Is HAL an idiot or is he trying to tell me something?

[hallerose]

Besides waiting for an injury reveal and how Hal's uses them, there are a lot of other indicators of which year you have. The best are probably L/R splits, strange events (triples, HBP, etc.) and walk/strike out ratios. Use it all information and make that best decision possible -- you probably want to be right 90+% -- with your big stars you don't want to drop them too early because the pick ups are just not as good -- if it is an average player with 5 very similar players in the free agent pool, try someone else especially when the drop penalty is 5%.

[Paul5757]

You have to take into consideration the pitchers faced, the park effects, and the possible cards of the other hitters in your lineup. It would be a mistake just to think that "HAL batted Rice 9th one time vs. a LHP so I must have his worst card."

Splits and stats are nice, but you can really tell anything from them at the start. Half the rolls are coming off the pitcher's card, so it'll take at least 200 ab's before you can tell anything. And even then, a couple of odd rolls might screw you up.

[BDWard]

Thanks for all the great comments everyone. Here's an update: I picked up Harold Baines and let HAL pick the LFer vs. both RHPs and LHPs. HAL always kept Rice out of the lineup in favor of Baines against RHPs and several times let Baines play ahead of Rice against a LHP! Note that I have pretty good reason to believe that it isn't exactly Baines best card either. I started to platoon Rice somewhat with Baines. Rice did OK against LHPs, but with no power, and Wrigley Field is home! He struggled against RHPs. Rice had just 1 HR. 1 DO and 3 RBI in 64 at bats and was hitting an anemic .242, less than .200 vs. RHPs. He was killing me. Apparently everyone reads the blogs because there was absolutely no interest from anyone in a possible trade and I sent out feelers to the entire league. I finally had to cut him and although it has been almost a week, no one has picked him up. It looks as though HAL's early hints about Rice were on the money.

[kidskid]

[quote:0ce74dc144="voovits"]If you want to think HAL is a complete idiot and does not know anything in this game, then I hope to see you in a league in my division someday.[/quote:0ce74dc144]