To start this off I should say that I'm not elite at this game but I'm usually good for a few BR 12-0 runs per year and I got one the other day so I thought I would write a guide on how I draft and people can share strategies. This year is very different from other years with no inside edge boosts so far, 3 batter minimums for pitchers, and stamina that carries over between games so I'll discuss this year in particular and some of the guys that I look for in drafts.

To start, I think that your bronze cards are what makes or breaks a team, especially the 70-74s. The hitters I really like to grab as starters are 2B Keston Hiura, LF Khris Davis, RF Franmil Reyes. As for pitchers, I wouldn't mind grabbing a decent 70-74 lefty starter just so I can use him as a RP when needed. For lefty RPs I like Zach Britton, Jose Alvorado, AJ Minter, Tony Watson, Amir Garret, Jake Diekman, Aaron Bummer, and Tanner Scott. There are fewer bronze rightly RPs I really like to hit but Pat Neshek, Emmanuel Clase. Jordan Hicks, and a few other hard throwers I like.

Now for hitter drafting strategies. I prefer to draft for power over other attributes and 1B, LF and RF are positions you can reliably get a good silver at so I prefer not to draft these positions until a good silver shows up. 2B is by far the hardest to find in my estimation so if I can find a guy like gleyber torres, Howie Kendrick, a good 85-94 diamond, or an infielder with 2B as a secondary I make it a priority to get those guys.

To reduce the risk of missing out on a position of need, I try to make sure I grab at least 6 or 7 guys I want to start before I draft my full lineup so im not relying on luck to get a position of need in the bench spots.

For my rotation, I rarely draft a good or better SP and prefer to only draft 1 or maybe 2 silver SPs so I can save the silvers for the lineup and bullpen. I try to fill my bullpen as much as i can with good bronzes since there are quite a few of them compared to at other positions, and fill the rest of my pen with mostly good silvers. Generally I like to have 2 or 3 LHPs in the bullpen but I could go with 4 if I get some good bronzes or 1 if I have at least 1 LHP starter I can use out of the bullpen. While I try to avoid commons or bad bronzes in the bullpen (since you'll probably need all 7 RPs to make a run at 12-0), all pitchers will struggle so I never take diamonds and only occasionally take golds.

Now to talk about specific rarities. For the diamonds, I'm looking for some big hitters to carry my lineup, preferably at positions other than LF, RF and 1B when possible but if I have to take someone like Thames, Sheffield, Gallo, or Taylor Trammel to name a few I will go there. Gold hitters are more of a crapshoot, but if I can find a good 2B/ C, that would be ideal.

Silvers have really nice hitters at most positions so I'll go and list some of my favorites. I'll update this if I remember more.
C- none, try to get schwarber or a gold/diamond if possible
1B- Encarnacion, Eddie Murray
2B- Howie Kendrick
SS- Tim Anderson, Mondesi
3B- Sano, Moncada
LF- Schwarber(can play C too), Joc, Eloy, Kingman
CF- Hicks
RF- Soler, Conforto

Sorry for the long post and I hope it was helpful. I'll update this as I remember more things

Mantle is probably the best player in the game and getting him also gets you trout, Sheffield, biggio, Wagner, etc to use so if you have the stubs go for him.

On the other hand, the gap between mantle and the other top CFs is pretty small at this point so if stubs are an issue you might be better off with bellinger, Dawson, or Eric Davis in center

Good work on this. If a big collection like that comes im sure we will see cards spike when it becomes confirmed and some cheaper or rarer cards may rise a bit in the long run, but since it happened last year a d people expect it again I don't think things will permanently spike.

Take the damon and Hayward you mentioned. A gold like Damon too me is way overpriced for a collection at 15k, while I could see Hayward staying at 15k or rising a bit after a collection barring a flash sale. 15k for a good like Damon is already very expensive and will upset people so I have to imagine they will release some kind of way to get him if he's needed for a big collection

Bunting used to be a problem when fast guys could bunt for hits easily no matter what you did. At this point though, hunts are easily stopped so if you get "bunt cheesed" that's on you

Has anyone been doing that this year? I think it could make sense, especially if you have both lefty and righty SPs, and/or you have one or two pitchers much better than the others. I just got Kluber to go with Newhouser at the top of my rotation, so I was thinking I could use an opener and then depending on my opponent's skill and lineup, I can choose either Kluber or Newhouser or if I think I'm significantly better or worse than my opponent I can go to one of my back end SPs and save my good guys for a tighter game.

The game was from his pre knuckleball days ('07) and he has very little to do with why the game is being shown but I thought it was funny to see him on TV

It sounds like you left a pitcher in for too long and your opponent took advantage of it

I made a thread about this a few days ago and I think a huge reason for this is the lowered pitcher energy which, among other things, makes it harder to hit corners and therefore it's much easier to hit

That might be the most efficient way of getting XP but the best way is just playing the game for your enjoyment and racking up XP along the way

I guess I'm in the minority on this one but it's easy enough to hit HRs in this game, the last thing we need is to play in a stadium where you can hit a HR to dead center at 96 mph or to straightaway LF or RF at 89 mph. If your'e someone that regularly chooses Shippet stadium (or something like Colorado or Laughing Mountain), I kindly ask you to reconsider your stadium choices in the future.

I just played the nationals in the 3 inning game and they had the 99 MVP Bryce harper that just came out a couple hours ago

Even though I think the show is much better in terms of gameplay and in DD vs MUT, I'll probably switch over to madden for the most part until madden starts getting stale for me when I'll come back to the show a bit.

Even tgough I like the show better and do enjoy the team building experience in modes like DD, I like the game a heck of a lot more early on before everyone has super teams so I'd like to enjoy madden before that happens

It sounds like you're on all star so that invites randomness. More importantly though it that the human brain looks for patterns and often finds them where they don't exist.

I'm sure you have just as many if not more lucky hits when you are winning but you remember it when you lost because of it and forget it when it doesn't affect anything

Its always your ace vs your ace so you can manipulate your rotation to use the guy you want

@greenbuk75 said in Think of it this way...:

@wingo18 said in Think of it this way...:

@greenbuk75 said in Think of it this way...:

@wingo18 said in Think of it this way...:

The Ruth program is basically like conquest. The amount of games seem insurmountable at first, but after it occurred to me that it’s basically like conquest, doesn’t seem too awful.

Except conquest gives u progress on missions, these don't. No stat accumulation

I guess that’s the trade off with the rewards

Wasting 30 irl hours grinding this is enough trade off

It's 14 full games worth if innings do it should be far quicker than that, plus they're at home from what I can tell

There will probably be a prestige Ruth but unless they make a 2 way star Ruth I doubt they have room for a better Ruth

I would just try an be patient and use power swing. Eventually they will throw a hanging breaking ball that you can hit out

Ohtani and Springer could go down. Gary Sanchez may drop too but i would be very surprised if he goes below silver.

Personally I'm not a fan of maddux so I would consider selling. There are so many affordable pitching options out there but I like Kerry wood and mike scott

@wingo18 said in Pickoffs is broken:

@NOTandris said in Pickoffs is broken:

It’s a guaranteed throw error if you successfully catch the guy leaning to steal. Am I the only one having this problem?

Literally just happened to me. Ball went out of play. Is that not supposed to be 2 bases? They only gave him 1

A pitcher throwing it away on a pickoff or a wild pitch is only one base so that's correct but the red throw is a glitch as far as I know. To combat it you can step off with L1 and then either force them back to the base or get them in a run down