How to fix the mystery games

[coyote303]

The 70s and 80s need to be brought up to speed with Bullpen v2 and readjusted salaries. However, I'm talking about something that IMHO is broken.

How excited I was to play my first mystery league so long ago. It was a game within a game to figure out which card you might have. It was a race to try to figure things out by game 39 and, failing that, by game 81. How naive I was not to realize you could let HAL do all your work after one game. Just leave your lineup blank and see what HAL does. It's not a perfect system, but it is effective.

My last 90s league, a manager realized after the first series he got lucky on three 1-year wonder players. He went on to have a sizzling year. Your 1-year wonder players are (or, at least, should be) a big gamble but not so much when you know immediately if you have their good year.

One possible solution:

Have HAL set blank lineups according to salary, [i:06b67fec3d]average [/i:06b67fec3d]L/R balance, and fielding ratings--not on which year a player has.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Perhaps you disagree this is even a problem. Let's discuss.

[voovits]

It's no secret on how I stand regarding the matter, in fact I'm pretty sure I was the one you were referring to.
Just remember though, for each person who swears by HAL lineups, there is someone who thinks it's a bad idea.

I like it as is, but if it were necessary to change, you propose a solid solution. It still has some potential issues however, like injury substitutions and hwo to handle partial lineups. HAL has a tendency to rearrange pbatting orders and positions in partial lineups and/or when there is an injury, so that could lead to potential problems.

I say no change is necessary, but that's easy for me to say as I like to use it. I'm curious as to what others think.

[AdamKatz]

Its kinda stupid seeing people fight for Tim Teufel. Similarly, seeing people drop players after hitting a 1.000 OPS in the first series is funny.

Admitdly, I am guilty of using HAL but I would prefer if he started subbing people by some arbitrary method.

I am guessing that having him base decisions on an average would be too complicated and something that is not built into the system but if he used the best fielder at each position and did a lineup by salary, it would force people to make their own lineup and would cause minimal damage during mid-series injuries.

[YountFan]

I would rather not have the one year wonders. They are not the true representation on the scrub player he was. They can have some betters years for these cats, but monster years....no thank you

Playing the one hit wonders just one strategy. I can see the appeal of a 6m card for 75 cents. It's game within the game...we just have to deal with it

But I do like you line up idea...maybe do it alphabetically

[coyote303]

Another possibility--I'm just brainstorming here--is to assign each batter a single season to be used for HAL's decisions regardless of which season a hitter actually gets. The assigned season would naturally be his most typical.

[franky35]

Although I am probably one of the worst offenders of relying on HAL, I tend to agree with both comments. HAL should set lineups by salary or some other criterion to stop this method of determining years. It would make the mystery year leagues more challenging and competitive.

Regarding one year wonders, I think that SOM shouldn't feature any unusual year with fewer than 100 ABs but should include a fluke year when a player just happens to come up with a career year and there are enough ABs. That's baseball. For example, in 1996, Brady Anderson hit 50 HRs which was twice as much as any other year. So, 96 should be included on his card although it was by far his best year.

[YountFan]

[quote:a1c9107781="franky35"]Although I am probably one of the worst offenders of relying on HAL, I tend to agree with both comments. HAL should set lineups by salary or some other criterion to stop this method of determining years. It would make the mystery year leagues more challenging and competitive.

Regarding one year wonders, I think that SOM shouldn't feature any unusual year with fewer than 100 ABs but should include a fluke year when a player just happens to come up with a career year and there are enough ABs. That's baseball. For example, in 1996, Brady Anderson hit 50 HRs which was twice as much as any other year. So, 96 should be included on his card although it was by far his best year.[/quote:a1c9107781]
Nice idea on the 100 AB and Anderson comments, although Anderson's is probably drug related

[sidfernandez]

I'm kind of incredulous.

Are you saying that at the beginning of the season if you let HAL put together your lineup that he'll select the good cards out of your "deck"? thus providing a valuable resource to separate the chaff from the wheat?

I don't know whether be pleased to know this now or cry because it's taken me until now to find this out?

This is my favorite card format, but it is also the one with my worst overall record. I'm playing my 9th team to the tune of an overall winning percentage of 0.469, 1 playoff appearance.

Let me know if what I said was incorrect. Thanks

[franky35]

Sid, there are several threads about this technique. I think it can be helpful, but you should read the other threads to give you more information how it works (or doesn't work).

[fatdaddy054]

I see nothing to convince me that hal is the answer. So much of this game is chance good or bad as it were. Bruce Bochte with his 84 card in comisky hit both hands at a +300 ave. over 400ab. Now how does anyone explain that?


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