Thoughts for Newbies

[MtheB]

some initial input for people new to ATG. (these are suggestions, not givens)

1) Design your team to fit your ballpark.
Your ballpark, and the team you put in it, usually need to account for 60% win record at home for your team to do well. The best way to achieve this is to pick an extreme park and draft your team to maximize what your home park provides.
Homerun hitters parks: You want hitters with Ballpark Homeruns (if you dont know what that means, ask), you want pitchers who do not give up BP HRs. You will need hitters at the top of the lineup who have high OBP so the homerun hitters have runners to knock in.
Pitchers parks: you will want high average, high OBP hitters, who have lots of extra base hits, and you will want good overall team speed, team defense, and good OF and catcher arms.
Lefty balanced parks: Obviously, you will want LH hitters and LH pitchers, but you also need protection. Have one or two lefty killers in your lineup to protect your lefty hitters (such as Jeff Bagwell 94 or any of the Clemente cards)-- sometimes good to have a left handed hitter who kills lefties (if you are in a Lefty HR park such as Dunn, you might want a guy like the 5.76 mill Klu, who destroys lefty pitching. Also good to have some RH pitching, and reverse righties (righties who do well against LH hitters) such as Satchel Paige.
Righty balanced parks: obvious what works here, but once again, you will want some lefty hitters who destroy RH pitching, and its also good to have RH hitters that are RH weighted such as G. Harnett 1930 or McGwire 1998.

A few notes:
In small ball parks, some owners like to have one slugger that has alot of natural HRs, such as Ralph Kiner. Its not vital, (I have seen teams win without a slugger of any kind) but it is a strategy that can be made to work successfully.
Alot of owners like to have T. Speaker in CF, as he is awesome in small ball parks with his great D, high BA and high OBP--you can bat him 1st, 2nd, or 3rd.
It very much helps in small ball parks to have hitters than hit alot of doubles and triples, as this increases your scoring chances.
I like to have strong arms in the OF and at Catcher when playing small ball, as this takes away the strength of other small ball teams coming to visit.
In hitters parks, those defense may not be as important, keeping runners off of base is, and defense is part of that (you will want to avoid the three run and four run homers). I like to have strong arms in the OF and at Catcher even when playing in hitters parks, as this helps negate small ball teams strengths.
Overall note about defense: its not critical to winning to have a great defense. you will see many teams that win with very mediocre defense. The idea is to score more runs than the other team, if you design your team to your ball park, then you will have a better chance at succeeding.
I have seen owners who have done very well by having excellent D, excellent arms, and low e factors, the challenge is that you pay salary for all those features.
Defense is more critical at SS,2B and CF, and having a big arm in CF certainly helps. Having good D at SS and 2B, means that you can have pitchers who dont give up alot of hits, but that do give up walks, as these walks can then turn into DPs.

Speaking of DPs, when you are selecting hitters you will want to look at the number of DPs on the hitters cards. A classic example is any of the O. Cepeda cards, he was a double play machine. DP hitters can kill rallies, and wipe out baserunners. however, there are some huge hitters, that hit into a fair number of DPs, so don't necessarily shy away from guys like Johnny Bench etc.---they certainly will hit alot of HRs and knock in alot of runs. The best way to use a high DP power hitter, is bat them behind a major base stealer, so they often come up with no runner on first. I saw one owner who batted Rickey Henderson at #2, and O. Cepeda at #3, and that worked well as Rickey was often on 2nd base when Cepeda came up. Just watch your overall DP factors, as you don't want to end up with a ton of guys that double up.

Injuries: its a crap shoot. guys who are more likely to get injured (have less than 600 PA), are generally cheaper than their bulletproof counterparts, but for that cheaper price you get higher performance. You can carry injury prone players and not have it be a factor, and there are times when your team will fall in the standings because key players are out for a long time. Some players are certainly worth the gamble and the risk, good to have workable backups for your injury prone players. Unfortunately, many of the NEL players are injury prone (due to not having full stats of them for the full year playing in Negro Leagues, Barnstorming and South America).

Money ball principles.
Yes they can work, but must be taken in context. you can't steal first base, if your leadoff hitter is larry Bowa, you are in big trouble. OBP is a big factor, and in strat the experienced owners live and breath it. Having said that, there are other factors to consider as well. Slow runners may get on base alot, but also don't take the extra base, may be doubled up etc. so speed on the basepaths is a factor.

Value
The real key in putting a successful team together is that you must be able to identify those players that are underpriced for how they perform, and to know which players are way overpriced for how they perform. By getting high value for lower price, that gives you more money to spend on your entire team. You could have V. Guerrero in RF at a salary of around 9.5 mill---the reality is that the Hank Aaron 7 mill card will usually outperform Vlad's card--giving you over 2 mill to spend somewhere else.

Remember, a players stats for a given year do not necessarily reflect how that player will perform in a strat league----first of all, the strat equations are based on that player, playing against teams in that year, in those ballparks. How that player will perform for you, will depend on what parks are in the league, what the pitcher breakdown is (RH vs LH), lineups etc.
And there are certain players who perform well above their card most of the time and vice versa. There are many, you will learn by doing and observing.
Here are some of the more obvious high value cards:
Catcher: G. Hartnett (especially in a RH power hitting park)
First Base: Mark McGwire (you can get 32 HRs for 3.75 mill)
2B: used to be what most people drafted first in the early days of ATG. now there are plenty of choices. In a division with lots of RH starters, the cheap N. Fox card (in a platoon with Beckert for example)--will perform as well as a 2B at double the salary.
3B: This is the thinnest position in terms of high value players, particularly under 6 Mill. If you dont care about defense, there are some very affordable big time sluggers at very good salaries---guys like Kevin Mitchell, Pedro Guerrero etc.
SS: D. Bush. Don't be fooled by his actual BB stats that say his OBP is .380. If you total up his chances for getting on base (out of 108) on his card against RH pitchers, its 55. he wont hit for high average, but he will get on base alot.
CF: Kenny Lofton. high BA, high OBP great defense. Injury risk however, but worth the risk.
RF: Hank Aaron. Somehow his cards always do well.
LF: Albert Bell. 50 HRs, righty weighted, below 9 Mill.

Some things to consider:
Primary goal is to win your division. So before the season, study the other teams, their ballparks, and their LH/RH breakdowns. You might need to adjust your team so that you can beat the teams in your division.
If there is a team that is predominantly RH hitters, you will want one or two righty killers, and so forth.

Trading: only make trades that are win/win. if you are not sure, put the offers out on the boards and get feedback from vets. I am a very active trader, primarily before the season begins. It is possible to make alot of trades if you offer win/win options. experienced and smart owners will not even look at an unbalanced trade, so dont be afraid to give up value to get the particular value/position you need.

Changes during the season: try to avoid these, as you pay a penalty for making changes during the season. Sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet as you have an obvious non-fit. but first, try to see if you can make a trade with another team.

Losing streaks and underperforming: just like real life, strat teams have slumps. dont panic. if you have the right team for your park, usually your team will break out of a cold slump and go on a tear. One of my favorite seasons was a team I had that was 12 games out at the halfway point, and went on to win the division and the title. I made only one change to my roster during the season.

Lineups: you want to tailor your lineup to your park, but in most cases, you will want to alternate LH and RH hitters as much as possible, to create pitching matchup problems for your opponent. Avoid having more than 2 or 3 same side hitters in a row, good switch hitters are always nice to have in a lineup.

Base Stealing: in ATG, there are plenty of strong armed catchers, so basestealing may not be a primary strategy to scoring runs. Remember, when evaulating how to set your stealing preferences each night, look not only a the opposing catchers arm, but the pitchers arms as well.

clutch hitting: seems to be that if you have a strong clutch hitter batting #5,6,7, that that maximizes the result. one thing for sure, you want to avoid terrible clutch hitters in those positions.

RH hitters: you will see that in terms of RH power hitters, most of them hit left handed pitching better. As most leagues have a 70% RH pitchers to 30% left handed pitching, it will help to have good LH hitters in your lineup and some RH hitters that hit righties better than lefties (guys such as Harnett, McGwire, Colavito etc.). Each league is different, so you will want to evaluate the LH/RH pitching makeup of your league.

Keys for learning:
once you are in a league, look at what players other owners, particularly the experienced owners, are using. take the time to look at their lineups and pitching rotations. at the end of the season, go back and look at all the teams, and check out player performance. you will be able to build a book of knowledge over time, to help you make better decisions each time you play.

[DonFESQ]

hmm, I agree in part and disagree in part.

[The Last Druid]

Yup.

[PotKettleBlack]

Another thing about clutch. One big clutch guy in the five hole, followed by a neg clutch guy in the six hole, your big clutch guy will lead the league in IBB. Not what you want.

[motherscratcher]

I think there is a lot of great stuff in there. Some of it I hadn't thought of. Some of it I had, but is definitely beneficial having it reinforced in my noggin.

I thank you for the time and effort to do this.

I'm also interested in where Don and Petro differ...

[geekor]

tldr

[PillPop]

[quote:55225b73a1="geekor"]tldr[/quote:55225b73a1]

That's harsh!

[216 Stitches]

Well, there is a whole thread already devoted to this topic:

http://forums.sportingnews.com/viewtopic.php?t=9842