Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

In my second league. First league I was 9 games under .500 IN ONE RUN GAMES. In this league I am 10 under through about 110 games IN ONE RUN GAMES. Is this generally variance or is there something to keep an eye out for?

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1415407 - Team 1
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1411955 - Team 2 (current)


Joe

Edit to reflect I suck in one run games. No idea how to fix.

You're playing in an extreme power park (particularly to left- handed bats) so stacking your line-up with left-handed power who have 8 BP hrs (or close to it) and getting SPs who have low BP hrs is probably a good idea and at least to me it looks like you don't have quite enough left-handed power bats and you don't appear to have pitchers who give up few hrs.

Let me cherry- pick through my teams to find a good result...
http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/sim/1411046

Miller is an extreme power park and I loaded up on the power bats.

Here is a better example of a team taking advantage of a power park:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1412113

Thanks for letting me look at your squads. I did a poor job of ranking my hitters in the draft and failed to get many of the guys you have on those teams. I also seem to not have the courage to go with a starter that is under $3M. Just emotionally it looks like too much of a risk, however the results tell me that pitching is like a box of chocolates. I think I will try one more league in Camden and just go hitters and try to pick up pitching in the waiver period.

Is having a .500 record in one run games more luck or are there settings to avoid? I have worked to ensure that my pitchers don't pitch tired. Is there anything else setting wise to look at? It may be that I just need to score more runs and give up fewer runs. If there is hope for this season, I am interested. The final 33 games are within division so I haven't given up yet.

Joe

You have to be careful with using cheap pitchers--they have to fit the ballpark. Guys like Strasberg and Bumgarner are good for low power parks. A guy like Treinen is good for high power, low baserunner parks and you probably want to have to good defense behind him. And you probably want a high- end relieved like Betances or Sanchez to be able to come in the game in the 5th to bail out your cheap guys. But Camden is a high-power, slightly above-average baserunner park so I think I would not want to go too cheap--I would like guys with 1.10 WHIP or better with around a hr every 15 innings or thereabouts. And you spent a lot on relief and Smith is good but the rest of guys I'm not too keen on. If you're going to spend a million or less on a reliever they should be extremely one-sided--Dunn is too even so he gets hit by everyone. And Otero is a R2 that is susceptible to lefties. Basically, if I am going to go cheap for a million or less I just want those guys to face guys from their good side and Hal to replace them when a hitter from their bad side comes. I thought I have read somewhere that checking don't against certain side hitters only comes up when the pitcher comes into the game . I am not sure. But I do know that Hal will make repeated switches if you have got guys in your bullpen that only get only side out. But I think that Hal is less likely to do that if you have a R2 out there. Not sure about that either but I have been burned by cheap R2s. The R2s you have are not cheap but they are only really good at one side. Anyway, my theory on relief if it's cheap then they need to get one-side out. For my high leverage relievers then they need to get both sides out and cost at least 3 million. But that's just my philosophy. But I don't want to spend 2.5 on a reliever for one out or who stays in the game against hitters he doesn't match up against. You can get a really expensive set of starters and pitch them until the drop and just have cheap one -sided guys in your bullpen. Lots of ways to handle it.

Sometimes, it may reflect the lack of a closer, but this seems not to be your case. In your case, it might reflect that you're not overpowering your opponents. Yet, playing in Cadmen, your offense should pull you over your opponent more often so that you're not into 1-run game issue.

Next time, try spending a bit less on your relief, so that you have more money spent on your offense. If you are to spend 15M-20M on your starting pitchers, then you should really concentrate on having no more than two very good relievers, a nice setup man that can pick up some middle innings and a nice closer whom you set as a back-up set-up man in case the first set-up man is tired. Then maybe spend 1M+ for a third string and 1M top on a backup closer, and complete your bullpen with a very cheap R2-R3 mop-up. That should leave you with a nice 50M to spend on your offense.

If you spend more around 25M on your starting pitchers, then you should set them to pitch as long as they can, and limit yourself to one excellent reliever that plays both set-up and closer.

Thank you,

That makes sense. I went with the decent reliever core to help the fact that in my first season I seemed to lose all my one run games in the late innings. I felt/feel that a bad reliever kills you more than a bad bench player.

If there is one more season left to play this cardset, I will stay in Camden and just beef up with hitters and pray to win 11-8.

Joe

Don't lose too much sleep over 1-run results since it's mostly random how you do in them.