- Posts: 804
- Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2012 8:00 pm
Fri Nov 01, 2024 11:27 am
I think that, aside from other things, there's a matter of personal style. In other words, what kind of team do you like to create, or what style of team are you good at?
When I started playing SOM a long time ago, I thought I would be focusing on pitching and defense and OBP. But after a few teams, I began to realize that what I seemed to be best at was contructing teams that could score runs. So I began to shift my focus toward hitting and scoring.
I also feel as if top-level defensive players tend to be a little over-priced, at least in the context of 80M or 100M caps. And there are teams in any leagues that will score a ton of runs, so from my point of view, you need a positive run differential against your rivals in order to win. There are different ways to do that, and find a why that works for you at a particular cap or in a particular park.
My own approach is to focus on offense and starting pitching more or less equally, with as much defense and BP as I can manage. And to get the most out of team at a particular cap, I look at player value. I won't use a 3 at SS or 2B except as a platoon righty vs LHP (e.g, I"m OK with Mariano Duncan). At 1B or SS or even C, I will use a 4 if they can really hit and fit my team concept. I'm also OK with 4s at the OF corners, if they can make a real offensive contribution. So, good defense is always a plus, but it's not a dominant factor for me. This is my personal style--it might not work for others. And it works better on some of my teams than it does on others.
One thing I look at when assessing one of my teams is what I call the four battles: the hit battle, the walk battle, the HR battle, and the error battle. If you're going to win, you need to be way ahead on at least one of these battles. You can directly compare your own hits, walks and HR with your opponents when you check you team roster. With a small ball team, you're probably going to lose the HR battle, so you need to win the hit battle by A LOT, and stay as close to even as you can with the walk battle. You can't compare your own errors with the errors in your team's favor, but you can compare your errors with the average errors per team on the league fielding page, and the errors in your team's favor are probably close to the league average of errors per team.
One useful facet of this approach is that your team's "hits allowed" reflects both fielding and pitching. If you're getting fewer hits than opponent teams, it might be a factor of pitching or fielding or both. If this happens frequently, then you want to adjust your approach. OTOH, if you're getting MORE hits than opponents, then your fielding/hitting balance is probably a good one. It's also important, of course, to look closely at HR and walks--but it's the hit and error battles where fielding comes into play.
Coming back to where I started from on the four battles, I find that it's OK to be about even in one of the four battles and to trail slightly in another as long as you win the other two battles decisively.
One way to study how opposing managers do it is to look at the Barnstormer League pages. Those teams are a matter of public record, so you can study them at your leisure.
When I started playing SOM a long time ago, I thought I would be focusing on pitching and defense and OBP. But after a few teams, I began to realize that what I seemed to be best at was contructing teams that could score runs. So I began to shift my focus toward hitting and scoring.
I also feel as if top-level defensive players tend to be a little over-priced, at least in the context of 80M or 100M caps. And there are teams in any leagues that will score a ton of runs, so from my point of view, you need a positive run differential against your rivals in order to win. There are different ways to do that, and find a why that works for you at a particular cap or in a particular park.
My own approach is to focus on offense and starting pitching more or less equally, with as much defense and BP as I can manage. And to get the most out of team at a particular cap, I look at player value. I won't use a 3 at SS or 2B except as a platoon righty vs LHP (e.g, I"m OK with Mariano Duncan). At 1B or SS or even C, I will use a 4 if they can really hit and fit my team concept. I'm also OK with 4s at the OF corners, if they can make a real offensive contribution. So, good defense is always a plus, but it's not a dominant factor for me. This is my personal style--it might not work for others. And it works better on some of my teams than it does on others.
One thing I look at when assessing one of my teams is what I call the four battles: the hit battle, the walk battle, the HR battle, and the error battle. If you're going to win, you need to be way ahead on at least one of these battles. You can directly compare your own hits, walks and HR with your opponents when you check you team roster. With a small ball team, you're probably going to lose the HR battle, so you need to win the hit battle by A LOT, and stay as close to even as you can with the walk battle. You can't compare your own errors with the errors in your team's favor, but you can compare your errors with the average errors per team on the league fielding page, and the errors in your team's favor are probably close to the league average of errors per team.
One useful facet of this approach is that your team's "hits allowed" reflects both fielding and pitching. If you're getting fewer hits than opponent teams, it might be a factor of pitching or fielding or both. If this happens frequently, then you want to adjust your approach. OTOH, if you're getting MORE hits than opponents, then your fielding/hitting balance is probably a good one. It's also important, of course, to look closely at HR and walks--but it's the hit and error battles where fielding comes into play.
Coming back to where I started from on the four battles, I find that it's OK to be about even in one of the four battles and to trail slightly in another as long as you win the other two battles decisively.
One way to study how opposing managers do it is to look at the Barnstormer League pages. Those teams are a matter of public record, so you can study them at your leisure.
Last edited by Outta Leftfield on Fri Nov 01, 2024 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.