I received a message from a long time blog follower Gregory, anyone that was in my league for the 2018 set know him better as the General manager of the Bay Bridge Blasters. He wanted to reach out and see if I would share his Holiday Showdown experiences so from here on out, will be in his words.
"In an effort to recreate some of the old magic, I was able to find and stumble across some unopened booster packs, draft packs, and starter decks over the last couple of months. My brother and I were avid fans of the game back in the heyday of 2000 and 2001. With some crafty online searching and bidding I was able to secure a ton of unopened cads, Talk about Christmas!
Long story short, over the last two visits my brother and I have had (we live about 1000 mile apart) we were able to open some packs and play old school style. I wanted to share with you all some of our excitement, so here was the recap of our two leagues:
Thanksgiving League 1
We opened up a 2000 starter deck, 2 2000 draft packs, 6 2000 booster packs and 4 2000 pennant run booster packs.
No salary cap, straight draft with the 4 teams (each of us captained two apiece)
Round robin, home and away series, 3 games per series - each team plays 18 games.
Top 2 teams in the regular season play in a best of 7 series to determine the winner.
At the half way point. there is an expansion draft with an additional 6 2000 booster packs to be opened- lowest seeded team gets first pick- our rounds of the drat total.
No bench, all positions must be filled, AL rules with DH, 4 starters and 4 relievers required.
House rules - relievers can pitch back to back games, but any more than that they get tired and start -1 control- this continues to build as the games continue and resets after they rest a day or a day off.
We can't remember the rosters, but it was a blast and had a ton of fun with it.
Christmas League 1
More information to share for this one as it has actually been documented. Would love to hear what you guys have to think about our rosters. Again, put in some interesting rules and twists for this time around. We opened 8 2000 booster packs, and 2 2000 Pennant Run Booster Packs. Taking just those cards, along with any foil that we opened at Thanksgiving, we had to form our best two teams a piece.
General Rules we followed:
5000 point salary cap with house rules for the DH salary, which is 1/5th of their total points. This was something that we adopted and played with as our store.league played by this rule. The other two rules we put into place were: benches were locked in at 20 points total(1/5 total points for bench players and let anyone get selected for their teams benches, and every foil had to be in a rotation, bullpen, or starting lineup (tough when you have Greg Vaughn!) Same house rules as above for special situations and relievers pitching. If a starter is called upon to pitch (which just happened in a 19-inning game that took place last night), they start their next game minus however many innings they throw in relief.
As of right now, we are 6 games into the round robin, home and away series, 3 games per series schedule. It's a tight race, with the teams listed below( and in their batting orders in the pictures):
Team 1 currently 2-4
C- Brett Mayne
1B - Chuck Koblauch
2B - Vina
3B- Cirillo
SS - Lewis
LF - Curtis
CF - Grissom
RF - Gwynn
DH - Everett
Rotation: Maddux, Colon, Hentgen, Oliver
Bullpen: Karsay, Graves, Christiansen, Johnstone, Morgan(Long Relief)
This is probably the most stacked batting order of the four teams, featuring the most 10's and 9's. There is a good mix of speed and decent power. Knoblauch plays first to add an extra 9 OB instead of an 8. I allowed him to use Morgan as a long reliever even though we didn't agree at the time (it's Christmas and we're playing with unopened packs,can't complain too much). Also, this has been the biggest disappointment team, sitting in last place. Some bad rolls have cost them, as they have put up the least amount of total runs offensively thus far.
Team 2 Currently 3-3
C- Lampkin
1B - Casey
2B - Velarde
3b - Fernandez
SS - Bordick
LF - Henderson
CF - Bragg
RF - Womack
DH - Guerrero
Rotation: Hudson, Elarton, Baldwin, Mlicki
Bullpen: Cormier, White, Alfonseca, Wagner
Solid team with the best reliever in the elague. Wagner is a beast and the backbone of any bullpen he is featured in. My brother would have preferred to use Gilkey in the DH position over Guerrero but had to due to requiring the foils to be in the starting lineup. While during the Tahanksgiving draws, I had good foils opened, the Christmas batch favored his hand, as he got Henderson, Fernandez, Velarde and Wagner all in this batch. So far most runs scored have com from the 8.9 and 1 combination.
Team 3 Currently 3-3
C- Castillo
1B- Hansen
2B - Alfonzo
3B - Beltre
SS Jeter
LF - Vaughn
CF - Singleton
RF - Grudzielanek
DH - Abreu
Rotation: Wood, Ritchie, Mendoza, Trachsel
Bullpen: Lloyd, Sullivan, Powell, Trombley
Toughest decision here was to add Grudzielanek as an OF for the bat. Point totak wise, it was the best option and with a +3 CF, I made the call. I do like this team, with power spread out and a high controlled bullpen. the starters are solid, and I love the Mendoza and Woods cards, two of my favorite cards in the Pennant Run deck. While a Red Sox fan through and through , I can't count the number of games I have played with Jeter manning short back in the day. Alfonzo is another card I enjoy playing with, cheap 9 OB with great defense.
Team 4 - Currently 4-2
C- Melusky
1B - Sweeney
2B - Offerman
3B - Evans
SS - Bogar
LF - Guerrero
CF - Jones
RF - Buhner
DH - Walker
Rotation: Halama, Cone, Neagle, Nomo
Bullpen: Wetteland, Veres, Plesac, Foulke
The surprise team in our opinion (maybe not yours though). Neagle got bumped to the three man in the rotation due to game two of the season lasting 19 innings. He threw the third game and went the distance, going 8 2/3 before giving up an own chart walk off home run. The rest of the teams fielding is slim pickings, as I got a tough draw on cards this time around. In order to keep some bats in the lineup, I went low fielding but flooded the bench with good options to increase it. If they can get a lead, they are typically in decent shape with their bullpen, anchored by one of the second tier 2000 golden boy relievers (Zimmerman, Hoffman, and Rivera included) Foulke. Evans has been a fun card to play with, having come up with a couple of home runs and clutch hits late in games.
It's been a ton of fun to create lineups again and have to figure out the best strategies to formulate a winning team with short resources. Always good to play against someone else rather than having your wife look at you like your crazy rolling dice by yourself at the table. And opening packs trying not to rip/tear them to shreds was fun again. Fortunately, we have alot of pakcs still in reserve for future get togethers and years to come, somethign we both plan on sharing with our kids later down the road.
What do you guys think of our team? How about house rules variances and such? Overall comments are more than welcome!"
Matt back here, just wanted to say thank you to Gregory for reaching out and sharing his showdown fun over the Holidays, family time and Showdown I can't think of a better mix.
First of all why are there two Greg vaugn's on team three? I always loved that foulke card and it might be the favorite card that I have since I don't have any of the eleven ob. guys. I have to say I don't think I could put Everett at DH no matter what the salary cap is. I'm very interested to see how the season plays out so keep me posted!
ReplyDeleteGotta say, team 1 reminds me of your blasters team, a lot of high on base but no power to drive them around, and that’s why they struggled to score runs in my league
ReplyDeleteLove the idea of opening new packs and drafting from there, been so so long since I've done that and definitely brings back memories of being a kid when the game first came out!
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DeleteVina, Cirillo, Gywnn, Curtis, Mayne... Team #1 is full of 2-hole hitters! Good ones, but it doesn't surprise me that they have trouble scoring. On the plus side, you put Knoblauch at 1st so you don't have to worry as much about his wild arm...
ReplyDeleteTeam #4 does strike me as the "best" because of the power in the lineup, higher-control rotation, and deeper bullpen.
I like the #2 team the most, mostly because I find Rickey entertaining IRL and Wagner is lights-out. I think it could benefit by moving Velarde and Bragg down in the lineup, though, and Vlad and Lampkin to the middle to drive in the OB10s. At least give them a chance for the big blast. Keep the top 3 hitters as they are, Vlad/Lamp 4/5. Then play small ball through the bottom of the lineup... Velarde, then Bordick to bunt him over. Bragg/Womack to do the same. I dunno, might give them some extra runs.
Still, I think Team #4 would have the edge in a long season.
Thank you to all who have posted so far. Through 12 games of the season, here are the standings:
ReplyDelete1 - 6-6
2 - 6-6
3 - 7-5
4 - 5-7
Now to address some of the comments:
Greg Vaughn is on there twice because it was a complete oversight. Since we did house rules on bench players, we did not take a ton of time to look over specifics of who were there, just looked at fielding and speed. Good catch, dumb mistake on my part.
In reference to the OB, I agree it does look a lot like it. I can say that in my opinion two things dictate the result on this: not playing your own games and strategy cards. Most of my teams back in the day (crazy to think it was 20 years ago!) were built with high OB and I won the league back to back years in 00 and 01 where we played at. Those teams included Cirillo, Olerud, Vina, Redmond, and Ichiro (how good was that card?). I do think when you play games without them, it drastically changes how to approach the game. It also impacts your team based on who is managing. I'm a small ball guy so I steal, sac bunt, and advance on fly balls all of the time to make up for not having a ton of bats, which in turn puts runners into scoring position. That was the long response to, yes I agree it looks similar, but in this case it was my brother who built out that team!
As for opening the packs, I found a great deal for over 200 packs at under $3 per pack so I had to jump on it. We have looked at different ways to "ration" the cards out so that is the overall plan over the next 20+ years and to enjoy them with our kids.
Where did you find those packs? Also how many games are you playing?
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