Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Well, I am getting my but kicked so far (4-8 over first 12 games, with a .218 batting average) in my first season. Nevertheless, it is has been tremendously enjoyable.

Two questions:

1) How deep are the batting stats? Do they take into account month of the year, home/away, bases empty v men on, etc?
The reason I ask is I am curious about my 1986 Von Hayes. He has 2 singles in 43 at bats so far and is just killing me. His real 1986 stats included a dreadful April, but his overall numbers were .309 BA, 379 OPB and 480 Slugging. So is it more likely deep stats (reflecting Hayes' dreadful real world April 1986) or is it more likely just a bad Strat start?

2) Does Strat allow players with real world small samples (real low plate appearances) to stay true to the actual numbers? Or do they understandably depress the numbers a bit.
I've been playing my 1986 Tito Landrum, who cost a mere 0.500, with the hopes he would match his real-life 1986 stats against RH Pitching--34 at bats, a .353 avg, 371 obp, and 382 slugging. [If it matters--he got most of his at-bats that year against Left hand pitching, where he was pretty ineffective (171 at bats, .181 avg, .261 obp, .261 slugging).]

But in the simulation he has been a disaster against RHP, at .152, .177, .152. Is this more likely a bad Strat start, or is it more likely Strat depressing a guys stats (which would not be unreasonable) since 34 at bats is so unrepresentative of what he might have done with hundreds of at-bats?


Thanks for any feedback. This game is a great combination of mathematical puzzles!!!

1) SOMO does not take into account the month, player's cards remain the same regardless of when a game is being played. Hayes awful start is just a strange parallel to real life. Your post brought back memories of '86 for me, I remember Von's terrible start now- a lesson in not reacting too much to small sample sizes I suppose.

Real life home/away is not adjusted for either, though of course the park a player is playing in for your team in SOMO will affect him.

The only time SOMO adjusts for men on base vs bases empty is when it uses the clutch rating. This is only used with two outs and runners in scoring position. On a player's card any results with a $ in front of the number will change from the listed result to either an out (if the original result was a hit) or to a hit (if the result was an out). I think the new resulting out is a flyball and the new hit is a single**, but not sure. The cd game lists each player's clutch batting average, but in SOMO you can only look at the cards to see the $ results.

2) I'm not sure about how much SOM adjusts for small sample sizes, they do some adjusting but usually it's not enough to make players like Landrum that bad, I would stick with him and he should get better. Other people probably know more about how much SOM adjusts for small sample sizes though.

The stats are done in a way that if you did a full season replay with player usage and team matchups similar to real life, full-season stats would come out the same as real life. But as you would expect, with so many variables involved, even full-season exact replications can produce wide variations from real life. In fact, you can play a computer season with the exact same 12 teams with the exact same settings many times and never get exactly the same standings. Your team's win total will vary significantly and individual stats will obviously do the same (with average/median values what is expected, of course). The hope for a single-season game on here is always that you've put together a team that should win more than it loses. The fun part is seeing how it all turns out (a scenario not too far from real life at all!)

In the old strat-o-matic magazine the game company said they did in fact adjust a card down some when they had limited ABs or innings. Though no details provided then or now as to how much or how that adjustment is made. I would not be surprised to find out the computer game engine does some additional tweaking to lessen the performance of some cards that are grossly overused. At the same time I have seen enough 30 HR seasons out of Milt May or stellar 400 inning releivers in ATG to discount the possibility of any such feature being turned on in the online game.

Also might be worth noting: The cards as I understand it are based on final complete season stats.
While cards are not adjusted to reproduce month to month real life fluctuations there could be reason to believe a card would perform differently depending on what part of season is being played.

What I refer to is the ballpark effects. We have the basic ballpark ratings. But there are optional weather effects that can alter the ballpark ratings depending on whether the weather is good, fair, or bad and change depending on what month of the season it is. I assume these are turned off in the online game but I am never completely confident we know what is and is not being used.