As I have written often enough, I have this standing rule in salary cap games: once you commit to a roster, don't change it.

I have held this thought dearly through Diamond Legends games, and six years of SOMBOE Strat-O-Matic playing, and I adhere to it for many karmic reasons. Most important, it seems to mess with the mojo. In other words if my team is tanking, I seem to know that if I replace my bad guys, it is just before the good rolls of the dice appear.

To complicate, I fear that the new players I will select will simply begin their run of bad rolls, making my seemingly bad team even worse.

I stuck with my originals every time, including an abominbile season when my team finished 70-92 in SOMBOE, my only sub-.500 finish.

This year I loved my team going into the draft, and coming out of it, and, love it or not, they are painfully bad. As in 16 games under .500 when virtually every other team was within some kind of striking distance of that watermark.

And, when i would see a glimpse of some kind of streak, taking two of three one series, then sweeping, invariably, my Chicago Hot Dogs would be swept, and in basically the same or worse shape.

What did I do wrong?

I over-platooned, picking a lot of good players everywhere, with no real standout anywhere. Ichiro was my most expensive plyer at $7.92 million. But, what really tipped me off was my outfield also has Nick Swisher, Josh Hamilton, Austin Kearns, Joey Gathright, and Norris Hopper, and that cluster functions as aoutfield/DH/1B platoon that was just awful.

Actually, Ichiro, Hopper, and Gathright were all just fine, but the other three, costing a collective $13 million were indeed awful. And Hamilton just got hurt all the time, so in a fit, contrary to everything I believe, I dumped Hamilton and Kearns, and Asdrubal Cabrera and Mark DeRosa, swapping them for Aramis Ramirez and Kelly Johnson, and then traded in Kyle Kendrick and Orlando Hernandez (a collective 7-27) for Ben Sheets and Greg Maddux, the latter of whom has been pitching very well for me in my local league. That and he won't give up so many walks.

So, Hopper and Gathright earn starting jobs with Swisher DH'ing and covering the outfield and first in the event of an injury.

So far we are 3-3 with change, but I made it when we were 16 games under .500, with 105 games played. So, it should be pretty easy to see how much I improve, if at all.

At least it is something to do.