Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Many of you know that you can have HAL choose your lineups for you by simply leaving them blank. But did you know -

- you can specify any number of positions, and still leave the rest blank. E.g. if you don't like you HAL starts at catcher (or 1b, or ss) you can fill in those positions ONLY and leave the rest blank? HAL will respect your wishes for the ones you fill in, and make his decisions on the rest.

- you can do it one way (e.g. not filled in, or partly filled in) vs. RHP and a different way (e.g. all filled in) vs. LHP, or vice versa.

- if you filled in your entire lineup (or several positions) the previous night, you can clear it all out again the next night and start over, possibly not specifying your choice for all (or any positions) and letting HAL pick? In other words, you can change your approach from night to night!

The last one I learned a trick to do:

-first go to the lineup page and click on edit lineup
-then click at the spot near the top of the page to ask to use the original interface for lineup changes
-at the original lineup interface, click on "clear lineups"
-in the original lineup interface, click on save lineup.
-then, in the original lineup interface, click on "use drop and drag lineup interface"
-you should now have a cleared out lineup!

Otherwise, without this trick, what I find is that you can't leave a position blank in the drop and drag interface, once you have previously save a player as entered at that position. This trick allows you to clear the lineups and start over, with as many or as few of the positions filled in as you want!

WHY FUSS WITH ALL OF THIS? If you are facing a 9L RHP and a 9R RHP on the same night, you may prefer to have HAL start your right handed batters against the first RHP, and then have HAL start your left handed batters against the second RHP, all on the same night. This gives you an advantage that is not otherwise available for 2 games on the same night.

BUT, HAL doesn't always make decisions you like. This is true. So you have to decide for yourself whether the decisions that HAL makes on a game by game basis are better or worse than your own selections (which must be used for both, or all 3 games). Or, you can give HAL the option at as many or as few positions as you want, by filling in the positions that you really want to be picked by you. In my experience, I don't always like the decisions that HAL makes at catcher, so I will usually fill in that position.

I am still trying to see whether or not I can get HAL to use the batting order I specify for a partially filled in lineup. I am not sure if that works yet. I can say that what I have typed here does work for me in the past month.

The other main development (at least for me) is the idea that the change is reversable. If you fill in your lineups, you can clear them again (see above). Of course, if they are blank, you can fill in as much (or as little) as you want.

I am interested in feedback, as always!

:)
Geoff

One more thing. HAL tends to overcompensate, or overestimate the impact of the player's balance ratings, according to my calculations. So I would use the "empty lineup" strategy with caution, esp. vs RHP. I would say, do your own calculations, and then leave blank only the lineup spots that YOU would like to see alternate based on the balance ratings of the opposing pitchers.

Also, I find that the worst over-compensating that HAL does is vs. RHP. So I would make limited use of this strategy vs. RHP (maybe leaving only 1 or possibly 2 lineup spots open, based on your own calculations). I have made more use of if vs. LHP, and I think it works better there. Somehow, HAL seems to make fewer mistakes with quanitfying the balance effect vs. LHP. And, in any case, when facing a LH starting pitcher, you may be more likely to see more RHP relief pitchers in that same game, in which case a left handed hitter (say with an R balance) may be a better choice to start the game, if the numbers say the choice is even. :) Geoff