[peterbernard209]

So Lefty O'Doul really wasn't doing badly but wasn't doing as well as Juan Gonzalez, who I was platooning him with. I was browsing through the Auction House and saw the Reggie Jackson gold Oakland peak card. I keep thinking that lefty pull hitters should thrive on this team mixed with high on-base guys to score when they hit. Johnny Frederick continues to amaze in the way I had expected O'Doul to, for example. He's got 6 triples, 18 doubles, and 8 homers.

So anyway, I illogically demoted Juan Gonzalez to give Reggie the DH spot and kept O'Doul to hit against lefties for the 14 days till Juan Gonzalez is back. It makes no sense but that's what I did. REggie came up hot and is hitting .400 in the early going, so a Gonzalez-Jackson platoon seems at this point to make more sense than keeping O'Doul up. He has ten games to change my mind. Next season, whether we're in Gold or Diamond, I want to plan on O'Doul either in left or at DH from the start to see if he catches on fire like I've seen him do for other teams.

The big star of our team is Hank Aaron right now. He has 4 WAR, 26 homers, 80 RBI, all of which lead the team. Amazingly, he's also our best base stealer-- 12 steals and caught twice. Carew stole 13 but was caught 12 times, and Royce Lewis stole twenty but was caught 17 times, which places him among the league leaders in getting caught stealing so far. I guess I have to go into game strategy and discourage those guys from trying to steal. Who expected Henry Aaron to be the best base stealer on the team? Imagine if he has a 20-20 season? That would be cool.

So having a stadium that gives pitchers room for error actually seems to be a better strategy at least for me at the higher levels. Another thing I've learned that I would pass on is that there are a lot of silver and a number of bronze cards that do better than some gold and diamond. We all know the famous ones but it's really fun and worth it to check the stats of every card you never heard of the first time you see it in the Auction House.

That's another thing-- I understand some people have good pack luck but I think Gold level and up PERSONALLY makes more sense to almost never buy packs. When you're really struggling and can't see anyone in the Auction House you can afford who would upgrade you at any position, then roll the dice with the card packs, or if you have the money to gamble. I think the first two levels of play should be used to get as many cards as you can, and to start to have too many for them all to be active. Then when a player isn't performing at gold level, you check the reserves and the auction house and player by player keep your eyes open for possible upgrades.

I guess all of that seems obvious and dumb but I had to learn it through experience.

Some people get lucky and get a perfect card they can sell to get every other great player with. If that's not you, I think you can still eventually create a great team on a very limited budget. I haven't proven it myself yet haha but I think it can happen.