Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Just trolling for ideas here: I am in a 20 team face to face league. My team going into the draft is heavy on pitching (Kershaw, Harvey, Archer, Tanaka and Liriano as SP and Andrew Miller, Benoit, Abad, Strickland, Soria etc in the pen.) My offense remains suboptimal with the highlights being Altuve and Boegarts middle infield,M Adams and C Santana at first, Gardner, L Martin, Ichiro and Raburn in the OF, Realmuto catching. I don't have a thirdbaseman so looking to draft Kang or trade for one.

I can draft a new ballpark so I am thinking small ball park so that my already good pitching will be dominant and since my offense cant really compete, maybe I can do a lot of moving the runners, stealing and two star singles from Altuve, Boegarts and Adams.

Anyone have an opinion as the best way to optimize this type of club?

you need a big park if you are playing small ball. hold down the other teams homeruns

Thanks for the response Sam, I probably mispoke. By small park I meant a park with low bp singles and homers. I wasnt clear on that.

Well, in terms of BP homeruns, I think it's pretty obvious from your team's makeup that it needs to be the lowest possible.

In terms of BP singles, I think it depends on a number of variables:

1- Catchers/pitchers hold combination: are you in the negative or in the positive? Kershaw will certainly be -5 again, not sure about the other pitchers and Realmuto (he allowed 43 SB and 16 CS in 101 games, maybe he'll get a 0 rating). If the combination is negative, you're likely to go for more BP singles, since you'll be able defensively to hold most runners at first.

2-Will you win or lose this battle of double plays? If Altuve and Bogarts were 3s, I would definitively go for less BP singles. Consider also gbA on the offensive side. Adams and Santana are traditionally players with huge numbers of gbA, another argument to go with less BP singles.

3- If the hold combination, double-play potential and offensive gbA are pretty much in the average or in even slightly below, then I would look at the offensive and pitching makeup, along the following lines:

Offense: the higher the on-base, the higher the BP single (to maximize the chance of scoring a run on three hits/walks or on a double)
Pitching: the poorer the bullpen, the lower the BP single (to maximize the use of your starting pitchers and not have them with their point of weakness)

Thank you Marc,

The bullpen is just as studly as the starting pitching. I have a bunch of ..330 - .350 on base guys to go along with Boegarts, Altuve and Adams to be the run producers. Not much to work with so that is why I had the thought of doing a lot of stealing, hit and run plays, bunting, etc. Anyway to scratch out a run two or three times a game instead of the more correct fashion of playing for the big inning and crooked numbers.

You don't need to hit homeruns to win.

I am hoping you are right. I will be outhomered all season but if my pitching can hold them to solo shots off their own cards then maybe I can scratch out enough runs to win a few.