Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I have Crawford and Vlady and a bunch of stiffs. I want to maximize these two stealing.

If I set my team base stealing setting to Very Aggressive and select "don't steal" for everyone except these two, will that allow the two mentioned above to have the green light?

Thanks!

I understand setting your "stiffs" to don't steal.

If you want your two speedsters to steal more, set the individual setting to "steal more".

as for your manager settings - if you set it to very aggressive, you are killing your team. Set it every day, along with baserunning based upon who you are playing the next day - ie, playing a catcher with a -4 arm, better be set to conservative. Catcher with +2 arm, very aggressive setting would be ok. Same with baserunning.

Does it matter actually what the catcher's arm rating is? I thought HAL's decision to steal or not was based on odds of success, which would shift based on the context?

I agree. If you only change two settings per day, it should be base running and stealing. I adjust these based on a teams catchers arm and OF arms.
In a game not long ago, I had set my base running to "aggressive" based on the opponants +2 catchers arm. 80 games into the season after never having attempted a steal before, in spite of previous aggressive settings, both Yaz and Gehrig make the break. Both are thrown out respectively. After double checking my individual player settings, both Yaz and Gehrig had been checked for "don't steal!" So I think by changing the managerial settings from "steal more" to "don't steal" just changes the odds on the number of times they will attempt to steal. It doesn't mean they will never steal. But I've long believed HAL is insane as well! :shock:

How do the pitchers' hold ratings figure into the question of steal settings (aggressive-normal-conservative)? I adjust those two settings daily as well, but I always worry about negative hold ratings even if the opponent's catcher has an average arm or even a less than average one. What do you think?