Please, someone explain...

how Travis Snider received an Even hitting card vs. LHP & RHP? He hit .381 with an OPS of 1.054 vs. LHP and .246 with a .734 OPS vs. RHP. Should he be something like 6L or 7L?

Also, Chris Stewart hit .486 with .526 OBP and a 1.098 OPS vs. LHP and his stats vs. RHP were .238, .330 & .580. Shouldn't he get a 9L?

I just don't understand how they determine these cards. Any body have any ideas?

Strat can and will cut back a players #'s vs. a particular side when they didn't have an adequate # of AB's.

Snider had 42 AB's and Stewart had 35 AB's vs LH's.

Anybody can get lucky in a limited # of AB's...

vsick is right. Traditionally cards based on seasons with a very small sampling of ABs when given a card get discounted. Theory is they just got hot for a stretch or were only used in very strategic situations for maximizing success and would have been exposed if played a lot more.

Bottom line to prevent some guy who happened to hit 4 HRs in a small 40 AB sample from being played every day and bombing 60 they have to scale it back some.

it also depends on who they batted against I believe. If they hit against crap pitching then their card would not be as good as some of the production would come off the pitchers card.

I get what you guys are saying, and obviously don't disagree, but what about guys like Josmil Pinto from last year's set? He had a TOTAL of 82 PAs and received an 8.75M card. They didn't scale back his card at all.

Don't get me wrong, for the game to be as realistic as possible, they should scale back cards from time to time. I just wish there was more consistency and/or more transparent reasoning to those decisions.

I get what you guys are saying, and obviously don't disagree, but what about guys like Josmil Pinto from last year's set? He had a TOTAL of 82 PAs and received an 8.75M card. They didn't scale back his card at all.

Don't get me wrong, for the game to be as realistic as possible, they should scale back cards from time to time. I just wish there was more consistency and/or more transparent reasoning to those decisions.

they don't exactly scale back the card, more like redistribute the lefty/righty in some cases

Pinto was even as well.

I kinda think they do both Steve, scale back AND redistribute in some unbalanced cases.

What they do is a case by case basis. Might point out that 82 ABs is double the sample size of 42. Still small but still double. My statements are based on my experience going back to childhood which ahhh, was just last year. Yeah that's right. Almost told how old I was. And based on what was explained in various communications in sources like the Strat Fan Magazine. Printed no less. Not that I am old enough to have been an original subscriber and read them when they came out, cough cough.

Anyway if the player has a track record they will sometimes blend the current season numbers with past season numbers to smooth them out. So hit .500 in 16 AB verses LH pitching when you have a career .200 BA against lefties and that card will get suffer significantly against lefties. No track record and they may blend a little L/R stats so it is still good but not so one sided as the pure numbers might appear to call for. Bottom line they look at the situation and make a subjective judgement call. And when things get subjective consistency may be just an illusion, the main reason I like math class and comptuter programming more than english and literature.

When I got my first set of cards, the 1973 Tigers had a backup catcher, Bob Didier who hit 10 for 22 in that season. Instead of that card, I got from SOM a 1971 Bob Didier card to make a card more representative of his real performance (which was a .219 average, not a .455 average!) I still think it was an interesting approach to carding lightly used players, if they have a past.

When I got my first set of cards, the 1973 Tigers had a backup catcher, Bob Didier who hit 10 for 22 in that season. Instead of that card, I got from SOM a 1971 Bob Didier card to make a card more representative of his real performance (which was a .219 average, not a .455 average!) I still think it was an interesting approach to carding lightly used players, if they have a past.

Didier caught for the 1969 Braves. Always preferred to use the Bob Tillman card at C instead.