Archive of SportingNews.com's old SOM Baseball forum

I am getting ready to play in my first No DH league. If I draft a strong starting rotation how do I manage the pitchers hitting. I want to keep a guy like Carlton in for 8 innings and not hit for him right? If this is true then I shouldn't waste money on a bench player to pinch hit much correct? I guess I am not sure how to handle the whole pitchers batting thing. Any basic ideas.

THANKS!

There is not much you could do about it really. HAL will pinch-hit for your pitcher if he deems fit. From my understanding, pitcher fatigue settings are not a factor in determining whether or not HAL pinch hits. I could be wrong though.
You should always have at least 1 decent pinch hitter vrs right and 1 vs left handed pitching, not too expensive, but have at least something.
Pitchers will always bat 9th, and even the best hitting pitcher can't hit very well, so you generally disregard pitcher hitting when choosing your staff. Their actual cards can be found here if you want to know what they are.
http://somonline.bluwiki.com/go/Pitcher_Hitting_Cards

Here are the 8 best hitting starting pitchers in my current 60M league:

Micha Owings 8N .327 .327 .490 1HR
Felix Hernandez 7N .307 .329 .507 3HRs
Adam Wainwright 8N .296 .311 .451 .762 2HRs
Cha Seung Baek 6N .261 .255 .478 3HRs
Jason Marquis 8N .250 .262 .406 2HRs
Jake Peavy 4W .234 .242 .266 0HRs
CC Sabathia 7N .222 .247 .378 3HRs
Matt Cain 6N .211 .241 .303 1HR

Looks like it makes more of a difference than I would think. Might be somewhat due to the smaller salary cap having them face more mediocre pitchers.

[code:1:c4b250b61a]
Name, First AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB BA OBP SLG OPS
Owings, Micah 60 7 16 6 0 1 8 4 .267 .308 .417 .724
Marshall, Sea 51 8 15 1 1 0 6 6 .294 .356 .353 .709
Wainwright, A 67 6 16 3 1 2 6 1 .239 .250 .403 .653
Zambrano, Car 48 8 11 3 0 0 6 6 .229 .304 .292 .595
Hendrick, Mar 52 4 10 3 0 0 5 3 .192 .236 .250 .486
Overall, SP 278 33 68 16 2 3 31 20 .242 .292 .342 .634
[/code:1:c4b250b61a]

I happen to have the top 4 pitcher-hitter in my team, and 5 of the top 10. Here is the performance of all my 5 SPs. I estimate the value of the batting performance of my pitchers to roughly 3-4 wins.

Marc,

A few years ago we were discussing whether the pitcher's hitter cards are indeed being used. This came up when people pointed out completed leagues where the pitchers with the best batting averages were sometimes "1" hitters. What did we conclude? As I recall, I think we decided that indeed the hitter cards were being used, but that the best-to-worst pitcher hitting cards were not exactly 8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Do you remember what we concluded?

Hi Glenn,

Honestly, I don't recall this discussion. But to answer your question, going from memory,

8N-5-8w-4-7N-6N-3-2-1

But I wouldn't hold my breath!!

But [u:f4f282d9e8]you do[/u:f4f282d9e8] think that the online game engine is using the 8 different cards (instead of just using a Pitcher 1 card for everyone), correct?

Wainwright, Owings, and Zambrano are all 8N. Marshall and Hendrickson are 4s. It seems like he believes it and it's working. I'm not sure if there are any other 8s in the '08 set. It can't be an accident that he's got them on his team and is talking about it in the strategy section. We'll see what he says.

I am definitive that Strat is using different cards. A pitcher with a 1w cannot hit homeruns. The homeruns by Owings and Wainright are possible if they are normal hitters, which they are (8N).

Definitively drafted on purpose.

I think it's certain that HAL is not using the #1 pitching card for everyone. In the league I posted above, of the top 8 hitting starters not a single one as a 1 hitter. 1s make up well over half of all pitchers. ;)

The _real_ question is does being a better hitter play into pricing? In a DH league, you might be overpaying for guys like CC and Owings since they will never hit. If hitting is _not_ taken into account, those guys might be bargains in non-DH leagues.