Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

KJ, who has recently joined our game, asked me to place this question in the appropriate forum. Have at it:

Who "wins" when you have a more dominant LHP against RH hitters and a lineup of RH hitters who hit LHPs better?
Thanks,
KJ

Strat has a 50/50 system - the dice rolls half the time on the pitcher’s card and half on the hitter’s.
My view is that the 50/50 system devalues the dominant pitchers since half the time the pitcher has no effect on the outcome.
So to answer your question, it’s a tie which means the hitters win more in Strat than would in real life against a true top pitcher.

Thanks for the reply. That was part of my last post and you answered some of it, but not that question so I figured I'd just repost that one. Again, thanks for your answer. Interesting. I get what you're saying. Looking at the 2019 cards, most of the top dollar pitchers aren't overbalanced, so I guess there's that. I'm still having a hard time removing a name and the associated skills with the numbers and I need to keep remembering that. John Doe with the associated numbers and putting together the best lineup I can is the answer I guess given you saying that half the rolls have nothing to do with the pitcher. It's hard to adjust to this game!
Be well,
KJ

This is a fun question.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any easy answers.

What does “dominant” mean here? Does it mean Ryu? Or does it just mean any 9R (ie, any hard reverse lefty)?

When you are likely to face RHP most of the time, why do you care about a lineup of lefty killers? What are you hoping to accomplish by this?

The 50/50 chance of rolling a pitcher or hitter card does not equate the way I think it is being implied. A dominant pitcher card roll (or even a mediocre pitcher card roll for that matter) is far more likely to end in an out. So the pitchers card, while it only gets half the rolls, gets a disproportionate number of outs versus the hitters card. So there’s that.

It’s a 4-D puzzle, and the deeper you get in the weeds, the more complicated the answer becomes. What kind of park are we talking about (split rolls)? The defense? How many innings can the starter go? If I start an S4 reverse lefty on quick hook (like Patrick Sandoval for $0.80), could I paralyze your offense with an R3 hard righty reliever (like Daniel Mengden for $0.96) that quickly enters the game? Yes, I could (and I do).

The name of the game is exploiting weakness. There are an infinite number of ways to do that, but step one is recognizing the weaknesses. The only time you see “50/50” in SOM Online is when you have 12 competent managers who know what they are doing. The bell curve for wins shrinks dramatically in tour leagues and vet leagues versus (most) generic autoleagues.

The great irony in Strat is that in a vet league, very often no one wins 90 games (which to the naked eye looks like nothing but “chance”), but in a generic autoleague, even a rando can win 110 games (which to the naked eye looks like “skill”).

tdkearns wrote:Strat has a 50/50 system - the dice rolls half the time on the pitcher’s card and half on the hitter’s.
My view is that the 50/50 system devalues the dominant pitchers since half the time the pitcher has no effect on the outcome.
So to answer your question, it’s a tie which means the hitters win more in Strat than would in real life against a true top pitcher.

I disagree that SOM's 50-50 systems favors hitters. In real life, a dominant pitcher will still give up hits. Let's take an example. Matty Alou hit .342 in 1966. Against right handed pitching, here's how he would do if every roll came off of his card:

AB 106
H 43
HBP 2
Avg. .405

But if he comes up '62 Hoyt Wilhem, who has few hits and walks on his card, Alou's totals (assuming equal rolls pitcher and batter) would look like this:

AB 207
H 47
BB 7
HBP 2
Avg. .227

Fielders would give up some hits on X chances, so Matty would probably hit around .240 if he faced Wilhelm every at bat. That seems pretty dominant to me, holding a .342 hitter to the low two hundreds in batting average.

Furthermore, one of SOM's competitors grades pitchers A, B, C, or D (along with some additional ratings that affect walks and strikeouts). These letter grade ratings only affect 15-20 percent of dice rolls. Nevertheless, in the game an A pitcher is dominant and a D pitcher is terrible. So, 50 percent is plenty to differentiate between a star pitcher and an average pitcher and a dud. In fact, it can be done with less.

On any given roll, it can be frustrating that your star pitcher gives up a key hit when the roll is off of the hitter's card. However, while your ace's card did not affect the outcome, it did realistically affect the odds of a hit given up prior to the dice roll.

SOM has a couple of minor flaws. However, its 50-50 system of batter versus pitcher is not one of them.

Actually, it favors the hitter MORE than 50/50/ Since 30 of the pitchers 108 chances are X chart chances. Granted , 2 of them are the pitchers own X chart chances. So 28 of the pitchers 108 chances are decided by the fielding ratings of his hitters.

So it's actually 108 hitting 80 pitching . This is the main reason pitchers will never dominate in this game.

STEVE F wrote:Actually, it favors the hitter MORE than 50/50/ Since 30 of the pitchers 108 chances are X chart chances. Granted , 2 of them are the pitchers own X chart chances. So 28 of the pitchers 108 chances are decided by the fielding ratings of his hitters.

So it's actually 108 hitting 80 pitching . This is the main reason pitchers will never dominate in this game.

And there are always at least 30 out chances on every hitter's card.* SOM could have just as easily put the X chances on the hitters' cards and put 30 additional out chances on the pitchers' cards, and it wouldn't change a thing. If the hitters' card had the X chances, it would not make them any more or less dominant (and the same goes for pitchers).

Unless batters start hitting over .600 or some pitchers' WHIPs go below 0.50, SOM's model works just fine.
==========
*I don't know if there is an exception or two to this statement, but it holds true for at least 99.9% of cards.

Sandy Koufax numbers against HOFs (24 abs or more):

Ernie Banks .173.231.368.
Hank Aaron .362.431.647.
Frank Robinson. .238.355.524.
Roberto Clemente .297.355.550
Willie Mays .278.426.536
BillMazeroski .190.248.220.
EddieMathews .281.373.416.
Ron Santo .231.310.474.
Orlando Cepeda.288.310.525
Billy Williams .250.346.412.
Richie Ashburn .216.429.275.
Lou Brock .185.232.246.
Joe Torre .220.233.339
Willie McCovey .143.213.214
Stan Musial .342.432.553.
Joe Morgan .241.371.448
Tony Perez .200.333.200
RedSchoendienst .179.233.179
Willie Stargell .087.125.174.

As good as Koufax was I would say about ten of the 19 hit him fairly well. So when your dominant pitcher gets knocked around by a loaded team...it may not be that unrealistic.

"The name of the game is exploiting weakness. There are an infinite number of ways to do that, but step one is recognizing the weaknesses. The only time you see “50/50” in SOM Online is when you have 12 competent managers who know what they are doing. The bell curve for wins shrinks dramatically in tour leagues and vet leagues versus (most) generic autoleagues."

"The great irony in Strat is that in a vet league, very often no one wins 90 games (which to the naked eye looks like nothing but “chance”), but in a generic autoleague, even a rando can win 110 games (which to the naked eye looks like “skill”)."

I saw this post from J-Pav and I thought it hasnt been my experience that dice rolls could allow a newby to win 108. No doubt it is much harder to win with veteran leagues and on the tour but even in your garden variety auto league it is not easy to win 95+ games. It is very hard to separate that much from the pack in 20XX (Ive started to play ATG and my initial impression thst given the really extreme parks and the huge number of players making it much easier to really maximize strategies to the hilt--I played one team in my first game in ATG that had several AAA runners--makes separation a bit easier but who knows.) Anyway, dice rolls play their part and it is frustrating when you think a well-designed team doesnt do as expected, but thsts the way it goes (Though I have to say when I look over my mediocre teams I tend to find some obvious flaws--sometimes I repeat old mistakes like getting a ten million second baseman who plays great defense but is not a great hitter or not match my bull-pen depth to my starters or scarcity causes me to reach on a player, etc)

So, from 2013-2017 I had 4 teams win 95 or more--two 97 win teams, a 98 win team snd on 99 win team (over 109 teams). In 2018-2019 Ive had 9 teams win 95 or more-- a 104 win, one 102, one 100, 4 99, 2 98, and 1 97 (over 50 teams). That's going from 3.67% to 18%.

So even in auto-land teams it is not that easy to get to the tail end of the curve (at least that has been my experience)...

[quote="J-Pav"]

It’s a 4-D puzzle, and the deeper you get in the weeds, the more complicated the answer becomes. What kind of park are we talking about (split rolls)? The defense? How many innings can the starter go? If I start an S4 reverse lefty on quick hook (like Patrick Sandoval for $0.80), could I paralyze your offense with an R3 hard righty reliever (like Daniel Mengden for $0.96) that quickly enters the game? Yes, I could (and I do).

J-Pav, How do you be sure that HAL puts in Mengden in that situation? My experience when I'm watching my games is that HAL rarely puts in the reliever I'm hoping gets put in. I had a situation the other night up by 1 in the 7th, bases loaded, 2 outs, and a right handed batter up. I'm thinking go to my righty specialist, but no, HAL puts in an E. Ended up not really mattering because we played the hitters card and gave up the grand slam, but the move didn't make sense to me.