Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

in the AL only league, I managed to trade away Dwight Evans, who at the time had 4 triples in 97 ABS leading me to beilieve that I had one of his 2 best seasons. (see below)
SIM RED 39 140 29 39 7 1 9 28 28 21 3 1 .279 .536 .396 .932
SIM COM 24 97 19 31 3 4 5 17 18 19 0 0 .320 .588 .426 1.014
TOTAL 63 237 48 70 10 5 14 45 46 40 3 1 .295 .557 .407 .964

for some strange reason, I decided to trade him for Don Mattingly, for 2 reasons, 1 - I have never played with mattingly, one of my faves growing up. and 2 - I had no left handed hitters on my team. anyway, here is mattingly's card so far.

SIM RED 24 100 13 29 5 0 4 16 5 11 0 0 .290 .460 .321 .781
SIM COM 39 170 17 49 13 2 5 23 7 18 0 0 .288 .477 .316 .793
TOTAL 63 270 30 78 18 2 9 39 12 29 0 0 .289 .470 .318 .788

I figured that when I made the deal, that it would be improbable that he would have been able to hit 4 homers in Fenway in 100AB if it was indeed his worst card, but after a third of a season, he has the OPS of his worst season. is there any reason to hope that i indeed did not make the mistake of trading a stud card in hand for a dud in the bush?

By the way, since making that trade my outfield has been in a shambles... check it out if you would like. (oh yeah I made a mistake by trying to pick up a non eligible player for Jim Dwyer, only to find Mr Dwyer picked up a fter i found out that my pickup was ineligible) If you know of any good AL scrap heep players out there feel free to toss them out...

http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/80s/team/team_other.html?user_id=73623&stats=sim

Mattingly is "N" power both ways in his worst year so nothing is ever really improbable.

I show that at his current pace he is going to hit between 16-19 HR's by season's end. He's also on pace to hit between 44-48 2B's.

Mattingly's card can be a little tricky at first to confirm by stats because his worst card isn't all that bad. In the right ballparks he could perform quite well.

You still have to make your own conclusions though.

Check out the 'Stats, Stats, Stats...' thread in this message board.
Lots of debate about how you can tell which player you have.
And, with a consistent player like Mattingly, the difference between his best and his worst seasons can be quite small.
But another consideration is that the game is weighted towards outs. All batters have a greater likelihood of getting out, than getting a hit.
Plus, since the better hitters being used is offset by the better pitchers being used, in a typical game there is probably 8 to 12 hits and around 4 walks per team. So, that means that again, it is more likely someone will get out than get on base. It's why I think HRs are the most importance offensive category. The difference between a .300 hitter and a .250 hitter is less than a hit every 10 at bats. But if that .250 hitter has a greater likelihood of driving in runs and scoring a run on one of your 10 hits, the more runs you will score.
But I digress, given that each at bat is an individual event, how a player does this at bat doesn't having any connection to his next, it is possible that your Mattingly is running into a string of outs. 27 batters have to get out each game, only 14 or so get on base, so someone has to be getting out. In your case, it's Mattingly.
Yountfan has a concept, again see the 'Stats, Stats, Stats...' thread, that for every 27 games, a typical player will have 2 great streaks, 2 average performance runs, and two slumps.
So your Mattingly may be in the midst of a slump. Plus, Yountfan's premise does not offer any order, so it could be slump, average, slump, etc.
But that is the average. If he put all his performances on a bell curve, we would probably see that there are players who never have a slump, perhaps have three or four hot streaks, or are consistent all season, and others guys never have a streak.
I faced the same dilemma with Dave PArker and dumped him after 100 abs because his average, slugging and OBP were all terrible and, even worse, during those 100 abs, he had one extra base hit. It as hard because Parker and Mattingly both have four great years and one decent.
Mattingly does have great D, decent numbers even in his worst year, is a left-handed bat who hits LHPs fairly well, so in total, he probably has more going for him.
So while youmay have his worst year, there is also a strong possibility that you have the '85 or '87 years.
Plus, you could drop him and end up with a layer with less upside and more downside.