Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I went with cheap starters in a pitcher 's park but with three excellent relievers; on offense I had seven .300 hitters with some speed. My defense is excellent. The team is putrid.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/real/1412587

From what I can see, your offense has some players who are much better vs rhp, but you faced over 35% of lefty pitching. In that context, players like Morneau and Philipps, who are good buys in my opinion, become under-productive.

As for pitching, when playing in small-ball stadium, I prefer to rely on cheap pitchers who have low whip. You can't win if their whip is as high as 1.50.

As for the relief, When you have three top-notch relievers, the challenge is to maximize their usage. To optimize the investment, you need to have two of them throw between 160 and 200 meaningful innings and have the closer pitch 140 high-leverage innings, and in my opinion, in a stadium like Angels stadium, it's too tough to accomplish---there are not enough singles and homeruns, and thereby not enough opportunities for Hal to get nervous and call in the relief early as often as you need to make the investment pay. Stadiums like Coors field are easier to work around on this aspect.

Finally, looking at the misc page, you se m to have a few bad breaks here and there...and you got breaks, they were meaningless, like having 49 rolls out of 68 on Collapso's card...I'm sure you would have preferred to have another player beneficiate from that break.

Also a lot of high injury guys with very low .oba bench replacements getting lots of at bats..

Thanks for the input, guys--good points. I didn't understand the 1.5 WHIP comment, though. (Perhaps you could clarify that, Marc--did you mean 1.2 is the cut-off point?) I have had trouble with making small-ball teams work. I have done better with power teams...for some reason I'm trying a small ball team in the semis.

And I never would have thought about three reliever strategy not being effective in a low single, low HR park.

At 20 games under this early in a season, regardless of whether the team is well put together or not, I think it is safe to say bad luck has played a huge roll in the record--I have seen quite a few 80M teams drop below 60M with drop penalties and most of those win more games percentage wise.

Other than the SP giving up to many hits (but in your defense, it is a low singles park too)---I think Morneau is hitting to much vs LH--Personally I avoided Morneau this season as the cost for him is a bit high as a platoon, and I don't like him at all going both ways. Morneau alone does not account for the horrible record though, it is just one of those bad luck teams.

I would rather have Adams and Butler or Valencia in a platoon than Morneau alone (though Adams has horrible clutch, batting him 2nd or 3rd may help a bit with the bad clutch), drop Callaspo and use the extra $ for a bit better starting pitcher somewhere---

That 3rd expensive reliever is a gamble with most teams. (I do it often though) Will he get enough innings to be worth the salary over a better hitter that plays every day???

One owner that has a winning record for the most part advised me to get the money into the game as often as possible, it's probably not quite that simple as how the players fit into your park (and the division/league as a whole) is also important, but getting the money into the game as often as possible will usually avoid poor teams.

Collectively, the whip of your 4 cheap starters is roughly 1.55 (with Cole as high as 1.81). It's too high. Part of it, I'm sure is bad luck--Cole is not as bad. But my point is that, if my team plays in a low-power stadium, I don't mind losing the homerun battle, but I want my team's collective whip to be among the best. It's difficult to give a cut-off, because it depends on how much you spend on your offense and pitching, but yes 1.20 could be a cut-off if you didn't spend heavily on pitchers

Actually, there's a link between What I just wrote and my point about bullpen usage.

Here's a team (not mine) that was succesful with 3 stellar reliever, all with 150+ innings.

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/sim/1411109

That team played in Great American, a high-power stadium. In that stadium, you can afford to have cheap starters with high whip, as long as they avoid the 3-run homerun, and this is exactly what that team got from its cheap pitching---actually the whip is perhaps lower than expected. In any case, because they allow more baserunners, with agressive bullpen settings, Hal will turn to the relievers more often and more quickly and therefore it's easier to full the bullpen of innings. In small-ball stadium, if you look for low whip cheap starters, they might have a few more 1-2-3 innings and therefore you don't need as much bullpen.

Marcpelletier! (and any one else caring to comment)


So take a look at this team:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/real/1411494

So far they are doing pretty well - but my intent was to load up on hitting, have four token * 4-day starters and then get the best relievers I could still afford. Collectively and individually my four relievers have better ERAs and WHIPs than the four starters. But it doesn't seem the relievers are getting as many innings as I would have thought. Any thoughts on what I should have the starters and relievers set up as F ratings and relief roles.

I don't know if this is comparing apples to oranges, ATG8 vs. 20XX, but same theory, isn't it?

One thing I notice is your players, while decent average hitters have low OBP's in general. I think this bears out in the fact your opponents walked IIRC about 120 more than you own players walked.

The other surprise is you were not outscored that much overall, the run differential is far closer than the record would indicate. This is often the sign of a weak bullpen, but that is not the case with your team.

Definitely not a team that walks a lot. What I don't understand is the .250 batting average. Granted the park knocks down batting average but Turner hitting .243 (.340 batting average), Pollock hitting .242 (.302 BA), Morneau hitting .262 (.319 BA), Brantley hitting .284 (.327 BA)--3 other .300 hitters not getting dinged as much, but no one hitting better than expected. Something about this offense that just doesn't click.