30 for 30 -- 101 simulated seasons (BIG POST, with full overview of simulation results)

 It took me over FOUR years to complete this simulations. As you (hopefully) recall, it started with 30 different managers drafting 30 different teams. The results of the draft can be found HERE for an explanation of the rules and the full First Round of the draft, and you can go HERE for a breakdown of the various teams as well as some voting from the respective managers on how they felt the teams stacked up.

In brief recap, the teams were made of players from 1991 thru 2021, as the draft was held prior to the 2022 season. Teams had a 9,000 pt salary cap, had to field 13 hitters and 12 pitchers, and could draft any eligible player as long as that player was not already drafted -- for example, when the Athletics selected 1996 Mark McGwire in Round 1, it meant that the Cardinals could not take 1998 Mark McGwire for their team. 

Thanks to the simulator created by Savard, we were able to plug in every team's 25 man rosters and simulate a full 162 game season... 101 different times!!! We did a series of posts that you can find under the blog's "30 for 30" tab on "Year 0," which ended with the Red Sox defeating the Diamondbacks in the World Series. 

In the remaining 100 years of simulations, 55 did not need a "Game 163" or tiebreaker. Those 56 seasons were successfully simulated by Savard, leading to fully computerized results for 56/101 seasons. The results of the 31 playoffs from years "1 through 50" can be found HERE. Unfortunately, Savard's laptop was destroyed and the simulator was lost between the completion of the 56
seasons and when the various tie breakers could be simulated. He was unable to recreate the simulator... and thus, the greatest MLB Showdown marathon of my life began - as I played out BY HAND a total of 45 different postseasons, meaning I played out 484 different series, not counting various play-in games and tie-breakers for division titles. Overall, I expect I played nearly 2,000 games over the last 4 years to get this done... it has been a grind that I am very pleased to cap off now -- first with this post that gives a broad overview, and then subsequent posts on a team-by-team basis to properly memorialize the highs and lows, as well as team building lessons, from each of the franchises. 

2011 Set - Milwaukee Brewers

With the NL West posted, it's time to move on to the NL Central, with a very fun team to start off.

The Brewers were the second-best NL team during the regular season, winning the NL Central as well. NL MVP Ryan Braun has a monster chart to go with 9 OB and A speed. Prince Fielder is one the few 10 OB batters in the set. But perhaps what makes the Brewers so dangerous is

2011 Set - Colorado Rockies

The Rockies finished fourth in the NL West. 4 years after their World Series appearance and 2 years after an NLDS appearance, Colorado has a predictably strong lineup and a predictably weak pitching staff.

Troy Tulowitzki is the best shortstop in the set, with a powerful 8 OB chart and plus defense. Hall of Famer Todd Helton is an affordable bat that will hit for average and power. As a bonus, Helton

2011 Set - Los Angeles Dodgers

Somehow the Dodgers managed a winning record in 2011 despite having basically two good players. It doesn’t hurt that those two players were arguably the best pitcher and best position player in the NL that year – Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw and MVP runner-up Matt Kemp.

Kershaw is a tier-2 starter with no doubles who can pitch 7 innings. Kemp is the only 10 OB, A speed card in the set, and his chart

2011 Set - San Francisco Giants

The Giants are a great example of a team on the edge that went all in for the Pennant Run. They finished just two games out of the Wild Card behind the eventual World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.

The two-headed monster rotation is supported by a few more solid starters, and any leads are protected by a good bullpen headed by 330-point reliever

Introducing the 2011 MLB Showdown Set with the First Team: The Arizona Diamondbacks!

Introducing the 2011 Showdown Set in 2001 style! With both the Steroid Era (1994-2009) and the Statcast Era (2015-2022) of MLB well represented by Showdown sets, I thought it was time to give the players we remember from the in-between period (the Post-Steroid Era) some love. Many players have never had a Showdown card made as part of a sizable set, so have fun with the novelty of new options for your rosters! 

What sort of set is this compared to the ones Showdown players are familiar with? The biggest difference between this and the Showdown Era (OG) sets is

Re-Introduction: The Greatest of Cleveland Baseball

 Hello baseball, long time no see! A lot has changed in the showdown world since May 28th 2018. For one that was my first post on the blog, and as you can see in my old creations, I have since been given the tools to make the cards look a lot better. Early days shoutout to Bob and Peter for the templates to guide me into better cards, and then learning photoshop. Also since then the blog expanded, my favorite discord ever was created, and then after that Matt Gula dropped the greatest showdown creation of all time in the Showdown Bot (check it out if you haven't yet somehow). 

A few guys that aren't included due to it being prior to 1993

NBA TRADE DEADLINE - 2021-2022

 Today is one of my favorite days in sports, especially for the NBA, outside of Opening Night, the playoffs, and the NBA Finals the trade deadline is so exciting, and today lived up to the hype. New beginnings for players and teams, as well as the fans can try to imagine the way their favorite team or least favorite team, will now look after a roster shakeup. If you're a big NBA fan like me, Woj and Shams were blowing your phone up today and the few days leading up to the deadline with notifications. So what I did was take my NBA Showdown format and much like the MLB Trade Deadline set, I tried to make cards for the players that I believe were the most impactful of those moved this past week. Lets go over the trades

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- AL EAST

 It is officially here, the beginning of the release of the 2020 MLB Showdown set. Now thanks to some free time the team here has been able to hammer out much of this set faster than usual, and instead of individual team write ups and making you wait, we thought in theme with the crazy season we would do a crazy divisional card drop. So up first is the American League East, personally I wanted to get the New York Yankees done and out for our good friend Rekt after his Yankees dismantled my Indians, as like my way of losing the bet, so hopefully he gets to enjoy his Yankees as well as his divisional rivals first. Also in these write ups, you may see comments from myself (Matt), or the rest of the team that worked on the set, Peter, Jeff and Bob.  So buckle up for the crazy cards of the 2020 shortened season, because like I tried to explain in the announcement post, some of these charts we have never seen before, as player percentages were all kinds of wacky from this season.

MLB Opening Day 2020

Introducing the New NBA Showdown: Rules

Hey guys, time to throw everyone off a bit with my introductory post to my reinvention of NBA Showdown. Yes this is still the Greatest MLB Showdown Blogspot, but Peter has been pressing me for months to get this new game out there, and is kind enough to allow me to post it on the MLB page. We are all here because we love the great game of showdown, but maybe some of you enjoy basketball as well but never got into the one year game, that I believe would be way more popular today than it would have been back in the early 2000s. I wanted to make the game a little more simple to rate -- so instead of Power vs Speed, I did straight-up offense vs defense as the player's two rating.

In creating these cards, I had a lot of success with my play testing and found these cards are tons of fun to play. Now, in this post I am going to re-explain the rules of NBA Showdown, but with my twists of playing the game.  The best thing about this post is, that once it is posted, and you understand the rules, the cards will follow. You don't have to buy packs to hopefully get the guys you love to build your team. You can just print them off and build a team of your favorites, or just play with your favorite team. Much like our version of MLB Showdown, no strategy cards, so it is just straight basketball action with decisions to be made by the coach.

SHOWDOWN HALL OF FAME: Randy Johnson

THE BIG UNIT is our second pitcher inducted into the Showdown Hall of Fame. The winner of four consecutive Cy Youngs during Showdown's hey day made him the most logical choice; his amazingly cool looking, original MLB Showdown 2000 card made him a lock! Randy pitched for 22 seasons and accumulated over 4,000 K: good for second all-time! As his high IP totals suggest, Johnson was known for pitching late into games and finished his career with a remarkable 100 CGs. Enjoy this run through the Randy Johnson era, especially his dominant late 90s to early 00s run that earned him several Cy Youngs!