Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Andy has provided extraordinarily helpful stats for the nominations, and I encourage everyone to go over to the thread to look at them. I thought it might be beneficial to have a thread to discuss the nominations -- likes, questions, shrugs, parameters. Think a particular nomination won't get your vote, say why. Say why, for example, Ray Grimes ( ) will get your vote. Too many 20xx players? Express yourself. Best years vs. representative years? When is a player's best year too good? Just try to be a little bit respectful of others ... as always.

Thanks again to Bill for organizing the nomination process and thanks to Andy for giving us some data to deal with!

Bill (another Bill)

How many Bills before it becomes a law?

As I stated on the other thread-
looking at the cards for how they fit into the set is good-
much less interested in how it represents in comparison to a players career.
Lots of players had one or two career years and I think we should honor those if they had
a reasonable number of appearances.

My wish list for an ATG Set:
I wish the set was set up where the best cards are the guys who had top Hall of Famer careers: Mays, Ruth, Mantle, Ted Williams, Gehrig, etc, you know the guys I'm talking about.
Next, players who had very good careers, then players who had pretty good careers, then players with more average careers, then players with below average careers and then scrubs.

Of course, outlier years creep in every so often, and in the past I've compared the Ted Williams cards to that 2001 Luis Gonzalez card. In no universe is Luis Gonzalez anywhere close to Ted Williams, except in our ATG set. I'm not against Gonzalez per se, just an example of the way outlier years creep into our set. Ted Williams performed like that for the better part of TWO DECADES, Gonzalez did it ONCE.

Some seem to only want a good card, they couldn't care less whether it's from a Hall of Famer or a guy who played for 5 seasons and started in only one of those seasons, yet had an outlier season in that one magical season. I realize I'm in the minority on this, but I will still tilt at the windmills.

Nowhere are outlier seasons worse than in the RP-only grouping. I think the top RPs should be Rivera, Hoffman, Billy Wagner, Sutter, Eckersley, Fingers, Lee Smith, etc.
RPs can be wildly inconsistent in MLB from season to season. If we go grab outlier seasons with some great WHIP from some dude that never came even close to duplicating that feat, we have chance to put another Dale Murray at the top of the Reliever heap. This may not bother you, but, again, I'd like the set to somewhat represent the history of MLB. Some say "the outliers are part of history" and I would not disagree that they are part of the history, but to me the true history is for the very best players to have the very best cards.

Again, just my opinions...….

andycummings65 wrote:
Of course, outlier years creep in every so often, and in the past I've compared the Ted Williams cards to that 2001 Luis Gonzalez card. In no universe is Luis Gonzalez anywhere close to Ted Williams, except in our ATG set. I'm not against Gonzalez per se, just an example of the way outlier years creep into our set. Ted Williams performed like that for the better part of TWO DECADES, Gonzalez did it ONCE.

.

I don't think the Gonzales card is remotely comparable to Ted Williams.
If one looks at live drafts, at his hey day, Gonz was being taken between the 6th and 10th round
where Teddy has always been a first round pick.

It's a 10m card is my point. Ted has 2 cards over 10m. My point is, average or good players sometimes end up in the same general pricing area as Hall of Famers.

Perhaps we could get two sets: All Time Greats, and Flash In The Pans. Gotta side with Andy on this one.

I know that the underlying argument in this thread goes beyond Luis Gonzalez, but I think that he might be the straw man here. We all know that ATG was originally founded on the rosters of the all-time best teams, which sometimes gave us anomalous years for players (underpar years for great players, overachieving years for "lesser" players), that we have been trying to counterbalance over the years with our various additions. Gonzalez was a key member of the 2001 Diamondbacks, World Series champs. This team might very well have been included in the set as an all-time great team from the beginning, which would have meant Gonzalez' inclusion. Is it representative of Gonzalez' output as a player? Not really, but Gonzalez was not some fly-by-night. The man was a major-leaguer for 19 years with an ops+ of 119 and by JAWS ranking (I know...not the be-all and end-all of evaluatory systems) the 24th best LF to play the game. From 1999 to 2003 Gonzalez was among the best in the game (steroids-induced? product of home field?) Ted Williams? Obviously not and perhaps his 1993 (speed and defense) or 2002 seasons would be more indicative of his true weight.

As the number of cards increases there are multiple layerings of cap players plus the increasing interest in franchise leagues. Squaring the circle is more and more difficult. The expensive "toys" of the big-cap players meet with a certain hostility from the "diamonds in the rough" of the lower-cap players (40 mil is a tough nut to crack, let me tell you). And vice-versa, as what might be perceived as a useful scrub by some is seen as a needless addition to the undergrowth of below 1 mil players. Some of us (well, me) see some of the additions are interesting links to baseball history (Cuckoo Christensen, I'm looking at you). This will never be a clear-cut process, but frankly when we stop debating, then the life of the game will have disappeared.

Bill

As for some of the nominated cards...

The Adrian Beltre is a nice choice. It give him a Ranger card (a nice option with Harrah). A long-time player who for some reason seems to fly under the radar and should be a Hall-of-Famer. The card seems it might underperform (https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/81/2012/1/2012), and lots of negative clutch. Probably needs a hitters park to perform up to IRL numbers.

The Ron Hassey card is intriguing. We can always use more lh catchers, but Hassey can't really play defense (4+1e6) and certainly can't run (1-8). He gets on base, that's sure. His "3" injury will drop his price https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/35069/1986/1/101 '86 is an outlier -- Hassey's lifetime ops+ is 100, '86 was 140. Will he play?

The Mickey Tettleton card looks exciting from my vantage point. The "3" injury will keep the price down. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/841968/1680/1/80 Though '89 was his best year in terms of ops+ (150), it isn't that much of an outlier, given Tettleton's career 122 ops+. Switch-hitting catchers are always nice to see.

For the record, I'm not against the Gonzalez card's inclusion in the set. Just looking for an example of where a consistent Hall of Famer for multiple seasons has "competition" from an outlier card where a guy did it once or twice. I think Williams/Gonzalez is a good example of that. And I'm not necessarily against some other outlier cards, I would just prefer to see other things added first.

Bob Watson, for example, had a nice career and needs a better card in the set. A better Watson season won't wow anyone and probably wouldn't get a ton of votes, but I'd rather see a guy with a very solid 19 year career get a better card over a flash in the pan.

Again, just my opinion.

The McGriff card poses some problems. It is obviously not as good as the one we have, but it does give us a Tampa Bay card. He can't really play defense (though some might argue that you can hide bad defense at 1B) and he'll clog up the basepaths with his high obp. '99 ops+ (142) is right around his career average (134). This guy was a hitter (it is surprising that he didn't drive in more runs -- I know, RBIs are predicated on what surrounds you, and he must have been surrounded by some particularly low on-base guys). He might get my vote only to help the TB crowd. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/3384/1999/1/1999

The LeFlore card is interesting. The defense is pretty bad, a LeFlore that can run AND hit could be fun. I probably would have gone with the '77 card (slugging as well). On the fence about this one. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/736931/1670/1/70

Bobby Bonds was always one of my favorites when I was growing up in San Francisco. The guy could hit and was exciting to watch. For some reason he got a bum rap. The '77 card gives him an Angel card and is reasonably close to his career ops+ (136 vs 129). We definitely need more Bobby Bonds cards. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/player/731062/1670/1/70