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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 148-150: Another Missed Opportunity

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Jack Bauer Squared is playing one of the league’s worst teams and has a chance to do something helpful toward trying to get into the playoffs. And after going 4-2 against two division leaders, surely we could at least do the same against the league’s weakest teams.

Uh, no.

Things started out well enough. Burt Hooton carried a no-hitter and a 1-0 lead through 5 innings, but it all fell apart in the 6th. Todd Helton??? put up 4 runs and chased Hooton, and then they roughed up the bullpen to cruise to an 8-1 win.

Fortunately we stayed tied for the division lead with Steroids Make You Faster, but it was definitely a missed opportunity to move in front while they lost to the wild-card leader 24 Hours at Wrigley.

Game 148

JBS came out strong in the second game, racking up 3 in the 1st and 7 more in the 3rd to coast to a 13-5 victory. Steroids lost again, so we moved a game in front in the division race but still 3 games under .500.

The recently-maligned-in-this-space Ryne Sandberg drove in 3 runs, and Bobby Murcer’s 3 RBI pushed him to 102, the first to get to 100 on the team this season. The 102 puts him 25th in the league. We have two hitters leading the league in anything: Sandberg is tops in at-bats at 670 (also second in triples at 14), and Carlos Delgado leads in doubles at 46. Kal Daniels and Delgado are in the top six in on-base percentage.

One of my league mates corrected me on something I said about Sandberg in a previous post, too. Though I said he was putting up numbers that would be the worst in the sim history, the records I cited only applied to a particular group of leagues all played at the same salary cap. And because this league is a higher cap than that, it’s reasonable to expect better pitching and therefore lower performance.

Game 149

On to the rubber game of our series, and once again we led early. This time Teddy Higuera had a shutout going through 5 and we led 2-0. Again the 6th inning turned the tide, as Todd Helton??? smacked a pair of homers to take the lead and went on to win, 5-2.

Game 150

The two losses in the series were definitely a missed opportunity, as Steroids Make You Faster got swept. So we emerged a game ahead with 12 to go, but we could have opened up a little space that would have been nice.

And coming up next: four games head-to-head with Steroids at Dodger Stadium as we begin the final three series of the year, all in the division. With teams only 3 and 5 games out behind us, it’s still possible for any of these four teams to win it. It’s also quite likely someone will win with a sub-.500 record too, since we’d have to go 8-4 just to get to 81-81.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 145-147: A Missed Opportunity

Let’s reset the scenario here for Jack Bauer Squared entering the season’s final 18 games. We came into our third straight road series at 71-73 and tied for first place in the National League West. Coming off series with the two division leaders where we went a combined 4-2, we headed to play the league’s two worst teams next before finishing with 12 division games.

If ever there were an opportunity to take advantage of, the series at Tigers of the Ontario Peninsula qualified. Every win feels precious right now, and you have to beat the teams below you. If only I could have explained that better to my code bits.

So we opened the series in Tiger Stadium by squandering run-scoring opportunities early. We left seven runners on in the first 4 innings and led just 1-0 despite outhitting the Tigers 5-0. The Tigers put up two runs in the 4th and another in the 5th off Teddy Higuera and then it stayed 3-1 until Bobby Murcer led off the 8th inning with his team-high 25th home run.

We put runners on the corners after that but couldn’t get the tying run home. We ended up with a 3-2 loss, dropping to 16-22 in one-run games. Meanwhile Steroids Make You Fast moved a game ahead of us by winning their game.

Game 145

No time to mess around now against a team we needed to beat, and we came out stronger in the second game. Ryne Sandberg hit his 10th homer and Garry Maddox doubled in two in the 1st inning to give Mike Cuellar an early lead. 

We got another start from good Cuellar, fortunately. He gave up only 1 run and 2 hits in 8 innings, and Bob Woodward nailed down the final out for his 34th save of a 5-2 win.

Game 146

Steroids lost their game to push us back into a tie, both of us now two games under .500 again. You start to get the feeling there won’t be much separating us at the end of this season.

A bit of a brief sidebar here feels needed to discuss Sandberg’s performance for me. The 1984 Ryno was an MVP for the Cubs, hitting .314 with 200 hits, slugging over .500, stealing 32 bases, and a Gold Glove fielder. 

He was my 3rd-round pick in this draft, where great hitting second basemen weren’t that easy to come by. I’ve had him batting 2nd all season, where I still believe he belongs. It’s just … he’s been really disappointing. He’s played fine defense at least, with only 7 errors, but I needed quite a bit more offense than that out of him and there’s just no sign he’s going to provide it. 

He’s played all 147 games and has put up a meager .245/.278/.370 slash line (compared with .314/.367/.520 in real life). For what it’s worth, in 53 seasons for other owners in his performance history, Sandberg’s worst season was .255/.293/.417. So he might be on his way to surpassing that for me. Gee thanks, random luck.

Now back to the action … We again got going early in the series’ final game, with Murcer’s 26th homer capping a 2-run 1st, but the Tigers quickly pounced on Bert Blyleven and opened a 5-2 lead in the 3rd. And then crickets until the 8th inning.

We rallied nicely in the 8th, loading the bases with no outs and Maddox clearing them with a double to tie the game. We couldn’t get Maddox home from 3rd with one out, alas. Then Gorman Thomas led off the bottom of the 8th with a homer off Joe Sambito, and we went meekly in the 9th to lose 6-5, another missed opportunity.

Game 147

That made us 16-23 in one-run games and 72-75 overall. Fortunately Steroids also lost their rubber game and remained tied with us. The rest of the division, as noted previously, isn’t exactly far behind either: 3 and 5 games back. With all division teams playing each other over the final three series (each four games), anyone really could wind up winning this.

Next up we come home to Olympic Stadium to face Todd Helton???, who at 60-87 brings up the rear in the NL but yet has won 8 of its past 10. Since we just learned that beating teams below us isn’t easy at all, there’s no chance of overconfidence going into this one either. But you know it would be a darn good time for a sweep, I’m just sayin’.

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Baseball MLB Sim Baseball

One Game Short

Despite winning our final 7 games of the season, my 1997 New York Mets fell one game short of the playoffs in the Cooperstown Historical Replay season. The Marlins held us off 92-70 to 91-71 to wrap up the wild card, and now they’ll try to duplicate the magic that led to a World Series win that year.

It was a good run and I don’t feel like I could have gotten much more out of this team. I drafted 9th last season, and 7 of the 8 playoff teams were ones drafted ahead of me. The only one that wasn’t: the Marlins, of course, who went one pick after mine. 

We are waiting now for the lottery to determine our draft order for picking 1998 teams. By finishing 3 games above the Mets’ real-life win total, I’ll probably be somewhere around the 9th-10th pick again unless I’m fortunate enough to jump into the top 3. 

The 1998 season has a lot of great storyline options and teams that would be fun to manage. Start with the Cardinals and Cubs for the Mark McGwire–Sammy Sosa record home run race and the 114-win Yankees, but there are certainly a few more that would be worthy to take. I have no idea who I’d take if I got a top-three pick, but I hope to have that problem.

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Baseball MLB Sim Baseball

Another Exciting Finish

I have other Sim League Baseball teams going, of course. Thirteen active seasons going right now, in fact.

One of them is my favorite ongoing league, Cooperstown Historical Replay. This league had a couple seasons going before I joined, but it works very simply and appeals to my old board-game mentality immensely. 

The league replays major-league seasons one after another, with each owner drafting a real team and using only the players from that team. It’s as pure a replay as you can get in this sim, but it also somewhat exposes where it can be a little flawed. The hitters tend to feast on the weaker pitching, and the bad teams tend to do really poorly.

But to keep owners motivated even when stuck with a lousy real team, we have a lottery where your chances are based on how close you came to managing your team to a record as good as real life. If you outshine the team’s actual performance, you’re likely to draft in the top few teams for the following season, regardless of how good or bad you were.

We are in 1997 right now, and for the second straight season I’m managing the New York Mets. Just the way it worked out. We are one game from the end of the season, and I’ve managed the Mets to a 90-71 mark and just one game behind the wild card-leading Florida Marlins.

The actual 1997 Mets went 88-74, so I’m on the good side of the ledger. That should get me a top-10 pick for 1998, but right now I’m fighting for that final playoff spot. We’ve won 6 straight to get a chance at forcing a tiebreaker game 163. We’ll have to beat Houston while the Marlins lose to Pittsburgh in the finale for that to happen, but it’s fun to have a chance.

My history in this league is decent enough. I had a great run in somehow managing the Pirates to a World Series title in 1987 and then taking the 1988 Dodgers to the World Series the following season but losing in seven games. As a Dodgers fan, it was special to try to get that team the trophy, since it remains the last time the team won. 

I’ve gotten one team to a World Series since, but these Mets aren’t really a championship contender. We’d still have to win a one-game tiebreaker just to get to the division series, and the team is already pretty fatigued trying to get there at all. Had to go for it, though. We’ll soon find out if our season continues for one more game.

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 142-144: Every Game Counts

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

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

Game 142

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

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

Game 143

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

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

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

Game 144

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

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

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 139-141: A Wholly Unexpected Sweep

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

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

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

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

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

Game 139

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

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

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

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

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

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

Game 140

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

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

Game 141

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

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 136-138: Fighting for First

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

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

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

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

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

Game 136

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

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

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

Game 137

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

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

Game 138

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

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

A Little Foreshadowing

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

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

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 91-93: A Little Bit Better

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

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

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

Game 91

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

Game 92

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

Game 93

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

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Baseball Jack Bauer Squared Sim Baseball

Games 85-90: Interleague Struggles

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

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

Game 85

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

Game 86

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

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

Game 87

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

Game 88

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

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

Game 89

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

Game 90

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