Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Am I correct in thinking that if a player, say Hideki Matsui, hits .306 with 115 RBI, that he SHOULD do similar in Strat? Obviously a lot depends on ballparks etc etc, but am I right to think this?

I presume pitchers are different as they will usually pitch more innings than in real life?

Can anyone enlighten me on this ?

If you were to recreate an actual season using all teams and approximating the same rotations and lineups, player stats do mirror real stats fairly well. Understand, though, that even a 162 game sked is a relatively small statistical sample and so random variances still play a role, but on the whole SOM replays are remarkably good at recreating the real stats.

That said, in the TSN game there are only 12 teams vice 30 to spread the talent over, stadium issues like 5 coors or Bonds in Coors vice pacbell, low AB players that have great cards can be played over a full season, etc. All that means that players are not going produce stats similiar to real life. The conditions are completely different than reality. That doesn't make the game any less fun, you just have to accept that the numbers are not going to repeat actual season stats.

That is what I thought, i.e. only having a small sample of teams and many of them being "All Star" quality. I just woindered why the real stats were so prominent when at the end of the season they are not going to be similar to the simulated stats.

In this game the stats that are important are the card stats, not the season totals.

Most of the vets here use the SOM Ratings book or something similiar that lays out the actual percentages of dice rolls for all players. You may already know a lot of this, but here is a simple example.

On a single card there are 108 possible rolls of the dice, or chances. If you were trying to decide between Kotsay and Pierre as your leadoff hitter, for example, the ratings book would tell you that vs RHP Kostay has 37.8 chances out of 108 of getting on base, 50.2 vs LHP. Pierre has 45 vs RHP and 39.7 vs LHP. This is the kind of comparison that should be made, not that kotsay hit .314 and Pierre .326.

Absolutely. As with all aspects of the game, you have to look at the park you're playing in, the other parks in your league, and what sorts of players the team you select will be going up against the most often. Matsui's season stats might say that he hit .306 with 115 RBI, but if you're playing in a league full of pitcher's parks with strong pitching, you would have to temper your expectations. Just like if you're playing in, say, Coors, with a bunch of other hitter friendly parks in your league - Eric Munson could pop 40 homers for you. Eric who? It's all about reading the cards and seeing how well they fit into your own personal gameplan.

I have played the game on disc here, and the season stats do even out eventually with all 30 teams going with all the players on the team they were playing for during the season that the cards are supposed to replay. If that makes sense. Never had Bonds get on base at a .612 clip, but everything else was pretty close to normal.