Bob,

Thanks for pointing that out....totally forgot about that in my original post.

I also do extensive scouting of each opponent, every week, even if they a division rival that I've played numberous times. I will check their hitting and pitching splits, check their ballpark effects if I'm on the road that week, check out any platoon killing hitters or pitchers that they may have activated for me, and I also try to predict their starting rotation for the week. That last one is a big one, especially when you have RHP with a wide variety of splits vs LH/RH hitters. I'll tailor my lineups based on the predicted rotation and I'm sure that has bought me more than a few games throughout the season. What I do at the start of each season is get a small yellow pad for each of my teams and write out my schedule, 4 weeks per page, and plan out my rotation about 4-5 weeks in advance. This lets me see if I have a team coming up that might, for instance, have a really low team LOPS and I'll adjust the rotation so that I'll have my best LHP start in games 1/5 and have other LHP available to start games 2/3/4 if possible. Or, maybe on an away series coming up I'll see that the park effects really favor RH batters, so I'll try and adjust my rotation week's in advance so that I won't have a LHP starting games 1/5.

In the 4+ years I've been playing perpetual PB leagues (more than that as a LL manager), I can't EVER remember a time where I let the robot play a home game. I even played a series in Jamaica this summer on the resort's computer. I put the game install file on a CDR and installed it during the one time it rained for a couple of hours. My wife, needless to say, couldn't believe it. :-) The fact is, the robot just sucks and to allow it to play your home games is management suicide.

As Patrick mentioned in a response below, "No one deserves to win, it is NOT guaranteed." I completely agree here. However, I would hope that those managers that do put in alot of time with their teams do reap the benefits from that and what we do isn't in vain. If it were, and the successful results we've gained from our hard work were actually due to luck, then I'd be a disappointed. I don't feel this way though, as you can tell. I think a ton of effort can help put your team into a position where they can win. Then, if you can manage to get them into the postseason and find some luck...then the championships will come.

Jon, St. Louis Trash
Champ, 99T2, 99T3, 00T2