here's a good (and lengthy
) reply from Valen a little ways back that explains it better than I can. Cadillac seasons are Super Advanced/Chevy seasons are computer generated cards:
"I know the hype is that Strato does exhaustive research and designs cards to reproduce seasons based on opponents, parks, etc for a given season, yada, yada. yada. And there may be some truth in that for recent seasons.
But keep in mind that for historical seasons this exhaustive research may be as much mirage as fact. Many seasons were computer generated with the stats fed in to a computer. This is especially true the further back you go both with real life seasons and when the year was first added to the Strato offerings. Simple truth is at the time some of these were first offered detailed stats needed for truly producing the kind of accuracy the hype implies simply was not available.
Now some of the seasons have been updated but generally they were updated in order of popularity and/or expectations of demand and sales generation. So can be a bit tricky to pick exactly which years are which. Some have gone by the prices on the product website and referred to various seasons as chevy and cadillac seasons.
Chevy seasons are totally computer generated. Stats were just fed in and cards produced using a computer formula. You can recognize these not only from the cheaper price on the site but also by some common characteristics of the cards. For example you will only see gb(C) on pitcher cards and no gb(A). Double plays were not factored in to the pitcher card. All double plays were accounted for on the hitter cards. Thus hitters from these seasons when tossed in to something like ATG will hit in to more double plays than they should. Pitchers from these sets who induced a lot of double plays will lose that quality and be less effective than real life. Note the difference between the 30 Vance and the 34 Vance. 1934 was one of the first seasons to be upgraded.
Both hitters and pitchers will have balanced or even identical L/R cards because reliable L/R stats were not available at the time of generation. Note for example the 1901 Cy Young card. The left and right sides are identical except for the placement of outs. The computer generation algorithm reproduced strikeouts but out distribution was probably randomized to some degree.
Some seasons have been updated for super advanced rules. These seasons are referred to by computer gamers as "Cadillac seasons". On these you will see gb(A) on most pitchers with hitters tending to have fewer on their cards. Cards will be unbalanced to reflect what they actually did against L/R opposition. But it is my opinion that even these Cadillac seasons are not all created equal. Officially it is said that extensive research went in to them but of course exactly what that research was has never been specified. I doubt they went back and analyzed boxscores. More likely they used purchased data. But if a season were upgraded in say the mid 90s the depth of the data that was available is simply not even close to what is available now. So no way a season upgraded then could have the same detailed data available for upgrading one today."
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 10:02 am