by gbrookes » Wed Jul 21, 2010 5:15 pm
I think that there are very interesting strategy and roster implications for the extra running decisions from this rule. For about a year now I have been emphasizing good arms for outfielders, and I have been carefully reading the game results.
The teams that I have run with good outfielder arms DON'T lead the league in assists. They are not even close to leading the league in outfield assists, to date. BUT, what I notice in the game results is that many, many times runners hold up instead of taking extra bases. The way I see it, this results in reduced runs scored in many cases! I think I actually like this strategic result better than seeing more runners going and being thrown out, since I think the strategic impact of getting runners to hold up consistently is an even greater advantage (compared to more bases being taken with, say, a 30% thrown out ratio). In other words, I think HAL gets overly cautious with baserunning when he is faced with a bevy of strong outfield arms.
By the same token, I have been taking care to have good running ratings (even if the stealing ratings are not stellar), and setting the running strategy option to aggressive, in order to counteract HAL being too cautious for the offense on my teams. I really haven't seen many cases where I questioned HAL's baserunning decisions, with these settings and roster strategies. Maybe other managers would not like the chances that I take on baserunning, but I think it is working well.
So far in online strat (2 years), I have done pretty well with small ball parks. I had one magical team in 2008 that was set in Camden, but other than that I have not done so well with homerun parks. So maybe it is about one particular roster and game strategy that is working well for me. Maybe with other rosters and team strategies my approaches are not working as well. But it really does seem to work in small ball parks like Fenway (also have had some successes at PNC).
As always, I am interested in other people's thoughts on this, and their own approaches and results!
Cheers!
:)
Geoff Brookes