Based on what I wrote about California's first matchup, you might be able to guess what happened in this one. First of all, I changed the lineup back to how it probably should have been before the computer players' attributes prompted me to do some tinkering that went against the real-life statistics. I put Coco Crisp in CF batting leadoff, which pushed Chase Utley back to 2B (he responded by hitting two home runs in the contest) and Ryan Braun to DH. I also brought in John Jaso instead of Jason Castro, who actually also airmailed a throw to second on a stolen base attempt, but the results weren't as catastrophic as the last game. The catastrophe was Stephen Strasburg's pitching, as he gave up the go-ahead run to Florida on a bases loaded walk, and the boys from the Sunshine State never looked back. In retrospect, I probably should have respected the 2014 stats and given Garrett Richards a chance to pitch, but it's hard to ignore the super high overall ratings of the starters who screwed things up for my home state. Either way, it's goodbye to my beloved Californians until the next tournament.
In the first matchup so far where a favored team actually won the game, the Central US eliminated Scott Kazmir's Texas club behind Corey Kluber's complete game masterpiece and an offensive charge led by Alex Gordon. Interestingly enough, the game suggested starting Mark Buehrle over Kluber, but I went with the stats and it proved beneficial to the team, which only leads me to further believe that the CA games might have gone differently if I chose Richards and Kyle Lohse over the higher profile star starters. Either way, in matchup 9, Florida continued its winning ways against the Southeast US by beating a pitcher who unquestionably SHOULD have been pitching for their opposition: David Price. But FL's starter Gio Gonzalez was just effective enough and Andrew McCutchen out-powered Mark Teixeira, and just like that the #4 ranked team was out of the running. A similar fate followed for the #3 ranked Central US when they faced the Dominican Republic behind breakout All-Star Alfredo Simon. I gave Mark Buehrle his shot here, but the veteran left hander couldn't keep up with an offense led by Carlos Gomez (who had a HR), Carlos Santana (bases-clearing 2B) and Robinson Cano (2-run 1B).
Back to the winner's bracket for matchups 11 and 12, the International team had a clear advantage against Venezuela in the pitching matchup, since it was only INT's second game, whereas VEN had to play two by virtue of being ranked in the bottom four. But honestly, any of Team World's top four starters could be a number 1 or 2 on a major league club, and Braves ace Julio Teheran proved just that by pitching a complete game to beat Henderson Alvarez of the NL East rival Marlins. He got plenty of support from the Cubans on offense, enjoying home runs by Yasiel Puig (giving him three in the two games so far) and Jose Abreu, with two more RBI's from Alexei Ramirez. In a matchup that heavily favored the Northeast US (breakout star Rick Porcello) over the West US (journeyman innings eater Scott Feldman), you can guess who ended up winning. Chase Headley provided a home run to keep the West in it, but it was Kole Calhoun's 9th inning grand slam off Jason Grilli (brought in after closer Joe Smith imploded) that sealed the deal and kept the lowest ranked team undefeated through this juncture. Let's take another look at the updated bracket, with eliminated teams crossed off:
Jumping right back to the loser's bracket, the Northeast US had a chance to redeem themselves as they trotted out Cardinals playoff mainstay Lance Lynn against Mets rookie Jacob deGrom. But since MLB 14: The Show apparently LOVES the underdog, deGrom ended up pitching the full 9 and Florida enjoyed home runs from some typically power-light hitters (Dee Gordon and Denard Span), plus one from an expected source (C Jonathan Lucroy). That's three significantly higher-ranked teams eliminated by Florida, for those of you keeping track at home. Meanwhile, in a shocking turn of events, the Dominican Republic actually won a game against an inferior team! Granted, Venezuela's pitching depth just about ran out, as they were forced to basically split the game's innings between long relievers (or at least they were at the time) Carlos Carrasco and Yusmeiro Petit, while the D.R. was able to trot out prized last minute free agent acquisition Ervin Santana. It also helped that Carlos Gomez (the player of the game) and Jose Bautista both went deep and that Santiago Casilla was able to pitch two innings for the save.
Back to the winner's bracket, if there's a game featuring the Western US, you can basically already deduce who's going to win. Baltimore rookie Kevin Gausman (from Colorado) out dueled Hyun-Jin Ryu (from Korea) as the top of the order (Kinsler, Brantley [who later added a HR], and Calhoun) chained together a couple of good rallies, pushing Team World into the loser's bracket to face whoever won the Flordia/Dominican Republic matchup... which we will move onto right now! It helped that FL had made it all the way around to the top of their (four-man) rotation, so Chris Sale went against Bartolo Colon of the D.R. Josh Donaldson and Anthony Rizzo proved the offensive heroes with a HR and a HR shy of the cycle, respectively, as the West US and Florida continued the set-em-up, knock-em-down pattern.
The previous victory set up Florida's #2 (Zack Greinke) against the International's #4 (Hisashi Iwakuma) in the semi-final round. The whole favoring the underdog thing is honestly getting kind of old for me, so I'll just tell you that Florida ended up winning, eliminating their fifth team in the process, behind home runs from Denard Span and Daniel Murphy. So what we're now looking forward to in the finals is a rematch of what happened in our very first matchup of the tournament (although it's listed as #2 on the bracket). Even though the West had ace Jon Lester on the hill and an undefeated record, Gio Gonzalez ended up the winner behind a 3-run HR from Ian Desmond (although Michael Brantley tried his best to answer with a 2-run 2B). Also of note is that I saw the first injury substitution of the tournament, as Chase Headley had to exit the game with a bout of forearm tightness.
So that should be it, right? WRONG! This is double elimination, so if the team that had previously ran the table to make it to the finals takes their first loss IN the finals, there's an automatic rematch to get every eliminated team to two losses. I made an executive decision to pitch FL ace Chris Sale on "three days rest" - or whatever the equivalent would be, cuz I can't for the life of me figure out how long a tournament like this would take - against the West's SP2 Tim Lincecum, but as you can guess, it didn't matter. Jed Lowrie didn't do much subbing in for the injured Headley at 3B, but Brantley and Kinsler combined for home runs and that was enough to give the VERY LOWEST RANKED TEAM the victory in this whole competition. Here's how the final round shaped up:
So there you have it, a completed tournament style lineup creation project using MLB 14: The Show (for the PS3, mind you) as a simulation engine. I'm somewhat of a rankings nerd, so I was mortified when all the best teams consistently got eliminated, but I guess that's the nature of one game coin flip style of play. Either that or The Show's AI gives an unfair advantage to the underdogs, which I'm not ruling out at all. But even funnier than that particular programming quirk was the crowd animation at Tropicana Field, home of the Rays, who I used to portray the Florida team. Despite all the exciting final round baseball going on, the only thing I noticed was the people walking in an endless loop down and up the stairs in the background. I hope they made some improvements for the PS4 version...
Thanks for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment