Ok, so the first experiment was contaminated with bad data. My bad. Bad torso!
I've made a new team in the Blackbox division to redo it, although with a slightly different set up.
Ducks of Hazard
4 blitzers
2 catchers
5 linos
4 rr
5 ff
First purchase providing no one dies will be apo, then buy catchers with the goal of having 4 catchers by game 5. The overall goal of having >50% win after 20 games remains. We'll see how this pans out.