Toughest ball park to put together a winner...

[motherscratcher]

[quote:4111d5cc82="rburgh"]Or, alternatively, FUDU might be one of the few with a good feel for what to do in neutral parks. As I said, I think it's possible that there are managers of which this is true.

I just think that most of us find it much easier to simply eliminate LH or RH power, or power altogether, or simply suppress all hitters. And I have a lot of empirical evidence to support this statement.[/quote:4111d5cc82]

I agree with you. Except about FUDU. I was in that league. It was the competition. He got lucky.

Personally, the only parks I've had even modest success in ar small all parks. In a neutral park, I have no idea how you draw any sort of advantage.

[FUDU]

[quote:839571c54a="rburgh"]Or, alternatively, FUDU might be one of the few with a good feel for what to do in neutral parks. As I said, I think it's possible that there are managers of which this is true.

I just think that most of us find it much easier to simply eliminate LH or RH power, or power altogether, or simply suppress all hitters. And I have a lot of empirical evidence to support this statement.[/quote:839571c54a]

Well it kind of puts everything back on the odds of the dice, no? That is what I was thinking when I picked that park, still took the approach to no ballpark HRs on my staff. Hell IIRC there was only 1 possible HR on any of my 4 starters cards. Not sure of the why, but I had the best staff in that league (100mil) and was the only team with 4 15+ game winners.

Either way I can now easily see the advantage or value in building an extreme lineup for an extreme park.

[rburgh]

More data:

I have gone through the records of this year's Barnstormers. In each of the six rounds, a prize was given for the best record in each of the ballpark groupings.

Ballpark groupings were :

Group 1 - extreme pitchers' parks
Group 2 - moderate pitchers' parks
Group 3 - neutral parks
Group 4 - moderate hitters' parks
Group 5 - extreme hitters' parks
Group 6 - LH parks
Group 7 - RH parks

Round 1 - $100 million, DH

Group 1 - 96 wins, 6/9 teams had 81 or more wins
Group 2 - 94, 10/16
Group 3 - 85, 3/13
Group 4 - 103, 10/17
Group 5 - 92, 4/10
Group 6 - 96, 8/17
Group 7 - 94, 11/18

Round 2 - $80 million, no DH

Group 1 - 96, 12/23
Group 2 - 104, 16/26
Group 3 - 88, 6/11
Group 4 - 87, 5/10
Group 5 - 83. 3/6
Group 6 - 100, 8/16
Group 7 - 95, 7/10

Round 3 - $100 M, split (pre-war, no DH; post-war, DH)

1 - 97, 8/15
2 - 93, 7/12
3 - 89, 4/9
4 - 90, 5/12
5 - 96, 12/20
6 - 90, 8/16
7 - 96, 10/17

Round 4 - $100 M, no DH

1 - 87, 5/10
2 - 93, 4/11
3 - 92, 5/13
4 - 90, 3/12
5 - 91, 8/15
6 - 93, 12/16
7 - 101, 14/19

Round 5 - $80 M, no DH

1 - 106, 12/17
2 - 98, 5/11
3 - 88, 8/16
4 - 90, 9/20
5 - 88, 5/10
6 - 95, 4/11
7 - 95, 6/11

Round 6 - $100 M, DH

1 - 96, 10/14
2 - 104, 8/14
3 - 91, 2/9
4 - 93, 7/20
5 - 94, 6/18
6 - 100, 9/12
7 - 97, 5/8

Aggregate managers with 81 or more wins in each ballpark group:

1 - 53/88
2 - 50/90
3 - 28/71
4 - 39/91
5 - 38/79
6 - 49/88
7 - 53/83

Note that neutral parks did relatively much better when there was no DH, and in smaller caps, while the $100 million cap DH leagues were dominated by LH parks, RH parks, and pitchers' parks.

Power and extreme power parks fared really poorly - this surprised me at the $100 million cap but not at the $80 million.

I think this data is pretty conclusive. I have drawn the following conclusions:

1. FUDU, you are one weird MoFo. :P
2. Teams in power and extreme power parks do far less well than I have believed up until now.
3. Moderate pitchers' parks are a lot better places to play than I have previously thought.
4. RH slanted parks are by far the easiest to do well in. This was no great surprise to me; there just aren't very many pitchers who totally suppress RH bats.
5. Small ball is a very successful strategy at $80 and $100 million caps.

But there is a significant amount of rock-paper-scissors in this game, too. If there are 11 teams in small ball parks, the other guys is going to have a huge advantage unless ALL 11 small ball managers understand how to adjust their team against the odd man out. In general, I am usually happy to be in a "different" ballpark than the rest of the league has chosen.

[The Last Druid]

Sample size is too small for any valid conclusions.