Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

HA doesn't seem to like Larkin on my current team.
Just to see what would happen, I let HAL set my line-up for my series and while I lost the series 2-1, Larkin sat all three games.
Instead, HAL used Seitzer and Herr at SS, both 4/48 in the field for the 9th inning.
My next series, I set my line-up and in two of the three games, HAL pinch-hit for larkin and I ended up with Seitzer and Herr at SS again.
My concern is less that I have Larkin's worst season, but that I keep ending with poor fielders at SS.
Setting Uribe as a defensive replacement at SS is not a solution since HAL only PHs when you are losing.
Thoughts?

HAL is terrible.
I was just swept in a series that saw HAL

1- Leave Knepper (set to avoid RH Hitters) in to face 3 righties in a row (while lee smith and 2 righty specialists sat), and blow a lead. Only then did HAL decide to bring in Lee Smith.
2- substitute uribe at 2b while concepcion, who qualifies at 2b stayed at ss
3- subbed castillo (4 range in rf & lf) in right, and moved guerrero to left (4 range in left/ 3 in right)----for no apparent reason.

:shock:

HAL STINKS!

[quote:c084b1ff22]1- Leave Knepper (set to avoid RH Hitters) in to face 3 righties in a row (while lee smith and 2 righty specialists sat), and blow a lead. Only then did HAL decide to bring in Lee Smith.[/quote:c084b1ff22]

Bernie is supposed to be looking at bullpen logic for one of his next tasks to improve the game. He has asked that illogical HAL bullpen usage stuff should be posted in the main thread on the Strat-O board.

Post a link to the boxscore in question and make a notation on whether or not L. Smith and/or the other relievers were in the game before this one. (ie., were the relievers that were not used tired?) Post a link to the boxscore here also.

I have more of a problem with line-up illogic.
I don't find HAL does as bad a job managing the bullpen then it does managing your line=up.
For example, in my opening season series experiment, it used Tartabull, a 4, in RF and DHed George Hendrick. It sat Magee and used Jerry Browne in CF. In other words, it totally disregards defensive ratings.
And that happens all the time when injuries occur. You lose someone in the first game of a series and are discover you ended up with your best defensive infielders on the bench and a couple of 4/48s playing for the last two games of the series.
And it wouldn't be that hard to fix. Just make the default for replacing injured players defense. So if you lose your ss, at least you'd end up with your next best defensive ss in the line-up.
However, I do think that there is logic to how HAL selects which players to use. Obviously it is an offensive stat, the question is which one.
If, for example, it is batting average, when I let HAL pick my line-up for the opening series, it looked for the highest BA at each position and used that player. So when it picked Buck Martinez to catch instead of Ted Simmons, it could be telling me I have 1979 .270 BA Martinez and the 1982 .269 BA Simmons (and a injury to Martinez in that series tells me he is either the 1979 or 1983 .253 BA Martinez. And if it isn't BA, why Martinez instead of Simmons?)
Unless of course, these decisions are totally random just to make it harder to identify which mystery cards we have

I believe I've seen elsewhere on these boards an explanation for the problem you highlight, yak. And that is that HAL looks to HR/slugging as the determining factor, not average, OBP, and certainly not defensive rating! And that blows, as most of us structure our teams to have the nine money guys out there to begin with. Those remaining on the bench generally are defense-first guys, or bench power for the most part. The power guys are the only ones HAL utilizes for injury replacements. A choice was made when HAL's brain was assembled. That choice can certainly be changed. But better yet would be to leave it up to us to set up depth charts by position that HAL would be asked to follow if possible. That way WE can choose the substitution philosophy...

[quote:037667ad2a]But better yet would be to leave it up to us to set up depth charts by position that HAL would be asked to follow if possible. That way WE can choose the substitution philosophy... [/quote:037667ad2a]

Depth charts by position are available in the CD ROM game. They are very useful too. Too bad TSN couldn't get that ported into the game in addition to SuperHAL bullpen management and SuperHAL baserunning. :roll:

For what it is worth, if you don't set up your depth charts in the CD ROM game, you'll get a lot of illogical player movement like Yak described. It's stupid, I know. At least the game maker recognized that more control was needed and implemented the fix for it with depth charts by position.

If it [i:037667ad2a]weren't[/i:037667ad2a] for the [b:037667ad2a]mystery card[/b:037667ad2a] option here in the 80's, I don't think I'd have even bothered getting involved with Strat-O online. It is void of many of the tools that the CD ROM program provides that make the game interesting.

I'm not sure about the HR/slugging hypothesis.
In the case of Martinez starting over Simmons, if I have the '79 Martinez and the '82 Simmons, Simmons had more HR and a higher slugging percentage as well as a better OBP.
The only stat that Martinez had which beat Simmons is BA, .270 to .269.
Plus, Martinez was a 5L that year while Simmons was a 1L and we were facing an RHP.
In every other Simmons card, he beats Martinez across the board in all categories.
I like the idea of a depth chart, however.