Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

Does anyone have a clear understanding of the the effects of and the relationship between the Team Strategy settings for Stolen Bases and the Individual Player settings for Stolen Bases?

I've always operated under the premise that the Team Stolen Base strategies are related to the likelyhood of a stolen base attempt vs the probability of success. By this I mean that at "Normal", a player is likely to steal if his probability of suceess is about 75%. The more "Agressive" the setting, the lower probability of success is necessary for a stolen base attempt. The more "Conservative" the setting, the higher the success probabilty is needed for an attempt.

I suppose the "Don't Steal" setting should be pretty evident: This player will not attempt to steal even if heck is freezing over. But what does the "Steal More" setting do? Does this mean that the player will attempt a steal at lower success rates? Or perhaps he will attempt steals in more game situations? Will he steal home with 2 outs in the 9th, behind by 5 runs? Etc, etc.?

And then finally, what is the relationship between the team and player settings? For example, what if I am at "Extra Conservative" for the team, but "Steal More" for a particular player? Which setting takes precedent?

Would appreciate any input on this! 8-)

I don't know what effect the team or individual card steal settings will have, but I can tell you that there are times when a player will attempt a steal even if the "don't steal" box is checked on their card. Occasionally they will be forced to steal if the next hitter attempts a hit and run and fails.
In general, though, I think stealing is overrated. It's much more important to have good base running speed.

I tend to think that Extra Conservative--what I almost always choose when I do actually find the motivation to set my manager settings, it's much harder in retirement--generally causes HAL to wait for the highest percentage steal opportunities.

In ATG 6, I average 85 attempts a season at a 72% rate. Only 2 teams (out of 22 collected)--both with Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins--averaged more than an attempt a game. 5 teams had fewer than 50 attempts in a season, but still at a 70%+ rate.

in the 6, due to all the great armed catchers, base stealing is not at a premium. i normally use normal setting with steal more set on 19-15 or better stealers. seems to work out ok. on my power teams. i go conservative on bunting, base stealing and h&r.

Thanks for the input guys!

Sounds like we all tend to shy away from the stolen base... generally trying to minimize attempts and maximize success rate.

Trouble is, for grins I've put together a SB theme team: Players *3-6/- (19-15) or better. Since I too always use "Conservative" or "Extra Conservative" and never check "Steal More", I'm curious as to which settings will optimize my steal rate/success rate without having my guys make steal attempts in ridiculous game situations?

Maybe I'll just have to go by the trial and error method?

suppossedly, if you check extra aggressive hal goes for third and home.