Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I am new to Stratomatic, so I am curious what thoughts are on my team. This is my team after the draft and free agency. League starts tonight. Any help is much appreciated.

[url]http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/team/team_other.html?user_id=20742[/url]

I forgot to include the stadiums in my league.

I play in Miller Park

1 - Skydome
1 - Bank one Ballpark
1 - Tropicana
1 - Coors
1 - Montreal
1 - Miller Park
1 - PNC Park
2 - Shea
2 - Petco

First things first.

Your link is bad. Click on your league statistics, then click on your team. Copy the URL on top of that page. It should have a # at the end of the link. ie. user_id=17766.

Thanks for the info.

[url]http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/team/team_other.html?user_id=20742[/url]

Chavez and Cormier are ok....

Rules about having a winning team
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1. Don't overspend on your bench. Carry 23-25 players and have 6 of them cost less than .75

2. The stadium.

Some prefered to use a neutral park 1st time out, one which is evenly balanced between pitching and hitting. In this case, don't have to many one-sided batters...try to keep an even lineup of lefties and righties...and a switch htter or two, to keep the oposition from stacking up all righty or lefty pitchers against you.

Some prefered to use a stadium that favours one-side, like Shea. Even in this case, you put yourself at danger if you go with 7 or 8 lefties.


3) Many players like try to spend about $50 million of salary on hitters, the other $30 million on pitchers;

Of the $50 million on hitters, concentrate as much of that on your 9 starters as possible (about 90-95%).
Seldom do you want to spend more than $500,000 on a reserve. The only possible exception being if one of your starters is more injury prone than normal.

4) Injury duration is as follows: for players with 600 or more Plate Appearances the max is 3 games. Less than 600 PA, max is 15 games. Players with injury rolls on 2 or 12 are much less succesptible to injuries than others.

5) As mentioned above, try to keep an even balance between lefties and righties in your lineup. Also, pay attention to how hitters fare against either left or right handed pitching. Generally you will see a bit more right handed than lefthanded pitching, so you may want to weigh slightly more against righties. Check the pitching on the other teams in your division however, as you will play these teams the most. This may lead you to alter this approach some.

6) Most important rule of all, do not "dump" players during the season. You can exchange players on your roster for players in the "Free Agent" pool during the season, but every time you do, it cost you 20% of the salary of the player you are dropping. Many "rookies" (myself included) start out slowly, then begin to drop players in an effort to improve, only to find that quickly they are playing with a $50 or $60 million payroll instead of $80 million. These $50 million teams are destined for last place.

7) As mentioned in another thread, get a guy with a high, over .400 if possible, OBP to lead off.

8- One big mistake you made was to mix up *SP and non -*SP. *SP like Morris can pitch every 4 games, and their price tag are ajusted in the prevision that they will pitch 40 games. (Same is true for Odadis Perez---I can't figure out from your e-mail if you took this Perez and the other Perez). Non *SP like Pedro can only start 33 games. So you mix them, you get into trouble: either you don't skip Pedro, and Morris will only start 32 games while you're paying him for 40 games, or else you don't skip Morris, but you have Pedro and Schimdt and Miller lose 2-3 games apiece. An interesting alternative is to go with one or two outstanding *SP, giving 80 solid starts, and give the rest to scrappy pitchers.

Conclusion: you better not mix. If you mix, then spend a lot on *SP, and concentrate on cheapy non *SPs for the rest of the pitching squad.

9- this game is not too much realistic about relievers: they can easily go for 200 innings without getting penalized...(however, I pretty sure that a pitcher like Dotel who gets 300 innings has pitched many games with some penalties on the fatigue rule...so you might try to avoid this. But 200 innings is often reached by relievers).

Addendum...For one-inning reliever, 140 innings per season seems close to the limit before reaching the penalty overusage.

10: THe golden rule of Strat: spend for the relievers you need. What I mean is that, before the season start, you have to figure out how many innings you'd like to have from your relievers, and spend the money that is appropriate for what you expect. You know that you will need about 1500 innings from your pitching staff. How much will your relief have???

Example: in one league, you play in Safeco--a pitcher's stadium, and you opted for the best *SP rotation available, all over 7M. You can expect to have close to or above 300 innings from each. So you have about 300 innings left to redistribute. You can assume that your closer will get 100, maybe 150. So in this scenario, I would spend for a very good closer, put him at set-up and closer situation, and get myself some 0.5M rp to complete the staff.

However, with the same SP starting rotation, but this time playing in Coors, the rule is not the same. Because you're playing in Coors, your pitchers won't be able to last as long in the games. (In case you don't know, the computer relieves any starter (save exceptions) that gives 5 runs in one inning, or gives 3 hits/walks after the pitcher reached his limit that is indicated at the right of S, like S7 means the pitcher will be relieved if he gives 3 hits/walks once the 7th inning is reached. And I should make the precision that this is minimal...quite often, the computer relieved the SP for less than that). So, in Coors, with the same SP starting rotation, you need more innings from your relief, and hence you might want to need a better set-up than one that is valued 0.5M to get this extra load.

Take note however that, in this scenario, because you're playing in Coors, you need to have a very good offense too!!! So if you're to have four stellar pitchers AND a very good set-up man, you might not have enough to spend in order to have the offense you need to have to perform...

That's why many coaches (myself included) that go with a Coors-like stadium prefer to have a very cheap SP rotation. If I start the season in Coors with a very cheap SP rotation---meaning not very good, and if in addition, I go with a relief setting that is aggressive for relief, than I can expect that I will 700-800 innnings from my relef . So in this scenario, either you go with 3 outstanding relievers, or 2 outstanding (5-6 millions), 1 very good (3-4 millions), and 1 cheap (0.5-1M) that will hopefully only mop-up. Because outstanding relievers costs less than outstanding SP, I will still have enough money to spend for an explosive offensive squad.





Other comments:

1) OBP before SLG

#2 Strat rule- WHIP before ERA.

#3 strat rule-Strengthen your middle defense.

#4 strat rule- Bring your bullpen stopper when the game is tight---(especially when the game is tied, contrary to unwritten baseball rule #24).

#5 strat rule- Avoid mixing *SP and non *SP, especially when you have at least 2 *SP.

#6 strat rule- Favor a leadoff a)with on-base b) with a stealing star---but 3 - OBP before speed at leadoff.

#7 strat rule- Avoid a second hitter with lots of gbA.

#8 strat rule- Avoid a fifth hitter with a high negative clutch.

#9 strat rule- Steal when expected success is higher than 70%.

#10 strat rule- Never bunt in the first seven innings (except for pitchers with 1w-3w batting ability).

#11 - Zero BP homers on pitcher's card in hitter's park

#12 - No more than one 4 in the OF.

First you have 2 centerfielders. you have to trade one of them for a DH type hitter which you do not seem to have. If you cna unload Beltran I would try and trade him first. Second you have way too much money on your bench....you have Eric Chavez so you need a backup 3B but Tony Batista, Chad Tracy, Geoff Blum/Robin Ventura could fill that void so you need to drop Randa for one of them. Then you need to drop Chase Utley for a .5 guy who can sub for the OF , then drop Valentin from catcher for someone like Laird or Ausmus. Then spend the rest of your money fixing your pitching...try and replace Dontrelle with some one without a * who is better and keep Gryboski and Marte but upgrade everyone else if you can Cormier is OK but ewith your money after these changes I am sure you can upgrade him too

And why couldn't I use either him or Hunter as DH. Is it because they are too valuable defensively.

[quote:f6ea164b03]And why couldn't I use either him or Hunter as DH. Is it because they are too valuable defensively [/quote:f6ea164b03]

Absolutely. You are paying a steep price for his defense, and then you are not using it. This creates an inefficiency of dollars spent. The more inefficient your team is, the less they will win. You could get as much offensive production as Hunter from a guy like Edgar Martinez or Ben Grieve at DH for less than a million bucks. That leaves you much more money to upgrade elsewhere. DHing a guy like Edgar (no position) or Grieve (a 5 rating), means you pay nothing for their defensive abilities.

Always think in terms of efficient use of money.

the league starts tonight. I have tried to trade Beltran, but there aren't any takes. David Ortiz is available. Should I drop Beltran and pick up Ortiz, or wait it out to see if anyone will want Beltran or Hunter.