Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

So I start off the year strong winning 12 of the first 18 and sit with a 35-24 record at one point. Both of those records within a game of "expected" wins. A bit of an experiment with a team seriously overweighted on pitching. Have recently lost 15 in a row and 22 of last 27 Trying not to overreact and have only adjusted roster minimally.

Anyone else experienced such wild swings?

Way back in ATG 1 I had a team reach midseason with best record in league. Tops in runs scored. Pitching having allowed the fewest runs in league. I owned that thing.

missed playoffs.....

I'm currently watching a Greinke/Sale/Archer/Lackey staff try and recover from a 3-19 start to the season. You would think it would be easy to NOT play .136 ball just by having Greinke alone.

Interesting card set stat: I've won three rings so far with this set - but I did not surpass a .500 win pct until Game 76, Game 30, and Game 88 (!) in each respective league. (Indirectly, some food for thought for those who panic and start launching players into the sun after a 3-6 season start. Just sayin'.)

I once went back to do a pattern check on my previous ring teams, and as far back as I could remember, I had never won a ring without going at least 11-10 in the first seven days.

It really makes you wonder what has to be going on to see such strange anomalies this card set.

So, I sympathize.

YES
Seems to be a pattern in the 2015 set.
My first 2015 set team started 34-17, then went 16-35 and finished 37-25 (going on to win the Championship)
A team started 0-13 finished 84-65 missed the playoffs by 1 game.
My PC event 2 team started 2-12, 8-21, finished 76-57 and currently in the finals.

This without making roster changes.

My worst was a 35-20 start where I had to have a strong finish the last week just to finish at .500. Frustrating but I think I can better relate to Cubs fans now.

Had a 51-27 team that crashed and burned to 83-79. Another team started 41-59, finished 84-78 and made the play-offs.

My first tour team was tied for the best record in the league with 10 games to go. Lost all ten.

My second tour team was tied for the best record in the league midway through and then didn't make the playoffs, barely above .500.

My third tour team started 30-22, then went 11-26. Now we're on a 15-7 roll. I can't figure it out.

I've got two rings this year but I have no idea why they were better than my teams in the GBBR leagues, where I've been consistently terrible.

Unusual year, to be sure.

I wish Strat would just leave things alone and let the games play themselves out without interfering to make sure that your record ends up as close to their "predicted" record.

I wish for just the opposite!

I WANT my record to be reflected by the pythag record. There's nothing worse than being +75 in net runs but playing .500 ball in the win/loss column.

My experience since first playing the game is that I usually win one of two ways: dominant from day one, or tread water all season but have a mid season hot streak. I have won rings by running someone down, but it seems to be extremely rare, at least personally.

Starting 3-19 then going 19-3 seems really foreign to me. Knowing it appears to be happening across the board is even MORE strange. It's weird how certain card sets have these unusual "personalities".

Also, mathematically this is very hard to explain. I know we're not talking precisely about coin tosses, but for the most part the game, starting with two players using equal salary, is largely a 50/50 proposition. A "good" season is 90 wins, which means winning five of every nine games throughout a full season. WWLWLLWLW. It's hard to pick out patterns when going 5-4 is "crazy winning" (.556 win pct).

Statistically, with coin tosses, there will be hot streaks and cold streaks. The gambler's fallacy is the desire to bet against a streak in the mistaken belief that a streak is unlikely to go once more in the same direction, when in fact the odds are still 50/50 for each toss.

The observation here is that hot streaks and cold streaks at least APPEAR often to be balanced out by "corrective moves" in the opposite direction. If a hot streak like 20 straight happens once every 2,000,0000 trials, I can handle that. But back to back 1 in 2 million shots??? That is hard to explain.

Unfortunately, one of the few things that WOULD explain it happens in the black box of the game engine.

Let the conspiracy theory arguments begin.