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This season in BB, I put on my best Billy Beane impression and tried to do the best I could with a very cheap team relative to the competition. For the entire season I was below the salary floor, and was 12th in squad salaries as of the playoffs, with only 4 abandoned newbie teams below me. 6 of the teams above me had squad salaries more than double mine. As a side note, why does this game have such poor retention, there were several new users coming into my league this season but none of them stayed... but I digress.

Despite having such low salaries, I was actually doing really well in the regular season. A combination of managing my own team well, salary efficient players, and other managers in the league managing their teams poorly, allowed me to surge to a 16-6 record and finish as the #2 seed in the Great 8. Both myself and another manager in the league considered it a fine achievement to have won so many games with a team that seemingly had no star players at all.

Unfortunately, much like the real life Oakland A's, things didn't go so well in the playoffs. You see, with HCA, and playing against a team with no depth whatsoever, I thought I could get away with a Playoff Normal, which would give me an outside shot of beating Moosa in the conference final. How wrong I was.

(58835384)

1-23 three point shooting when my outside scoring was equal to his outside defence. 31-16 final quarter when his team had 4 players that played 48 minutes or close to it. BB logic never seems to make sense... but his team's weekly wages were triple that of mine so I can't exactly say I was robbed.

Here's what my squad looks like. $72,568 weekly salary, though it'll certainly be at least a bit higher next season because I was training Bradbury, Cicvaric and Yray:

http://www.dowce.com/~Jhh

Your thoughts?

Last edited by Jay (OTT) at 5/29/2013 7:12:56 AM

It's not so much the fact that I lost, it's the way I lost that really peeves me here. 1-23 three point shooting when my outside scoring was equal to his outside defence? 31-16 final quarter when his team had 4 players that played 48 minutes or close to it? BB logic never seems to make sense... but his team's weekly wages were triple that of mine so I can't exactly say I was robbed.

I bolded the point where you hit the nail on its' head.

Your ratings were higher because you were playing at home, had better game shape, played a PG on SF spot and probably higher enthusiasm. Effort does not show itself in team ratings. But talent trumps moneyball every time. Don't you remember what happened with that Brad Pitt-leaden team in the playoffs?

Anyway, your shooting skills (JS/JR)from PG to SF was:

PG: 9-6
SG: 10-9
SF: 10-6

His outside players's OD is probably in 12-14 area, so you really couldn't have hoped to beat that. Yes they played 48 minutes, but they were so much better defensively than your players that it didn't show.

A combination of managing my own team well, salary efficient players, and other managers in the league managing their teams poorly

I bolded the parts that were the reasons for your good league record. D.III in decent to bigger countries (400 users and more) are filled with managers that don't know how to manage game shape and enthusiasm. So by the definition of Moneyball, your team wasn't that. Moneyball takes "bad" players with specific skills and utilizes them to full potential in combination with other bad players with different specific skills. This is an example of BB Moneyball player:

JS 9, JR 5
OD 5, HA 16
DR 17, PA 17
IS 7, ID 17
RB 16, SB 12

A 60k player that plays like a 90k PG in offense and 200k C in defense and is very competitive in any D.I. His only weakness shows when facing a 2-3 defense, but who is playing that anyway, right?

Why did you move this GM-Perpete? I wasn't asking for help, I was trying to spark a discussion!

I guess half of your first message was about moneyball and second half about "Why did I lose this game", so that's probably why he moved it.

I understood fully why I lost the game: I got in over my head and tried to Playoff Normal a team with triple my salaries. That's not why I made the thread...

So how can we help you then?!

You got lucky to be in this position considering your poor roster, so stop whining and turn your swag on.

I'd rather be like the New England Patriots. Have a valuable team/arena while having to pay its players average league salaries while contending for a title every year.

To me its much better to concentrate on income than being cheap.

Looks like your opponent loaded up his roster in April so I'm pretty sure he had a better team despite the difference in records, so playoff normal was a suicide mission.

You would have been better off being realistic that you weren't going any further than the conference finals and just played for the win yesterday because you wouldn't have come within 25 points playing the first place team. You did notice that he beat you by 20 in your building recently?

Successful season/experiment overall, shows the importance of gameshape, enthusiasm and having players that produce well for their salaries. I hope you banked a lot of $$$.