Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I'm not talking about typos, but structural errors of two types that cut across all games (maybe more in ATG games). I've seen each discussed through the years, but wanted to raise both for discussion.

Two kinds of pitchers suffer from the two-card P/H format. Both types therefore tend to be less effective than they should be. As to the first type, it's not an issue in the right kind of park; as to the second, even the right park can't really help.

1. Guys who give up a lot of solo HR's relative to total HR's. Your Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter, Fergie Jenkins types, who pitched much more aggressively with the bases empty and a decent lead, resulting in relatively high HR totals. The game has no way of reflecting the fact that they are less likely to give up the gopher with men on base or in a tie game. Their 30+ HR total gets dispersed evenly across all situations, instead of being concentrated in less harmful circumstances.

2. Guys with exceptionally low walk totals. Greg Maddux, David Wells (there aren't too many who walk so few as to raise this issue, but these two do and I guess there are probably others). If strat gives them no walks on their card, they're still gonna walk more than they should, just off the hitters' cards. As far as I know, nothing is done to compensate for this. Unless you depart from the 50/50 P/H format, there is no way to change the disparity in walks. You could adjust for it to even out their effectiveness, though. That would mean putting fewer hits on their card than their actual performance warrants. This would be controversial, because: (i) it would be offsetting one statistical inaccuracy with another, which runs against the grain for a game based on stats; and (ii) you'd have to determine what the right offset would be (since swapping hits for walks, one-for-one, would make them much [i:8e586346da]more[/i:8e586346da] effective than they should be.)

Does anyone know if strat has looked at these issues? I just tend to avoid these types of pitchers (though, if the pricing takes all this into account, they may still be decent values).

Is it possible that the computer version/CDROM compensate in ways that the cards cannot?

FWIW-

I used Paul Byrd in a league on a few occasions. The last time, I had to drop him. He was among the league leaders in walks given up YET he has ZERO walks on his card. :cry:

[quote:8006acf272="bleacher_creature"]Is it possible that the computer version/CDROM compensate in ways that the cards cannot?[/quote:8006acf272]On the second point, yes. There is a "correct board game excesses" option:

[quote:8006acf272]Turning on this option improves the statistical accuracy of certain players who had extreme performances. For instance certain pitchers such as Greg Maddux allow very few walks. Using this option will enable Maddux to duplicate his real-life dominance in this area. A number of categories are affected by this option including home runs, walks and strikeouts. Also pitchers hitting will be affected by using this option, resulting in less walks and extra base hits by pitchers.[/quote:8006acf272]
On the solo vs. men on base homers point, maybe not. There [i:8006acf272]is[/i:8006acf272] a "starting pitcher clutch" option, but the wording of it IMO sounds like it's analogous to hitter's clutch, and wouldn't apply to homers:

[quote:8006acf272]This option implements the starting pitcher clutch system. An internal clutch rating is determined for each starting pitcher based upon a number of factors including his "expected ERA" compared to his actual ERA. During game play the system alters the results so that pitchers who pitch poorly in the clutch give up more of their hits with men in scoring position while pitchers who are good in the clutch give up more of their hits with the bases empty. The total number of hits added and subtracted for each pitcher is computed so that their basic stats (hits to innings pitched) is not skewed. Every starting pitcher receives his own clutch rating individually computed to match his real-life ability.[/quote:8006acf272]

Thanks, I didn't know that. Do we know if either of these options is used by TSN?

the same thing can be true for hitters as well...

the 2005 Bonds card could not possibly account for a .602 on base percentage and 232 walks...thus in the many, many 2005 leagues played, he never approached either figure...

just wanted to let you know that extreme performances that might be limited by the 50/50 p/h factor are exclusively in the pitching realm...

Good point, H.

No, that's a completely different situation. That happened because intentional walks have to be left off the card, and Bonds was intentionally walked 120 times in real life. You are simply not gonna get HAL to intentionally walk a person nearly that many times. (IMO, you probably wouldn't get there against most human managers either, since it's very debatable whether it's smart strategy.)

So you picked a bad example, because that was an intentional walk thing. But it probably does make sense that you don't need the "correct board game excesses" when you want MORE of something to happen. You can just make the card better. It seems a lot more necessary when you want LESS of something to happen. But let's say we're talking about a guy like [url=http://www.baseball-reference.com/s/seweljo01.shtml]Joe Sewell[/url] who once struck out 4 times in 699 plate apperances. In that instance, I could see "correct board game excesses" kicking in to try to fix the problem that he would otherwise strike out too much. I don't know for sure that it does, but I can't say for sure that it doesn't, and it would make sense if it did.