ATG9 Salaries - the Egregiously Overpriced Cards

Usage-based pricing is an interesting concept, but I could see a lot of practical challenges to implementing it. It's an idea that's been kicked around on these boards for years, but so far neither TSN nor Strat-o-Matic has gone there.

Interesting! I would say the "market" more or less reflects this - the cards listed above rarely get used. I NEVER see that 13.07 Ruth kicking about.

...so this is my real frustration with current salaries - many cards that I'd love to use have been banished to a netherworld of Salary Hell. That Ruth card is the perfect example - his 60-homer season with the Murderers Row '27 Yankees is arguably the most famous single season in baseball history, yet it's untouched in ATG.

And Ty Cobbs second most famous season , in which he stole 96 bases (1915) Isn't even in the set

I think the answer to all of this - which I doubt would ever happen - is to have a single (correctly priced) card for each player in ATG based on their career (or at least a 5 year average at the peak of their career) stats, and not an ever-growing batch of single season cards. A usage model such as the one described here would probably work much better for career-based card salaries.

And Ty Cobbs second most famous season , in which he stole 96 bases (1915) Isn't even in the set

...and most walks/highest OBP + he doesn't get injured! If added to the set, it will be Cobb's best card and the best leadoff hitter in ATG!

You haven't mentioned pitchers. They must not be such an issue with pricing I guess.

You haven't mentioned pitchers. They must not be such an issue with pricing I guess.

There's plenty of issues with pitchers. Running salaries for pitchers is more complicated, so I haven't taken that on.

I decided to build a team based on my failed Barnstormers semifinal team with 4 of the most egregiously overpriced cards as the centerpiece of the team - 1927 Ruth, 1927 Waner, 1896 Hamilton and 1999 McGwire. This supposedly was going to set me behind by over 5 million dollars, so I put them in Forbes 57 to add to their egregiousness. The similarity of most teams in ATG is mostly the result of one strategy - Joe the Jet's dominating value strategy. It rolls out because it works like a blocked lane in bowling with the seventh board, you just put those teams out there and it will roll right over all the lower teams.

The design of this team is similar to other teams I have held with a lefty HR hitter for lefty road parks and a righty home run hitter for righty road parks. Now the team does have an admittedly great value in Nap Lajoie, I have always found Waner and Hamilton to have very good value in small ball parks and await their one million dollar price cut with anticipation. Waner’s ability to play all the outfield positions along with Hamilton being able to switch to CF allows a decent offensive platoon hitter in Ken Smith to be far more effective, especially since I know HAL is going to have me leading the league in injuries.

I was hoping to get to 200 RBI’s for Ruth but fell a little short.

https://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1532728

As for Egregiously Overpriced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

Nice job gkhd11a.

My own ratings are different than RiggoDrill's own. I'll break down the differences in another post. But among the 4 so-called egregiously overpriced cards you targed, only Ruth 13.07M and McGwire appear in my ratings too expensive by more than 1M.

I should mention that there is a big advantage to use dominant offensive cards in the heart of the lineup. It pays to get monster cards that are perhaps less optimal to the stadium, especially for the cleanup spot because of the leverage the clean-spot has. So I too sometimes go on with a Bonds-type of card in Forbes.

This said, I did a WAR analysis of your team (Win above replacements). Your team had a 98-64 pythagorian record, and a 103-59 real record, and my WAR analysis yielded an expected record of 101-61.

WAR analysis of your team= 54 (replacement level) + 17.7 (pitching) + 29.1 (offense adjusted for defense) = 100.8 wins

Here are how the 101 wins break down. First column right after the name is the WAR contribution. Then the price tag you should expect to pay to get that much WAR, considering the playing time of the given player. Then the real salary, and the extra value the guy had.

Name........... WAR2,,,,,,,,,,,,, Money value,,,,,,,,,,,,, Real,,,,,,,,,,,, Extra value
............................. of performance ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,salary,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
King, S. (1888) 9,72...... 14,96....... 10,84...... 4,12
Walsh, E. (1910) 5,89....... 10,70...... 10,79....... -0,09
Pfiester, J. (1907) 1,77....... 4,88....... 7,06....... -2,18
Donald, A. (1939) 3,00....... 5,22....... 2,45....... 2,77
Sutton, D. (1982) 0,27....... 2,90 ....... 1,32....... 1,58
Mantei, M. (2003) 0,57 ....... 2,37 ....... 2,73....... -0,36
Garman, M. (1977) -0,24....... 0,23 ....... 0,77....... -0,54
Sambito, J. (1986) -2,07....... -1,82....... 0,55....... -2,37
Bair, D. (1988) -1,17....... -0,70....... 0,54....... -1,24
TOTALS

Name........... WAR2,,,,,,,,,,,,, Money value,,,,,,,,,,,,, Real,,,,,,,,,,,, Extra
..........................of performance ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,salary,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Value
Roseboro, J. (1965) -0,4....... 1,96 ....... 1,06....... 0,90
Henry, J. (1916) -1,6 ....... -0,60....... 0,9....... -1,50
McGwire, M. (1999) 4,2 ....... 7,74 ....... 9,54....... -1,80
Carew, R. (1982) 2,4....... 4,70 ....... 2,91....... 1,79
Smith, K. (1982) 1,5 ....... 3,19 ....... 2,09....... 1,10
Lajoie, N. (1904) 7,3 ....... 10,75 ....... 8,78 ....... 1,97
Melillo, S. (1934) -0,5 ....... -0,29 ....... 0,72 ....... -1,01
Adams, B. (1955) 2,8 ....... 6,01 ....... 2,32 ....... 3,69
Appling, L. (1936) 4,7....... 8,32....... 7,62 ....... 0,70
Wine, B. (1964) -0,4 ....... -0,01....... 0,76 ....... -0,77
Cardenal, J. (1980) -0,1 ....... 0,14....... 0,58 ....... -0,44
Davis, T. (1965) 0,0....... 0,21....... 0,52....... -0,31
Hamilton, B. (1896) 0,4 ....... 4,14 ....... 6,14 ....... -2,00
Waner, L. (1927) 1,3....... 4,85 ....... 5,52 ....... -0,67
Ruth, B. (1927)  I-2 7,5....... 11,25 ....... 13,07....... -1,82

S. King was the MVP of your team. 360 innings with an ERA of 3.60, he generated 9.7 WAR. To get that many WAR, you should typically pay 15M, but King cost "only" 10.84M, he gave your team an extra value of 4.1 WAR for his buck. By that I mean that, if you were to spend 89M on your ball club, and get 89 wins with this spending (assuming here, for sake of simplicity 1M=1WAR), then the buying of King would have given your team 104 wins, 15 wins for 11M.

Ruth did a pretty good job. He was the second best player with 7.5 WAR. But his 7.5 WAR, considering his playing time, was worth 11.25M, not 13.03M. You could have expected 2 more wins with a more optimal player. In contrast, Lajoie generated 7.3 WAR, but only cost your team 8.78M. He generated 2 more wins compared to your average 9M player.

The bargain value was Adams. He played like a 6M, but cost only 2.32M. He alone almost compensated for the four "egregiously" overpriced cards your team had: McGwire, Ruth, Hamilton and Waner together cost 34M but generated only 28 wins. Paying 34M to get 28 wins usually translates in a 75-87 kind of team, considering you must assume some obligatory costs that don't generate any (or minimal) value like having subs, paying for useless relievers, etc.

But you had great values in Adams (+3.7 wins), Carew/Smith platoon (+2.9 wins), Atley Donald (+ 2.8 wins... thanks to a dominating season 3.82 ERA...call that luck), Sutton (+1.6 wins...thumbs up for having him against some extreme right-handed divisional rivals).

Had you been able to generate 34 wins with your so-called egregiously overpriced cards, your team could have ended up with 107 wins given the super performance of the players mentioned above.


To get this analysis, I had to assume a few things. For defense, I attributed to Lajoie 15 extra double-plays over an average second baseman. For Hamilton, since he only had 5 assists (below average), I assumed that guys ran a lot on his arm without getting out. So I assumed that he allowed 20 extra bases.Perhaps I went too far. I redid the analysis with only 10 extra bases, and he was still under-performing. He did not have a good season. I assumed that the catchers were responsible of all the stolen bases, when in fact it's a combination. And for the sake of simplicity, I just assumed that Ruth, McGwire and Adams were as good defensively as your average, and made some extra minor adjustments with the other players. So perhaps I overestimated Adams's contribution a little bit (his 3e15 is a bit below the league average).

My ratings are very different from Riggio's too. I see five boys on Riggio's egregiously overpriced list that my ratings have as steals already. And another seven that I already consider bargains. Hopefully those price changes get implemented, then instead of fighting for Ashburn and Bonds every draft we can all just fight for these egregiously corrected new guys again. My vote is to just let Riggio unilaterally reprice the entire set.