[mikev]

Goodbye Luis, Thanks For The (Teenage) Memories

Sweet! The Crusaders had fantastic 8-1 sim with a win over Vegas, a sweep of Green Bay (suck it, JQ!), a sweep of Buffalo, and then 1-1 with a 10 inning loss to Long Beach (I hate you, Hsin-ta Jin)

Unfortunately, Vegas went 7-2 and LA went 6-2, so I hardly gained any ground. WTF yo. That means we're still 7 games back of the Wild Card, and it pretty much looks like it's not gonna happen.

As far as specific performances, Edwards is really making a push for a starting corner spot next year in the outfield, and with Gonzalez asking for more money that we're willing to give him for his age 37 and 38 seasons, it's probably Edwards time come 2014 anyway. On the season (155 AB), Edwards is hitting .284/.325/.471 with 6 homers and 26 RBI, but he's absolutely mashing righties with a .289/.341/.518 line. We'll take it.

Luis Vargas is dead. The TWENTY ONE YEAR OLD closer, already in his fifth big league season(!), suffered his second talent hit of the year, and third since last October. It started with a slight drop in stuff, bringing him down from 4/5/3 to 3/5/3. It didn't have much of an effect on his on-field performance, and he started the season as the closer. He started the season on fire, allowing no runs in the entire month of April, and overall being very, very good through May and June. He had totaled 41.2 innings, allowed only 6 earned runs, 29 hits, walked 11, and struck out 35. He had 15 saves, 4 wins, and 3 losses. So, what do we see on July 1? This:

Luis Vargas: Stuff Talent Decreases from 3 to 2
Luis Vargas: Overall Stuff Decreases from 7 to 6
Luis Vargas: Stuff versus Lefties Decreases from 7 to 6
Luis Vargas: Control Talent Decreases from 3 to 2
Luis Vargas: Control versus Lefties Decreases from 6 to 5
Luis Vargas: Stuff versus Righties Decreases from 7 to 6
Luis Vargas: Movement Talent Decreases from 5 to 4
Luis Vargas: Velocity Decreases from 93-95 to 91-93 Mph

No injuries. No drop in performance. Nothing to suggest that he should become "okay" instead of "very good" as far as relivers go. Just boom, all of a sudden you can't pitch well anymore. A pitcher with 2/4/2 talents is not likely to be in the big leagues for very long. Well, that was cemented last sim, as we were greeted with this:

Luis Vargas: Control versus Righties Decreases from 6 to 5
Luis Vargas: Overall Control Decreases from 6 to 5
Luis Vargas: Control Talent Decreases from 2 to 1
Luis Vargas: Movement Talent Decreases from 4 to 3
Luis Vargas: Velocity Decreases from 92-94 to 91-93 Mph

Heh. Now it's just comical. Luis Vargas, the 17 year old wunderkind who stepped directly into the big leagues before he was even allowed to vote, had plummeted from a 4/5/4 monster to a 1/3/2 irrevalent player.

So, just for fun, I poked around on the big boards. I recalled a certain post by Markus saying that stats were the catalyst for talent changes. I found a reply to another post by RonCo, who has done a metric ****ton of research on player development for OOTP. Check this out:

Originally Posted by RonCo

This is fun to watch.

BTW .. using stats to trigger talent changes has a certain sense of logic, but is, in the end, backwards and a flawed approach.

Carry on ...

aaaaannnnndddd tthhhhheeennnnn

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I respectfully disagree

Uh... so stats trigger talent changes, huh? Mr. Vargas, your sub-.200 ERA, 0.39 WHIP, and 4:1 K:BB ratio are just not good enough for the big leagues. Sorry, kid. Thems the breaks. Maybe you and Fortescue can get together and start a bowling league.