Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Pat Venditte has his own rule in the minor leagues, but they didn't do anything special for him in strat!

He only has a left handed card. I know it's tough to make an exception for 1 guy, but he should automatically get the platoon advantage every at bat, which doesn't seem difficult to add in. It doesn't seem any different then a switch hitter, right?

Just curious how they were going to handle him!

I did not expect them to be able to handle that. Would seem more logical to have made him RH pitcher though since he will face more RH batters and thus that is the side he would pitch from the most.

That rule you refer to though is not just a minor league rule. It is in the majors as well. I think Venditte is the second such pitcher. A little disappointing, though not surprising, that Strat cannot handle. It would seem his rise to the bigs took several years so they had plenty of advance notice it could be coming. But given how slow they are to react to deficiencies in the game not surprised they were not ready.

Guess this is another one of those things where you have to accept and live with it because the overall game is sufficient fun to warrant overlooking some flaws.

I didnt really expect them to change the game for one player, but it is such a cool story I was curious to see what would happen.

He is better as an LHP, so maybe that is why they gave him a lefty card?

Maybe if he sticks with Toronto this year, they will have to rethink things...

Years ago, the Padres had a relief pitcher named Greg Harris who pitched left-handed to a couple of batters, mostly as a publicity stunt. He was a pretty good right handed reliever for a few years.

hveed wrote:... he should automatically get the platoon advantage every at bat

Actually, that's not the case. Here is the rule:

The pitcher must visually indicate to the umpire, batter and runner(s) which way he will begin pitching to the batter. Engaging the rubber with the glove on a particular hand is considered a definitive commitment to which arm he will throw with. The batter will then choose which side of the plate he will bat from.

So, ideally Venditte would have two pitching cards, one based on his performance as a lefty pitcher and another based on his stats as a righty pitcher. When a lefty batter came up, you would use Venditte's lefty pitching card. Same with his righty pitching card against righty batters. When a switch-hitter came up you as Venditte's manager would choose either his lefty card against righty hitters and make the batter bat righthanded or you could choose to use Venditte's righty pitching card against lefty hitters and make the batter bat lefthanded.

The Venditte rule is confusing, even in Strat!

you are correct, for switch hitters he would lose his advantage...

But there are so few switch hitters around these days that the majority of the time he can get the platoon advantage. ( I think he only faced 3 last year, MArwin Gonzales, Melky Cabrera and Carlos Sanchez)

And he is also permitted, once per at bat, to switch sides, (The hitter is also allowed to switch once as well) which could really mess things up!

The need to have 2 separate cards, one for each side, as biomechanical man expertly describes, would be the killing point for the online game or even the cdrom game. That will likely be more difficult to program than might on the surface appear.

Each card would be an entity unto itelf. So special code has to be written so he does not tie up 2 roster spots. When switching from one to the other with nothing special that removes one from the game and rules do not permit re-entry after leaving. So special code would need written to allow that. There may be more coding considerations but those jumped to the top of my head.