Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I'm new to the 80's game. How do I know which card I end up with? Why not just use an average card or let the owner decide which card to budget for?

thanks

Before the season begins, you don't know which card you have. You can sometimes figure it out later by injuries and results that could only occur in a certain year. For example, if you get a HBP + injury, and there is only one card on which that injury could occur, you know that's the year you have.

You can also take an educated guess sometimes for certain players, although that can be a bit risky. For example, if Chet Lemon hits sh1tload of triples vs. LHP, you can probably guess that you have his '81 card.

The biggest new player mistake is cutting a player too soon based on results from a few games.

It's a guessing game of analyzing stats versus R/L pitchers, K-W ratio, power, and such. UNLESS, you get an injury reveal. Player gets injured, you get reading from box score (such as "line out max") and compare his card readings for each year. If, for ex, the player has an injury on, say, a "ground out," versus a LHP, and only one of his cards has an injury reading of "ground out plus injury" versus a lefty, you have that card. In a lot of cases, the reading is "line out max plus injury," which can narrow the range to 2-3 cards, after which you can analyze his replay stats to see what ya got.

What an odd system. It changes the whole dynamic of drafting because there are some players who may have one bad card out of five years and I sure as heck don't want that one.

Also, I may draft a player because of the L/R splits and some players vary from season to season, so I draft a RH C to hit lefties and he ends up with a 4R split instead of 3L. That's not good either.

I love the idea of using older players like the 80's but I don't want to spend all the time and energy and not know what I'm getting...

The 80's game may not be for you. But, before you decide, give it a shot. The very fact that there is the potential for variation in each player from draft to draft is what keeps us 80's junkies coming back. You can draft the same team, same ballpark draft after draft with quite different results. :)

Mike

this plays alot differently from the other strat games. I think it is 100x more fun. You have to monitor your team and drop and add players. Unlike the other strat games where once the draft is over, your work is pretty much done.