Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I have seen several instances with the Hit and Run taking place with a runner on second and first base empty. The last time my opponent has a .361 hitter ground out advancing the runner with one out. Bad for him good for me but makes no sense under any circumstance. Comments?

Definitely not smart.

Possibly an attempt by Hal to simulate the action of a hitter making an extra effort to hit the ball to the first base side so the runner can advance on an out. Or what many baseball people call making a productive out. Remember the computer manager is probably programmed to think like an actual manager, not necessarily how we might play a strat game.

I dunno-hard to see a real time manager having a .361 hitter give himself up to advance runner from second to third with one out. Seems more like a glitch of some sort.

I have to say I simply don't get the Hit and Run as a general strategy in ATG. I usually put my Team Strategy setting on Extremely Conservative for H & R and also use individual settings of "Don't Hit & Run" for all my hitters except perhaps a "good field / no hit" INF backup. This generally produces somewhere between zero and 2 or 3 H & R attempts in a given year.

With good hitters in an offensively rich context like ATG, the H & R seems to me to be a bad strategy. Just to summarize some of the downsides:
1. No walks
2. No home runs
3. Must steal even w/o a good lead (if I remember rightly). This means if the batter misses the pitch, the runner can be at a real disadvantage.
4. With a good to excellent hitter (as most ATG hitters are), you're batting off a not-too-generous chart rather than off the hitter's good to excellent card.

To put all this in statistical form, in my most recently completed 100M league, league average BA was .278 and league average OBP was .344, while league average SLG was .443. Meanwhile, H & R batters went 52 for 222, which is a .234 BA. It's also pretty close to .234 OBP and .234 SLG (though I may be missing a few wrinkles--maybe a few doubles get sprinkled in). True, a manager might avoid a few DPs and gets some extra runner advancement, but I would take an OPS of .787 over an OPS struggling to rise above .468 any day of the week. It's hard for me to see how the benefits of H & R outweigh the negatives.

But I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about H & R, and maybe I'm missing something? Would any like to make the case for using H & R in ATG?

I would agree that in a "standard" ATG league it probably hurts with all the great offensive players. That being said, we are playing in a specialty league of 60 mil cap PLUS only two players per team over 4 mil so it often is quite a bit lower scoring (depending on how you fashion your team) and the H&R does factor in. It's a pretty cool league by the way.

Consider that while it does take it off of the hitter's card (bad, if it's a good hitter) it also takes it off of the pitcher's card (good if it's a bad hitter vs a stud pitcher)

A Hit and Run result can come off the pitcher's card...... Can't it? I thought with the advanced or super advanced game the result can come off of the pitcher's card, or the chart, but not the batter's card.

well, if i remember the charts accurately, a 'B' hit&run guy with the if out of position (in or holding runner) will hit, maybe .260 tho w/ not much power, so I would not do it w/ a hitter, in terms of the salaries, worth about $4m or more..


in the card game, though, the H&R chart singles are mostly, if not ALL ** singles, meaning, a runner on second would score w/out a play, so, it might make sense in the later innings, espesh the 9th or extras down or tied