[BirdWatcher]

It has now been nearly exactly a year that I have been playing OOTP (I purchased OOTP18 during the World Series sale last year.)
And this is really just my second save that I have played very extensively. The first was an historical save where I took over the 1993 expansion Colorado Rockies ("my" team).

So I definitely feel like I'm learning all the time with this game (and hopefully will be for many years to come) and especially given the different challenges with fictional play as opposed to historic play.
My goal with my Rockies save was to challenge myself and turn the Rockies into a dynasty. Thirteen seasons in- with two championships and winning records in all but the first two seasons, including a three-year stretch with 116, 125, and 116 wins- mission accomplished.

My goal in this save is a bit different. Or perhaps I should say that I approached it hoping that dynasty building would not be so easy in fictional play. And so far it certainly hasn't been.

And I'm loving every minute of it.

So, what's my point today? Well, just to stop a moment and reflect upon what I've been learning through this save and what I am still trying to figure out.
For instance, my newly acquired (in the off-season) starting pitcher, who is in many ways our most talented starting pitcher, has just come off the disabled list and is now officially categorized as a fragile player. What I feel like I am learning, the hard way, is to even more prioritize durability in pitchers. Up to now I have mostly been trying to avoid fragile pitchers but I haven't made a huge distinction between those with normal injury proneness and those who are durable or better. Sure, all other things being equal, I will choose the durable (or Iron Man) guy over the normal. But all other things are rarely completely equal. And perhaps especially when there isn't a body of evidence built up yet (or not much of one anyway), all the more reason to err on the side of caution. This aforementioned starting pitcher, for instance, was a FA out of Cuba. His injury proneness was listed as normal but there wasn't a lot to go on beyond that. (I will not let myself peek behind the curtains at the editor in this save.) Similarly, one of our best young starting pitcher prospects in the minors (Rob Ibarra, if you are following along at home), while still listed as normal in terms of injury proneness, has been racking up a lot of DL time in the past season or so. And with our most recent first round draft pick, starting pitcher Steve Green, also considered normal in this area I have to hold my breath that he doesn't turn out to be vulnerable to arm injuries as well. Miguel Campos, one of our most talented young starters taken during the inaugural draft, has also gone from originally being normal to now being fragile and while he still has some talent it appears he is destined for bullpen action primarily and that the career-ending injury may always be just around the corner.

Another lesson I am learning the hard way is the importance of power hitting. With my Rockies save it was a given that I would focus on power hitters, along with getting good infield defense, pitchers who induced ground balls, outfielders with good to great range, and a deep and talented bullpen. Those things didn't always work out the way I planned every year, but overall this approach yielded great results.
With this team I have focused more on team speed and defense and even traded away some of my best power hitters in the first season or two largely due to them aging and starting to see defensive skills erode. (It turned out I jumped too soon in trading OF/1B Mark Compton, who remains a solid defender in rightfield and has been one of the league's finest power hitters thus far.) And the team does have great defenders and top of the line speed. And can't seem to score runs. Even in seasons where we have a team batting average and OBP in the top half of the league, we are invariably near the bottom of the league in runs scored. And this season, with our one consistent power source (Antonio Puente) having only 4 HR's at the half-way point, this is a major problem. Our leading HR hitters this season are sitting at only 5 HR's (Tanner Yurek, Ruben Souffront). Granted, this years offensive numbers are down across the board in the league, but even by league standards for this season this is ridiculous.
Our starting pitching has been pretty good in spite of injury issues, our bullpen has been mostly tremendous, our team defense remains a real strength, and while our stolen bases are down a bit the team has even more speed spread out through the lineup than in the past. But with so little power, we just can't score enough runs to contend.
And I haven't been able to figure out what to do about this either. I don't have any bonafide sluggers coming up through the ranks. We do need to upgrade at thirdbase in a serious way and if somehow we could find and be able to afford a free agent thirdbaseman with good power in the off-season that would be fantastic. Probably isn't going to happen. The guy who best fits this description is Detroit's slugger, Jamison Bash. But he is locked up for at least a few more seasons.

So the learning curve continues and sometimes it seems steep. I'm loving it, and I'm very fond of my team and this league, but sometimes it can be pretty frustrating too.

Currently the team is playing better, largely on the strength of great pitching and some timely hitting. (Or, in the case of the game featured above where we won in spite of being no-hit, a timely error by the opponent, a timely stolen base, a timely productive out, etc.)
It is possible that our recent complete shake-up in the catcher position is paying off. Not sure yet how much to read into it, but the pitching staff does appear to be faring better with the Brett Wood/Joey Townsend catching duo rather than the Sam Rogers/Tony Silmon combo. And, in spite of Townsend not appearing to have that much potential and having the rep of being unmotivated, he's provided us with some big hits including a few HR's already in his very limited time. So there's that.

Still, if we hope to continue this winning trend and finish at least over .500 (2 games over at the moment), we will need Puente to get hot at the plate and at least get to 20 HR's for the season, we will need Yurek to approach that, we will need Souffront to keep developing a bit more power and Erbakan to keep showing that he has power potential (3 HR's thus far), and we will need a few others who have some raw HR-hitting ability to at least get a handful more along the way (Willie Chavez, Townsend, Arturo Baca.)

Either way, I'm going to have fun with it.
And thank goodness I discovered OOTP a year ago. I'm loving it!