Which is more important, hitting or pitching?

Depends on the ballpark, you say? I'm not so sure that's a good answer. I noticed 2 teams in the same ballpark--everybody's favorite, Forbes '57--in the same league with the same (well, 88 vs 89 wins) records that got there by very different approaches. Check out The Last Druid's Right Stuff and Morpheus's Stormin' Giants in this league ($80/NO):

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/league/423758

Both playing in good old 17-17-1-1, but one spent $29.15/36% on pitching and the other $39.39/49%! Petro's team was #1 in hitting and #4 in pitching, while Morpheus's was #1 in pitching and DFL in hitting.

While this confuses rather than clarifies the question, it does teach me one thing: relief wins and saves are a lot cheaper than SP wins. Petro's starters got 3.5 wins for every dollar spent on them, while Morpheus's got only 2.4 per $; there's the better hitting spilling over. But look at the relievers--Morpheus's got 7.3 wins+saves per buck and Petro's got 6.6/$. Maybe the more important question is which is more economical, starting pitching or RP?

This game amazes me for how uncannily it can fairly price hitters, SP and RP.

I think it's all context, i.e ballparks, team configurations and cap. I read a post a while back by Calvano and if you look at it by how many rolls are used on a pitchers card vs a specific hitter in a given game, a starter's card comes up much more often than a hitters card which would seem to make a starter more valuable. A hitter's card comes up at least 4-5 a game and 50% of that is 2.5. A pitcher, say facing a min of 30 batters in a game, would avg out to 15 rolls per game. I think in smaller caps, pitchers are much more valuable but the higher in caps, the less valuable they are as hitting can dominate. The teams you presented show two different approaches. I think the more relevant question is which specific pitchers can you use to maximize your available dollars

BOTH

It might be easier to answer the chicken or the egg enigma first.

Here is my all time favorite Forbes 57 team of mine. It was 100 million with no DH. It was the only small ball team I have ever had to score over 1,000 runs. It was also a very solid pitching team with pretty terrible defense. I enjoy playing outside of the typical book and this team fit the bill. Sadly they lost in the semi finals but they had the best run differential in the league by over 100 runs so I figured that would be my luck. http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1384568

The most important thing in this game is getting the most dice rolls in your favor, whether it's while pitching or hitting. You gotta put your best possible team out there every day, and hope you get the dice rolls. Plain and simple.

Some of these guys think they are "better managers" because they get more of the lucky dice rolls or receive more favorable draft picks. In my opinion, I've owned better teams that didn't make the playoffs than some of the teams I own that did make the playoffs. I've seen some teams who I thought were better overall than my playoff team, but they didn't make the playoffs. I've seen many inferior teams make the playoffs while my superior teams missed out by one or two games. Some people have better luck than others...

So that is why Salty beats me. He understands how to get the dice rolls in his favor. I knew it couldn't be because he knew strat better.

I think we can work out the answer to this question by simply looking at a pair of Strat-0-Matic cards, one for a hitter and one for a pitcher, then contemplating the fielding chart.

A dice roll of 1-3 goes on the hitter's card. A dice roll of 4-6 goes on the pitcher's card. That means that offense and defense are equally important in Strat, since each has a 50% chance of determining the result.

But..and this is a big but...there are 108 possible chances on each card, and of the 108 chances on the pitcher's card, 30 are X chances that refer to the Fielder Ratings of the defensive players on the pitcher's team.

27.8% of the total pitcher's chances come on these fielding X-rolls. Since half of all results end up the pitcher's card, 13.9% of all SOM rolls go to the fielders.

Taken at face value, this would mean that Strat is 50% hitting, 36.1% pitching, and 13.9% fielding.

However, I think that the above numbers slightly overstate the importance of Fielder's Ratings. That's because even with a 4-range fielder, many of the rolls on the fielding chart are still going to be outs. So to be accurate we should nudge up the percentage for pitching a little. I haven't really crunched the numbers, but it seems reasonable to assume that we can safely nudge up the pitching number to, say, 39%. That would mean nudging down the value of fielding down to 11%. These probably would not be wrong by more than a percentage point one way or another between pitching and fielding values.

If we accept these assumptions, we arrive at a formula like this: Strat is 50% hitting, 39% pitching, and 11% fielding.

A further point is that we pay for fielding when we buy our offensive players. This would suggest that 61% of the outcome of a Strat contest is determined by the offensive players (including their fielding), and 39% is determined by the pitchers.

I think we can work out the answer to this question by simply looking at a pair of Strat-0-Matic cards, one for a hitter and one for a pitcher, then contemplating the fielding chart.

A dice roll of 1-3 goes on the hitter's card. A dice roll of 4-6 goes on the pitcher's card. That means that offense and defense are equally important in Strat, since each has a 50% chance of determining the result.

But..and this is a big but...there are 108 possible chances on each card, and of the 108 chances on the pitcher's card, 30 are X chances that refer to the Fielder Ratings of the defensive players on the pitcher's team.

27.8% of the total pitcher's chances come on these fielding X-rolls. Since half of all results end up the pitcher's card, 13.9% of all SOM rolls go to the fielders.

Taken at face value, this would mean that Strat is 50% hitting, 36.1% pitching, and 13.9% fielding.

However, I think that the above numbers slightly overstate the importance of Fielder's Ratings. That's because even with a 4-range fielder, many of the rolls on the fielding chart are still going to be outs. So to be accurate we should nudge up the percentage for pitching a little. I haven't really crunched the numbers, but it seems reasonable to assume that we can safely nudge up the pitching number to, say, 39%. That would mean nudging the value of fielding down to 11%. These probably would not be wrong by more than a percentage point one way or another between pitching and fielding values.

If we accept these assumptions, we arrive at a formula like this: Strat is 50% hitting, 39% pitching, and 11% fielding.

A further point is that we pay for fielding when we buy our offensive players. This would suggest that 61% of the outcome of a Strat contest is determined by the offensive players (including their fielding), and 39% is determined by the pitchers.

Part is also the scheduling oddities, the God Lizards, who were up on The Right Stuff by 2 games with 10 to go when they fell at the end, played the other two top teams 12 times each while the Right Stuff played them only 9 times each. 6 less games against division winners is worth at least 1 or 2 additional wins on average.