. This was the closest we were to get all season. Part of the reason for our slump was SP Monboquette going 0-4 but still ended up as a 23-game winner for us, well justifying his $5.1m contract. The trade with Pittsburgh turned out well for both teams with their 1B Stargell becoming their star hitter. For the Cards, 3B Ron Santo won the Batter of the Month in September, hitting .320 with 9 HRs. We did sacrifice some hitting (we ended up with the #3 OPS in the league) but happily gained in pitching with the team ERA ending up as 4th best in the NL! Despite the distant 3rd place finish, there is hope for the future with our very solid lineup and really good young arms in the rotation. In the standings, Pittsburgh did win the pennant, barely holding off the Braves by one game. In the AL, as usual, the California Angels coasted again.

How does Killer compare with Stargell for fielding at 1B? And how does Santo's fielding look?

In general, when good pitching talent is stuggling, defense is the first place I look - and as mentioned before, range is just as imporant as fielding percentage. It sounds like that has been addressed somewhat.

Holy crap. You put Ron Santo on the Cardinals. Have you no shame man??? :)

Santo's fielding should be a ton better than Kilebrew's. He won like 5 gold gloves at 3rd.

By the way, as a Cubs fan, I have to say I hope you have better luck putting Santo in the Hall of Fame than the Cubs did.

Let's compare 1967 fielding stats:

1B

Stargell: 1504 TC, 9 E, .994 PCT
Killebrew: 720 TC, 3 E, .996 PCT

3B

Killebrew: 237 TC, 15 E, .937 PCT
Santo: 431 TC, 28 E, .935 PCT

Hmmm, looks like a wash. Ron Santo does have a B-rating at 3B but I know that Lahman's fielding stats do not translate well for historical players.

Maybe we should start calling the 3B corner the "black hole".

Originally posted by ShagVT
By the way, as a Cubs fan, I have to say I hope you have better luck putting Santo in the Hall of Fame than the Cubs did.

He might have had a better shot had he actually been a hall of fame caliber player and put up hall of fame numbers. ;)

Back in on this (got to get out of the habit of playing 3 games at once). I'll be wrapping up the 1967 season and then start in on 1968, the last year before the big realignment. Look for the writeups early next week.

Heh - I figured this dynasty was dead! Welcome back!

Dead? Not at all. Pre-vacation, vacation and post-vacation can really mess up gaming schedules.

1967 Post-Season

World Series

The World Series matchup is interesting. Both teams are by far #1 in their league in Team ERA. The Angels have a 2.71 ERA while the Pirates are even better at 2.38! Even though the Angels have better hitting, the Pirates superb pitching staff should overcome that. As a side note, it is interesting that the Angels’ starting C is none other than Tim McCarver, a Cardinals reject. He actually had been stuck in the minors before getting a chance to start this season and posting somewhat decent numbers for a C.

The Series was a superb pitching duel. Pittsburgh did win in five games with scores being 1-0, 2-1, 5-1, 1-2 and 4-2. The Pirates were led by SP Jim Merritt (11-5, 1.55), the #1 draft pick in 1965 and SP Jim Hardin (16-13, 1.69), this season’s NL Rookie of the Year.


Awards

NL Rookie of the Year: SP Jim Hardin, Pittsburgh (16-13, 1.69)
AL Rookie of the Year: SP S. Jones, Washington (13-13, 2.69)

NL Cy Young: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles (18-6, 1.78)
AL Cy Young: Juan Marichal, Detroit (17-5, 1.51) (This is Marichal’s third Cy Young but first one in the AL with his new team he signed with as free agent)

NL MVP: LF Frank Robinson, Cincinnati (.291, 29-87, .908 OPS) (His first despite putting up good numbers since 1961)
AL MVP: RF Tony Oliva, Washington (.349, 33-104, .972 OPS)


Cardinals Wrap-up and Arbitration/Extensions

We had another profitable year earning $5.5m profit on $67.3m in revenues. Our Fan Interest started out at 68 but rose to 78 by the end of the season. We nearly sold out every game so another bump in ticket prices will occur next season.

Even though we had the #3 OPS in the NL, our sacrifice of some hitting for better pitching may have proved too costly. But considering the horrible start we had, I think we improved a great deal and have high hopes going into 1968. The lineup was solid top to bottom, perhaps with the exception of C Bill Freehan. He is a Gold Glover at C but with the lack of good hitting C in this league, that’s not much of a loss. 1B Killebrew and 3B Santo proved to be a great one-two punch but no one else really had an outstanding season. One of the biggest weaknesses is in the backups. Backup 2B Joe Morgan, in his first year in the majors, hit a paltry .184 with no slugging at all. However, as true to his 4/3/9 ratings, he does have a great eye, resulting in a .308 OBP. The primary backup OF Adolfo Phillips was even worse, batting .164 with a .454 OPS.

The pitching staff performed interestingly. Our longtime ace, SP LeMaster lost 20 games but our 23-game winner, SP Monboquette had one of the higher ERAs on the staff at 2.96. Both SP Nolan and SP Parson had ERAs of 2.21 and 1.77 respectively, but combined W/L record of only .500. This probably can be explained by their stint with the lowly Giants. The bullpen performed fairly well but got hurt a little when MR Butler and his 0.69 ERA went down for a long period on the DL.

We have eight players up for arbitration. CF Conigliaro will be sticking with his high salary of about $3.7m but on the other hand, our new SP Tom Parson is due a $4.3m raise. MR McGraw and SS Gotay are due raises of $1.2m and $500k. With 1B Rod Carew ready to be promoted, we will release 1B Dees and his $1.3m salary, as well as MR Sutherland who is due a $800k raise.

To help pay for the expected $4.9m raise in arbitration, we will let MR Butters go to free agency, freeing up $1.2m. Our second highest salary, $10.1m to RF Clemente is also up for extension. He had a drop in performance this season to only .735 OPS (.272, 20-55). He is still valuable in RF but will be looking for a substantial pay cut. Being the classy veteran that he is at the age of 33, he agrees to $6.0m/2 year contract. This saves over $4m. With that, we give LF Hickman a new contract of $6.0m for 3 years (a $2m raise), keep SP LeMaster at $5.0m for 5 addditional years and give small raises to CF Brock and MR Butler of about $500k each. The net result is a projected increase of about $2m, which we can handle if we don’t plan on splurging in the free agent market.

That’s it for a very active 1967 season.

1968 Pre-Season

We head into another season with optimism. With an increase of ticket prices to $13, we should expect revenues of about $70m. Currently, after the arbitrations were completed, we have a payroll of $61.7m. Even though our starting lineups are fairly well set, we are in need of better backups and a couple of good MRs. We may do some creative financing if we see a good free agent (esp. a SP) but much to my dismay, 1) the free agent market is the poorest I have seen in this career and 2) the two superstar SPs at the top of the list (SP Richert – 10/8/6 and Koonce – 8/8/8, 1966 Cy Young winner) both simply do not like the Cardinals organization. So will be looking to fill some backup and bullpen holes as originally planned.

Oh, one important league news. The Kansas City A's have moved to Oakland. This is the last of the 1960s moves before the massive shakeup coming next season.

Here are the positions analysis as we head into the 1968 pre-season:

C – Last season, C Freehan started and C Blefary backed him up. Both posted well below average OPS for the position with C Freehan at .601. The only decent FA C available is our old friend, C Tim McCarver, but he had not posted numbers any better than C Freehan. Besides, C Freehan is a Gold Glover, if that means anything. We will stick with this pair once again, hoping for better production.

1B – Switching Killebrew to 1B did not effect his league leading numbers but turned him into a Gold Glove-caliber 1B. Our former starter, 1B Dees (before 1B Stargell replaced him), is now a free agent. 1B Rod Carew (6/3/6) will be called up to backup 1B Killebrew.

2B – 2B Chico Salmon will return once again to start. While his numbers are nothing outstanding and his glove is mediocre at best, he seems to be the best option available. None of our backup IF are worth anything – 2B Morgan, 2B/SS Tadlock or 3B Lanier. Each posted OPS under .570. But as mentioned, the FA market (for batters particularly) is dreadful and there really is nothing better for backup IFs.

3B – All-Star 3B Ron Santo returns and with his great production in the third spot ahead of 1B Killebrew, he becomes part of a powerful one-two punch that we had been seeking all of these years. The addition of 3B Santo came about when looking for a better glove at 3B in place of Killebrew. But as it turned out, 3B Santo’s glove is not that much better (.935 pct).

SS – SS Gotay has been our starter for several seasons now and has been an effective leadoff hitter for us. He does not have that much speed but has a decent OBP. His glove is somewhat of a liability (.948 pct) but will not be looking for any changes in the starting infield.

LF – Gold Glove LF Hickman has been quite consistent in his career for us, once again hitting about .800 OPS in the 8th spot in the lineup. Last season, we tried LF/RF Phillips as the backup but he couldn’t hit worth a lick (.164 BA, .454 OPS). There are two options for a backup OF. We could call up OF Jay Johnstone (4/3/5) from AAA or go after FA M. Jimenez (6/5/5). We have about $5-6m that we could spend while keeping within the budget and OF Jimenez should easily fit within that.

CF – We have been fortunate in having two solid CF: Tony Conigliaro and Lou Brock. CF Conigliaro posted decent numbers again but his average fell to below average for him (.244, thus contributing to a .713 OPS). CF Brock behind him continues to amaze with a .306 average and 20 SB in limited duty. We had tried starting CF Brock but that didn’t work out in a brief experiment.

RF – RF Roberto Clemente, with his re-structured contract, bears watching in RF. He actually had a better season than CF Conigliaro posting .272 BA with 20 HR and 55 RBI (.735 OPS) but at 33 years old, he is showing signs of decline.

SP – We had been going with a 4-man rotation, now consisting of SP Parsons, SP LeMaster, SP Nolan and SP Monboquette. Once this rotation settled in last season, it improved our SP staff considerably. We had not been going with a spot starter so an option was to pickup a FA SP to perhaps switch to a 5-man rotation. But as we saw, the top FA SP (SP Richert and SP Koonce) will not sign with us. Our fallback position is to call up SP Larry Dierker from AAA who had been with us since he was 17 years old. His ratings are now 7/7/6, which is good enough for a spot SP role.

MR – There have been and will continue to be a slew of highly rated MRs in the game and it is just a matter of finding the ones that will perform the best on a consistent basis. We have three of them, MR McGraw, MR Butler and CL Bollo. MR Coombs had a disappointing season despite his 8/8/8 ratings but will be given the benefit of the doubt. However, there is one change that we need to make. We will try MR Tug McGraw at CL since he posted a low 2.54 ERA last season while CL Bollo posted 3.21. We will see how this works out but as always, there are always constant shifting going on in the bullpen. Additionally, we will be looking to draft a MR in the first and second rounds (when all the best ones are available) to help solidify the bullpen. Even if none of them pan out, there are a couple MR that could be called up from AAA, as well as the ability to trade for one.

Speaking of trades, for the first time, we go into the season not looking to make any trades. However, the Trade Difficulty has been set to Very Hard with AI Favors Prospects.

Free Agency

We only went after one player, OF M. Jimenez (6/5/5), to backup LF and RF. A guess has him going for $4m so we offered $3.6m for 3 years. Then something happened I had never experienced before, he accepted it right away and signed in week 2. No more time was spent on free agents except to note that SP Richert signed with San Francisco for over $10m for 6 years and SP Koonce signed for about $8m with the White Sox.


Draft

Like the free agency market, the draft appears to be very weak as well. We have the 15th pick out of 20. Of the five rounds, we drafted a MR pitcher that has some SP endurance in the first four rounds. The first two seems to be aberrations. MR/SP Andy Messersmith comes in at 10/9/5-G/A/G and MR/SP Jack Billingham comes in at 8/9/6-G/A/G. Why these two have such high ratings even though they are not very high on the available players report rankings, I don’t know. Anyway, we did draft these two players and immediately placed them in our active bullpen. The other two MR/SP were Jim Rooker (3/6/4-G/A/G) and Davey Fast (6/6/5-G/G/P). The last pick, as usual, went for an Utility IF Bobby Floyd (2/2/4-P/P/F).

After the draft and further promotions/demotions, our payroll stands at $65.6m which is within budget and less than San Francisco ($76.1m, which they are looking to turn around a last place finish from last season), Los Angeles ($71.5m) and Houston ($66.1m).

The expectation this season is once again, optimistic. We do have a really good pitching staff and lineup – it’s just a matter of everyone performing to their abilities. Despite some down years, we did end up with the third-best team OPS and fourth-best team ERA. However, there are some good teams in our league, maybe not quite as balanced but can turn in superb pitching or hitting performances to capture the pennant, as Atlanta and Pittsburgh have done the past three seasons.

Here is our starting lineup:

1. SS Gotay (a reliable leadoff hitter)
2. RF Clemente (will keep him here for now, hoping to regain his stroke)
3. 3B Santo (emerged as one of the best hitters in the league)
4. 1B Killebrew (the great cleanup hitter, as usual)
5. CF Conigliaro (moved him to the 5th spot last season and did okay)
6. 2B Salmon (continuing to be the decent hitter)
7. C Freehan (he has the ratings to be better but has not shown much so far)
8. LF Hickman (as usual, one of our top OPS hitters in the second cleanup spot)

SP1: Parsons (good young pitcher with superb stuff, 1.77 ERA in 1967)
SP2: LeMaster (our former ace who lost 20 games last season by not pitching too badly)
SP3: Nolan (a 19-year old rookie last season who won 16 games with a 2.21 ERA)
SP4: Monboquette (surprisingly our staff ace, a 23-game winner with only a 7/6/8 rating)
Spot: Dierker (we had Larry in AAA for four years so it’s time to bring him up)

MR1: Butler (hoping he has no effect from a long injury)
MR2/SU2: Messersmith (an unknown with 10/9/5 ratings)
MR3: Coombs (has high promise but basically failed last season – 9.69 ERA in limited appearances. Will try again this season.)
SU1: Bollo (a former CL now setting up)
CL: McGraw (hoping the Tugster can be an even better reliever than Bollo was)

Messersmith and Billingham are low on the rankings report because they are MR/SP's. OOTP values those guys like they are MR's, and, of course, a good MR is not as valuable as a good SP. It's a semi-exploitable flaw in the game, but there's no way around it. I am consistently able to draft really good SP's in lower draft rounds because the AI sees them as just another MR.

In the past two seasons before the draft, I turned nearly all MR/SP into true SP. I didn't do it this season because there is a wealth of quality SPs in the leagues and needed to balance that out more. As you will see, Messersmith proved superb in his MR role and Billingham, well, he got kicked off the team.

1968 Season

April

Record: 15-11 (15-11 for month), 1st place, tied

Not a bad start at all. We, as always, plays just above .500 but this time, either we have caught up or the league has fallen to our level (I’ll choose the former). We are tied with the Phillies but the Pirates are just ½ game behind. All of the NL is within four games top to bottom, which hopefully means a good race this season. Our ace from last season, SP Monboquette was Pitcher of the Month going 5-0 with 1.73 ERA. Interestingly, our old friend, 1B Stargell of the Pirates, won Batter of the Month.

As customary, we take the results of the month to see if any of the experiments are failing or not. One thing we clearly noticed was that MR Bollo would be better back in the familiar CL role while CL McGraw becomes the setup. Perhaps a reason for the 15-11 start is that 3B Santo is not hitting yet (.173, 1-8) but 1B Killebrew and CF Conigliaro are taking up the slack by leading the NL in HRs with 6 each. CF Brock is off to a torrid start which is just too bad that he is only a backup. But on the other side, RF Clemente is still falling (.545 OPS). We drop him to the 7th spot and unfortunately, put him on the trade block.

May

Record: 28-25 (13-14 for month), 5th place, 4.5 gb

On May 5, we work out a blockbuster trade (you knew there had to be one sometime this season). RF Clemente did not command much value by himself so we worked in moving our excess SP. In AAA, we have SP Nolan Ryan and Top 5 prospect, SP Jim Ollom waiting (either of which would command high trade value) but instead, we added SP Larry Dierker along with RF Clemente. We are curious about MR/SP Billingham and since the Spot SP role seems to be expendable, we can afford to lose SP Dierker. Also added to this group is one of our starting SP, LeMaster. He went into last season as our ace and former Cy Young winner but ended up losing 20 games somehow. So far this season, he is 1-5 with a 4.06 ERA, so something is not right despite his high ratings and youthfulness. Of course giving up SP LeMaster, we had to get a SP in return and look who we got...

Cardinals get:
SP Paul Richert (9/8/6, 5-2, 2.21 ERA)

Giants get:
SP Denny LeMaster (9/7/6)
RF Roberto Clemente (6/5/4)
SP Larry Dierker (7/7/6)

Do you recall that SP Richert was that star FA SP that was not interested in us? At $10.6m for 6 years, he has gotten off to a great start with the Giants and hopefully, he can be worth it for us. With this trade, CF Conigliaro moves to RF and CF Lou Brock finally gets to start (again). We call up OF Jay Johnstone to provide backup in CF. By the way, our one FA signee, OF Jimenez, has proven to be a good pickup and a valuable backup in LF and RF. We, of course, make CF Brock the leadoff hitter with his phenomenal stealing ability and high OBP/OPS. SP Richert now becomes our co-ace along with SP Monboquette.

The rest of month had us falling a bit as San Francisco (figures) had a hot month going 19-8. The Cardinals now lead the league in HR, Runs and Hits (and OPS) with Killebrew and Santo coming around. Our OF of Hickman, Brock and Conigliaro are doing very well. Our bullpen ERAs are between 2.08 and 2.70 but our SP4 Nolan is struggling a bit. MR/SP Billingham tries out the Spot SP role.

At the end of the month, we get a very interesting trade offer. One of the best pitchers in the ML, SP Camino Pasqual – two-time Cy Young winner (I believe), is being offered by the Twins for 1B Carew and good prospect, SP Buschhorn. This seems to be a salary dump for the Twins but unfortunately, we cannot take on a $10.8m salary (that would put us way over the budget as well as at the top of the payroll list).

June

Record: 48-34 (20-9 for month), 2nd place, 1.5 gb

For the first time in several seasons, we have a great month – despite losing the last three games to fall back out of 1st. San Francisco still holds the top spot with SP LeMaster performing very well for them (figures). Contributing to a great month is the hitting surge of the lineup. We now have – by far – the best SLG and OPS in the majors with Batter of the Month, 3B Santo leading the way hitting .291, 11 HR – 25 RBI for the month. San Francisco (2.69) and Pittburgh (2.61) have quite a better ERAs than the Cardinals (3.01) but ours is #4 in the NL and improving. Fielding is now a liability again, esp. up the middle but we are not going worry about that. MR/SP Billingham has been very erratic in his appearances with his ERA bouncing from 15.00 to 7.50 and back up. Maybe with his high ratings, he will fetch something in trade because he will prove a liability for us. Our SP staff is doing good as mentioned by SP Nolan is the weakest link (he just turned 20). The bullpen all have ERAs under 2.00. One final note for the month is that the once powerful Atlanta Braves is now sitting is last place despite monster season from Hank Aaron and Billy Williams.

Before July began, we pull off one more trade to try to get a better starter so we can place SP Nolan in the Spot SP role. We succeed...

Cardinals get:
SP Tom Hall (8/8/6, 8-2, 2.26 ERA)

A’s get:

SP Billingham (9/9/6)
SP Buschhorn (3/4/6 prospect)

SP Tom Hall represents an improvement over SP Nolan and helps improve our pitching staff to keep up with (and hopefully overtake) the Giants and Pirates. We also get rid of a problem child that really did not fit into our lineup very well. SP Buschhorn had attracted some interest and we could afford to lose another SP prospect given our young starting SP staff.


July

Record: 59-46 (11-12 for month), 2nd place, 3 gb

San Francisco regained the lead with Pittsburgh 5 games behind. By the way, in the AL, Cleveland is keeping its lead on the Yankees. Once again, our OBP/SLG/OPS keep going up to record levels with our whole lineup, top to bottom, performing up to expectations (finally). Even our previous weakest hitter, C Freehan, is thriving in the #2 spot. Our pitching is steady with a 3.03 ERA but even with our bullpen continuing to be superb, CL Bollo has cost us some games this month. As we keep the pressure on the Giants and stay ahead of the Pirates, we cannot afford to have our usually reliable CL going south on us.

Forgot to mention the All-Stars. With a team as good as we have, it should come to no surprise at the number of All-Stars for the Cardinals:

SP Monboquette (13-5, 3.32)
SP Richert (11-7, 2.28)
MR Coombs (3-0, 0.86) ??? Got chosen over Messersmith and McGraw
1B Killebrew (.263, 20-52)
3B Santo (.269, 17-51)
RF Conigliaro (.280, 8-38)

I would say CF Brock (.350 BA) deserved a spot in addition to the whole bullpen.

August

Record: 75-60 (16-14 for month), 2nd place, 2.5 gb

We actually held first place for some of the month, flip-flopping with San Francisco. We are still – by far - #1 in all hitting categories in the major leagues. Pitching is holding steady at 3.00 ERA but both San Francisco and Pittsburgh are getting better in team ERA. To show how much our lineup has improved, what had been the weakest hitter, C Bill Freehan, is now leading the NL in BA. In the AL, Cleveland holds an 8 game lead on the Yankees. September might be an interesting month as we engage in the race for the pennant.

On September 10, we fall to 4 games back as San Francisco decides at this time to get really hot and so far this month, has a 7-game win streak. Defending NL pennant winner, Pittsburgh, falls out of the race at 9 games back. During this week, SP Monboquette won his 20th and 21st game.

On September 17, we are no closer and San Francisco’s magic number is at 9, as they have won 12 out of 13 – all on superb pitching.

September 24 shows their magic number down to 3 as we are still 4 games back.


September to end

Record: 94-68 (19-8 for month), 2nd place, 3 gb

A great month got us no closer as San Francisco had an even greater month (20-8) to capture the pennant. With such a superb hitting lineup, our downfall appears to be in pitching but even at that, our team ERA of 2.98 is quite good (#4 in the NL). It is not as good as San Francisco’s 2.58 though, with both SP LeMaster and SP Dierker doing well for them. Another telling stat is that our pythagoram record shows us at 99 wins, good enough for the pennant. Where we failed and perhaps the key difference is that we were 24-28 in one-run games. However, there is little we can do about that since we already have the best bullpen in the NL. To show how awesome our hitting lineup was, our team OPS was .728. The next best in the NL is .667!

We have done all we can do and as long as the core of the team is kept together, we will challenge for the pennant. However that might prove difficult to do. We are at the maximum payroll we can be (to ensure a healthy profit and not being the highest in the NL) but in the upcoming off-season, we are looking at $5.9m in arbitration raises and our superstar 3B Ron Santo is looking for nice raise from his current $5m contract.

Note to my readers. As you can tell, OOTP5 is very addictive and fun for me to play - too much so in fact. What drives this is the easy approach, self-paced style and the many critical decisions that are required to build and maintain a team. I am afraid that this will continue indefinitely, esp. with this exciting dynasty. I know I will want to keep up with this, esp. with the salary decisions coming up as well as the 1969 realignment, but I cannot promise anything. There are too many other games I want to continue play or to starting playing (like perhaps the new pirate game) but OOTP5 will always pull me back in. With that, I'll probably leave this dynasty (at least the write-up) for now. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate it.