Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I will be the first to admit that I am a newbie to Strat, and have a lot to learn. However, I have a strong feeling that the majority of this game comes down to luck. Please let me explain. My new league started last Monday, and already Bonds (6 games), Edajar Martienez (10 games), and Mike Schmidt (6 games). Anyone can tell that these are key pieces to my team. This is unusual for only being 30 games into a season?

Furthermore, I understand this is a dice game, but quite a few of my loses this season are not do to my bullpen, but from the other teams rolling 1-3, which gives them the advantage.

Are the above situations just a statical anomaly, or is something else going on.

Look at it this way.

Make a list of the top 20 players at each posiiton
Assign a umber 4-24 for each of them
Roll the dice for each position and select the corresponding player to include in your draft. This will take all the skill out of the draft.
Assign 4-24 to the ballparks, roll the dice agin and select the corresponding ballpark. Again taking skill out of the ballpark selection.
Roll dice to determine your batting order, pitching rotation, and manager stratagies.

The only part of the game that is luck, is the dice roll for the result of an at-bat. The rest of the game is skill. But given 2 managers with equal skill, the only thing left to seperate them is random chance.

Just as in real baseball, the diffrence between a .300 hitter and a .275 hitter, over the course of a season is 15 hits. Just being lucky enough to see 15 pitches that are a little more in the middle of the plate, just 15 more hits that were 2" further right, just 15 more games where the starting SS is injured. How much of that is skill and how much is luck.

Very well said, jdmercha!

Unlucky to get injuries, but skillful to have cheap but effective backups to sub in for short stints....

Unlucky to miss a ballpark HR, but skillful to draft the proper players for your ballpark...

You get the idea. Bottom line - it's a whole lotta fun!

Luck is HUGE - but that is somewhat true is real baseball. A smoked line drive can be right at someone while a bloop falls in for a double. Generally, if you have the best team you will see it after 162 games. The worst mistake is to panic too early, the dice rolls will even out eventually.

If your team beats mine it's luck, when my team beats yours it's skill! :lol: :lol: :lol:

The luck comes and goes. Earlier with a 2008 team I had put together what I thought would be a ball-crushing juggernaut...but had scored something like 15 runs in the first 9 games. Was my team bad?

Not exactly...when I mapped out how many AB's landed on my hitters cards vs. the pitchers cards, it was a 40/60 split, which obviously won't happen over the course of a season.

So it's way too early for you to panic. The injury rolls can be quite cruel, however.

I'm glad somebody brought up this topic, as I've been looking for a good opportunity to vent.

I've argued in the past that pythagorean records and records in one run games have been a good proxy for the "luck" part of a season. That is, consider the game about 75% skill and 25% luck (more or less). With twelve equally skilled managers (at whatever level), generally three will outperform and three will underperform an 81-81 record because of nothing more than "lucky dice."

Here are my first eight completed teams from 2008, followed by my record in one run games and the number of games above/below the pythagorean record.

Team 1: 25-21 ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-2[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 2: [color=red:f37b6dd831]22-25[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-4[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 3: [color=red:f37b6dd831]17-26[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-4[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 4: [color=red:f37b6dd831]17-22[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-1[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 5: 34-23 (+1) CHAMPS!
Team 6: [color=red:f37b6dd831]17-29[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-5[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 7: [color=red:f37b6dd831]23-26[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-4[/color:f37b6dd831])
Team 8: [color=red:f37b6dd831]19-33[/color:f37b6dd831] ([color=red:f37b6dd831]-6[/color:f37b6dd831])

Can coin flips really be [i:f37b6dd831]this[/i:f37b6dd831] unlucky?? HAL, oh HAL, where's the love?

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=208301

This team is in a NL player only, No DH, Unique Parks. You tell me if it is Luck or Skill. SGT D

A little of both. The luck is skewed more towards the actual games and the dice, but the skill comes from putting the actual team together, that will fit your park, your division, and your league, as well as the lineups and game settings. While luck plays a very big part, there is indeed skill involved. If it was pure luck, you'd find most managers hovering around a .500 won/loss percentage, yet year in, year out, you see the same cast of characters with a higher winning percentage.

I will buy that to a point except that there are player's who know the dice roll probabilities and know how to get 200+ innings from RP's (Yes the Super RP is still in effect, just saw Kuo throw 225 IP) and can take a guy with minimal AB's and have that guy put up treamdous numbers, to me that is skill and too much time on your hand :D
SGT D