Perfect Drafts are so random ... I don't get it at all.
 

Is there something about perfect drafts I am missing? You only get so many cards from each level, it hardly seems like there's a way to gain an edge, but I keep getting destroyed in the first round. Or I'll build a 2 game lead on the road and then lose three in a row ... it's frustrating, because unless I want to spend real money, there's little way to improve my team in the game ... and the card draws this year have been incredibly weak, loads of packs with nothing but cards valued at 6 coins.

Any advice would be appreciated, because I'm close to giving up on PT and it's not even mid-April. I'd like to enjoy this aspect of the game ...

Pt26
 

There are multiple ways to get extra packs or points without spending money.

1. PT Live is basically daily fantasy baseball, and you get the points added to your team the next day, plus bonus points for making the daily and weekly leaderboards.

2. Twitch drops. You can watch affiliates as well as the main OOTP account on twitch and you get a regular pack at 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes of viewing and a silver pack at an hour and a half. You can watch multiple streamers on most days.

3. Tournaments - you can enter the live iron tournaments with the live cards you have now, most likely. The quick tournaments are 16 players and reward you with packs depending on how far you advance. If you keep getting knocked out in the 1st round, copy the teams that have won in the past. You can see your past tournament under the "Your Tournaments" tab on the tournament entry screen.

4. Complete missions to get better cards.

5. Accumulate CS from daily and weekly tournaments or from good performances from your team.

6. You get first time promotion bonuses for each level beginning at promotion to the low gold level.

7. Play the live card revaluation game. On the first Monday of each month (sometimes a Tuesday when the first Monday is a holiday) all of the live cards are recalculated. You want to have cards that have had good months. There are streams that help you with this.

Getting to the top levels is possible with either time or money. If you can watch 6-8 streams a week you can progress to a pretty high level by devoting 9-12 hours a week to "watching" streams. You can find lists of streamers in one of the Sticky posts.

As far as perfect drafts go, you need to have a pretty good knowledge of the card set. I recommend doing the daily Bronze drafts for a while so you can see what works. It's essential to set your team up properly with both team and player strategies using the sliders.

dont forget challenge league packs. got a 100 Dickey on day 5.

Challenge league? I'm not familiar with that ...

The Perfect Drafts ARE random (so to speak). The folks that consistently do well are those that have an understanding of the card ratings that border on a college class (LOL). Even so, however, the variables of a single game play a HUGE role in a short series. One game, one hit, (in real baseball one pitch) can change the projection of a game in an instant.

That's why a season is so damn long !!

Challenge mode. You start a new save in regular OOTP (not PT) and you play it while you're logged in. You can earn a pack every 72 hours from any random achievement in that save.