Update: Back to the '90s, ATG

[chess2899]

Brad, must I babysit you during every league? Go to ATG III on the left side of your 80s league home page and you will find what you are looking for. :roll:

[chess2899]

PillPop says:

[quote:741018a4b3]You'd get your butt kicked in ATG, Chess. Take it from someone who's had the experience numerous times! [/quote:741018a4b3]

Perhaps and perhaps not. My brain is not wired correctly! :D We'll see how the ATG players do with the mystery game. 8-)

[visick]

How can Caminiti's '96 season[i:ad1687b2c7] NOT[/i:ad1687b2c7] be included?

[FRANKMANSUETO]

Seems to me that some of the better cards of the newly released 90's Mystery will included in ATG VI when that is released. But that remains a mystery as well. :lol:

[PillPop]

[quote:974465c8f9="chess2899"]PillPop says:

[quote:974465c8f9]You'd get your butt kicked in ATG, Chess. Take it from someone who's had the experience numerous times! [/quote:974465c8f9]

Perhaps and perhaps not. My brain is not wired correctly! :D We'll see how the ATG players do with the mystery game. 8-)[/quote:974465c8f9]

Oh, I forgot. You're one of those Mystery Card jihadists. :wink:

[PotKettleBlack]

[quote:38c521c1b6="AeroDave10"][quote:38c521c1b6="Petrosian"]I also think that player salaries should be adjusted to make small ball more viable that's a big one I think.[/quote:38c521c1b6]

I totally agree with Petrosian on just about everything he said, but this is definitely the one thing that really needs to be looked at by the TSN folks. I really find it difficult to pick a small ball park and fill it with singles hitters that are priced the same as HR hitters that seem to get way more production.

Go to the Diamond Dope actuals, filter by any salary cap, and then sort the players by RC700 (runs created per 700 plate appearances). You'll see only a handful of hitters who average less than 20 HRs in the top 100 (I counted 12). Since you can't change the cards or the stadiums, you have to change the pricing to make those cards more competitive.[/quote:38c521c1b6]
I agree with the central argument... but....

Here is the formula for RC used on the Dope:
Total Bases*OBP.
Which skews things to HR hitters.
Consider, in this formula, holding OBP the same:
10 HR = 13 Triples = 20 doubles = 40 singles.
For triples to equal the value of HRs, you'd have to have an associated increase in OBP.
For instance, 10 HR at a .350 OBP = 10 triples at a .467 OBP.
So, to equal a Hack Wilson level of production, in a small ball park, you're going to have to have a guy who is on base about 65% of the time, and hits an assload of doubles.

That isn't to say that there isn't value in small ball style hitters.
wOBA might be a better evaluation tool. But any linear weight system is pretty much always going to give higher value to higher value events (HRs).

[Outta Leftfield]

[quote:95a32ac820="PotKettleBlack"][quote:95a32ac820="Petrosian"]I also think that player salaries should be adjusted to make small ball more viable that's a big one I think.[/quote:95a32ac820]


Here is the formula for RC used on the Dope:
Total Bases*OBP.
Which skews things to HR hitters.
Consider, in this formula, holding OBP the same:
10 HR = 13 Triples = 20 doubles = 40 singles.
For triples to equal the value of HRs, you'd have to have an associated increase in OBP.
For instance, 10 HR at a .350 OBP = 10 triples at a .467 OBP.
So, to equal a Hack Wilson level of production, in a small ball park, you're going to have to have a guy who is on base about 65% of the time, and hits an assload of doubles.
[/quote:95a32ac820]

Thing is, you can't keep OBP the same and get an accurate result. The formula in fact being used for the diamondope actuals is .OBP X .SLG X AB, which you can confirm by trying it out against the actuals themselves. This is in fact the basic Runs Created formula first developed by Bill James.

Since OBP and SLG and AB are all factors then OBP is not going to be the same. According to the formula in use, 13 triples is 3 more hits than 10 HR, so that's going to raise OBP. Same with 20 doubles. That's 10 more hits than 10 HR, so it's going to raise OBP. And higher OBP will raise RC per 27 outs. In fact, OBP rightly gets a bit of a bonus in the RC equation. Since its level is generally lower than SLG, at least among top players, it counts a bit more. An OBP of .350 x SLG of 450 equals 1.575, which is then multipled by AB. On the other hand, an OBP of .400 x SLG of .400 (the same OPS) equals 1.6 X AB. As I said, OBP has a slight edge in value.

That said, it's very hard for a great small ball hitter to equal the RC of a great big ball hitter. The small baller has to have an incredible BA, plus lots of HR and 2Bs & 3Bs, to match Hack Wilson, let alone Mickey Mantle. That's because in Mantle's best strat year (1956) he hit a real-life .356 with a ton of walks (giving him an awesome OBP) and hit 52 HR (giving him, with his .356 BA, an awesome SLG). Even Tris Speaker in his best year can't match that, as one can see by their Dope actuals. Yet Speaker costs about the same as Mantle's two big years (in the second of which--1961 the Mick is almost Tris's equal defensively.)

So I think Petrosian's point in that, great as he is, Tris is never going to match the run production of Mantle. Therefore, he should cost less. Let's say Tris's cost went down from 13.41M to 12.4M. That would make him more competitively priced and if, along similar lines, iCobb, Wagner, Lajoie, Rizzuto, Colliins, Sisler, Frank Baker, etc were all 1M cheaper (and the lesser players proportional), then a team could load up on the small ball stars, have cash left over for extra pitching and, in a big park, could make a run for it against all the slugging teams, which would allow more small-ball teams to flourish.

It's an interesting concept. It's certainly hard to see why Speaker's 1912 year and Mick's 1961 year cost almost the same, when, while they're very close defensively, Speaker over time has produced 27 fewer runs per year. However, we have to keep in mind that the basic RC formula—while easy to figure and apply— is very crude. It doesn't deal with SB, for example, or baserunning speed, or DPs. So if all these factors come together and a player had high SB's with low CS, lots of speed on the basepaths and low DP, that could improve the player's real run value fairly significantly. Also, RC are known to skew a bit at the really high levels, exaggerating the hitter's value. Many contend that NERP (given in the player card values but not in the actuals) is more accurate, especially when measuring the best hitters, but it would be hard to apply in the actuals setting, since we don't have a record of GIDP, for example.

So the new pricing would have to be carefully balanced, and more realistic than the basic RC formula, or else the small-ballers would take over. A truly balanced pricing system allowing multiple strategies would be the ideal.

[BobBoone]

I play both slugging and small ball teams. I love them both. However, since a lot of big sluggers have great arms, they serve to offset the speed factor of the small ball teams. I am not certain exactly what can be done about this, but one thought I have is to remove 1-17 as a running speed cap. I don't feel that it is any longer needed anyway.

I guess that I am trying to say is whoever was the fasted in history, in this set is exactly the same speed as the maybe 300th fasted. What if Ichiro was a 1-20 runner. Is that going to "break" the game?

One more thought. What if we removed the based on 20 method and used a percentage instead. Now if Ichiro was a 1-97 runner and Stargell (gotta love him!) is a 1-15 runner, all of a sudden small ball becomes much more interesting. I do realize that it means changing everything like the arms and so on, but it would remove the 5% jumps between abilities.

The same is true with stealing. The slugging catchers also tend to have the great arms. You go out on a limb and build a stealing team only to find yourself in a division with Bench, Carter, and Howard. Your stealing days are over. Base it on a hundred, and manufacture a system that will make stealing and running matter. I loved watching the '85 Cards play!

Also, is 5 defensive ranges enough? I would love a system where Vizquel stands out defensively and is not just another 1 rated. Think if there were just a very few elite defensive players. I totally admire Cal Ripken Jr., but I can't imagine that at any point in his career he had the same range as Ozzie.

I know that this will not be easy, but it is at least food for thought. Jon.

[YountFan]

Base 20 just means 5% increments.

8 = 40%
17 = 85%

I could see 19 runners (95%) being the top.

[BobBoone]

[quote:1671043a9d="YountFan"]Base 20 just means 5% increments.

8 = 40%
17 = 85%

[/quote:1671043a9d]

I did understand this, perhaps I worded it poorly. What I am trying to say, is that the orginal rules were based on keeping the charts simple enough that you could sell the product to the masses.

We, in the online community, no longer need refer to the charts to determine the outcome of the play. Therefore, I suggest the we open things up a bit. Excluding the great Clemente for the moment, our outfielders arms change in 20% jumps compared to each other (this thinking also ignores the plus arm outfielders who are seldom used). Including the unique arm of Clemente, we are still using 16.67% jumps.

In other words, we have lumped all of our players into these huge sections to make for ease of use of the charts. If the original game had 100 different ranks for defensive range, we would have needed 100 charts. That would not be practical.

Back to the speed issue from my earlier post. A wider mix of arms coupled with a wider range of speed MIGHT help balance the game between slugging teams and smallball teams.

I hope that I am writing this in such a way as to say that this is an idea. It may or may not work, I just thought that I would throw it out there and see what our community thought.

Jon.