Samstag, 18. Januar 2014

SOM Diary: 2013 replay - team selection

I've started thinking more specifically about the 2013 replay with the cards I ordered today (yay!). I've also started to write up some depth charts and charts where I can track each players games played to track performance and make sure I roughly hit the correct numbers of games per player.

Team selection

After some more thinking and reading, and also simply looking at the sheer number of games to be played, I have decided to go for the AL only option 2 in my earlier list. So there will be three four team divisions, dropping the fifth placed team in each:

AL East: BOS, TB, BAL, NYY
AL Central: DET, CLE, KC, MIN
AL West: OAK, TEX, LAA, SEA

Individual "player trades"

In general I will do the 2013 replays without and changes to the player rosters provided by SOM card selections. I will reflect major trades like Peavy or Soriano.

However, when I read the AL 2013 summaries in the Hardball Times Annual 2014, the idea occurred to me to make a few individual "trades".

In addition to trades that occurred in reality (e.g. the Iglesias/Peavy trade for the RedSox mid season) I could help out the worse teams and at least get a look at some of the key players from the fifth placed teams by moving one or two people from the fifth placed teams to a fourth place team with an obvious need.

For example, the Twins (? to be verified) seem to have struggled with below average starting pitching, and on the other hand with the Blue Jays placed fifth I was sad not to be able to run R A Dickey. So why not move Dickey to the Twins, give the Twins a reliable starter with good ERA and many innings pitched and get a chance to see some knuckle balls fly past batters and catchers? I guess he'll have to take Thole with him as a personal catcher - if only to get the passed ball stats roughly right...

I might also look into giving the Yankees some support in the injury plagued infield, e.g. by looking for some good infielders from the Astros or White Sox.

Samstag, 11. Januar 2014

Ankersteine: Getreidespeicher (GK-NS 14)

I think I have now built most of the original models from the Anker sets up to GK-NF 14, so I've started to dabble in other stuff. One thing I wanted to look into was the Neue Serie models released by the company later, today available via the CVA archive at ankerstein.ch.

I started with the grain storage (Getreidespeicher) from the booklet for GK-NS 14. I like these more modern buildings, with different proportions and style than the classical Richter buildings.


However, I quickly stumbled across the many differences between the NF and NS stone sets, started to improvise and towards the end of building had to add a few stones from a surplus set normally used by my son. I think I will continue my dabbling in the NS models with the buildings for set 12 and come back to the models for 14 when I actually have the stones from GK-NF 14A available to compensate for missing or different stones.

Building the model was a lot of fun, though, and it has many characteristics that set it apart from other Anker buildings I've tried earlier.
  • the bridge between the small administrative building and the actual storage building (and I always thought that the one in my company's headquarters was a very innovative idea ;)
  • the space for a railroad between the buildings, with loading areas on both sides
  • the neat little stairs at the end of the unloading platforms
  • the strong vertical design with the high walls structured by niches and windows (leading to a rather shaky construction as the window frames and the walls to their sides don't interlace at all)
  • the long flat roof over the unloading platform, and generally the nice mix of roof angles to use up nearly all blue roof stones
Overall a very nice project, highly recommended and also nice to show to people who don't know much about Anker buildings to avoid the impression that they are only good for classical castles and churches...

The main walls with the different protruding columns and niches are starting to take shape
First layer of the roof on the main storage building, with the ventilation holes already in place
Side view of the face of the building with the same vertical niche design as the main building front, and the pedestrian bridge over the railway line.
Backside of the building, same facade and roof layout as the front but not interrupted by bridges or other building parts.

Donnerstag, 9. Januar 2014

My podcast directory

More for my own use as a favorite list, but maybe someone else might also be interested: here's the list or podcasts I listen to more or less frequently.

1. Magic the Gathering
2. Games in general
3. Sports
Baseball aktuell
Baseball outdated
4. Tech
5. History