Read the Cards!

[bleacher_creature]

It has been said many times and in many ways: the cards tell you everything you need to know.

Someone in the the Scott Proctor thread pointed out this guy is a 9R not an E for balance. They made the point "this is why you have to read the cards".

I have had my ratings book since January I think, and I know what "the book" says on a lot of players. However, experienced Strat players ultimately know to read the cards. They will say things like, "I'll never go for a card like Giambi's that is all walks and few hits.

C. Duffy is a .330 hitter in real life or whatever, but his '06 card has more hits than Rod Carew's '69 card.

I bring this up because I think part of the reason I just won a '69 Championship, but cannot win in 2006, is that I rely on the book way too much, whereas 1969 doesn't have a book (or does it?).

Again, as someone once said (paraphrasing): [b:2dc345e38b]"Everything you need to know is on the cards".[/b:2dc345e38b]

[bleacher_creature]

Take a look at Manny's card for example. It is no wonder that he is hitting .235 after about 250 PAs, while playing in SBC (1-16;1-7 for RHBs). Sure he might be losing a few HRs over Fenway (1-10), but Fenway singles are lower than SBC (Fenway = 1-14).

My guess is that Manny will pretty much only match his .293 AVG in Coors.

[bigmahon]

Wow, this thread hits home with me. 8)

I have had good success in the past exclusively reading cards. I managed to win 12 titles and make it to the Tour finals last season by reading the cards. This year, for some unknown reason, I decided to purchase some ratings info, figuring it would take me to the "next level". Boy was I wrong. A couple of hundred bucks later I have the worst winning percentage of my career, and 0 titles in the 2006 set. It has been a miserable showing. :cry:

Bottom line (I think) is that the ratings info pulled me away from the cards themselves, not a good thing for me (obviously). As I wade back into the waters, I will be dumping the ratings and going back to what I do best: [b:88710018c3]reading the cards[/b:88710018c3]. 8)

[visick]

I usually do both. :lol:

[visick]

FWIW-Manny has 0 BP singles vs. LH's.

[cummings2]

Agree.

When I first started I was completely lost. After my first strat team ever (last year -105 losses) I tried to understand the cards better.

Unfortunately for me the "ratings way" of reading the cards was not intuitive to me.

Fortunately, I came across Luckyman's ratings that were posted for last year's set. Reading those ratings got me to paying more attention to the cards in the efforts of trying to figure out why those players were ranked high (or low). Out of that process came my current way of reading cards, certainly far from great but it keeps me afloat.

Even though I have the ratings disk for this set it's still not the book I go by. It's more "natural" for me to convert roll chances to Averages (BA, GbAs, EBs...).

Lately my card reading has gone through some changes, but I still do my thing through reading 'em cards.

[bleacher_creature]

[quote:f643bdee82="socalchiro"]FWIW-Manny has 0 BP singles vs. LH's.[/quote:f643bdee82]

I knew that going in (from the book of course). How did he hit .293 though? He faced his share of LHPs.

In theory Manny should get some singles off the LH pitchers' cards. Anyone disagree with that?

I mean, people always use the term "bad rolls". Must not be getting the rolls etc...

How about...let's not call them flaws...let's call them "idosyncrasies", unique to Strat cards.

[ANDREWLAITURI]

I have to wholeheartedly agree with this thread. I've been around since Strat started on TSN and at first I was totally lost too. I doggedly kept after it though and my winning percentages started to creep higher over consecutive seasons as I learned to start card reading, never reaching the level of stardom achieved by some here but improving anyways. And then because I got lazy or whatever? I thought I could just glance at a card without taking the trouble of breaking the card down and have success! Boy was I wrong!!
My last two 80's teams? Disasters! :shock: My 06 teams so far? Fighting to get to .500! :oops:

Yep! It's back to the card reading for me as well. :roll: