Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

My staff has no pitchers worse than +1 and with Roseboro a -3 this makes any combo no worse than -2 correct?

Opponents have stolen 27 bases in 38 attempts vs Roseboro which equates to .710 success rate correct?

Opponents are 4 for 4 vs the combo of -3 Roseboro and -3 Sp M. Caldwell

And 3 of 4 vs -3 Roseboro and -6 K. Rogers.

So 7 of 8 vs the best negative combo the game will allow or 87.5 here....


However Hal Wagner +3 only 2 pitchers at -2 and the rest 0 or +1, +2 ...so he can not be better than +1 correct...and he's thrown out 33 of 102 runners attempting to steal for a .676 success rate correct?

He's a +3, and never better than a +1, has thrown out a higher pct than the -3 never worse than a -2

AND with a +1 sp making the combo a +4 opponents are only successful .695% of the time.

Now....assuming this all can be explained in some hard to find, clear as mud rules (see rule vf2.54 if it's a game played on Tuesday...look under "how to make pea soup frb>V#2 if the game was played on Wednesday and started by a left hander OR someone named Donald) ....really assuming a legit "here's how it works" and "here's how you manipulate the game to work better"........I gotta believe the logic could be improved

Not many know this but HAL played Willie Wonka and Nev Grandpa Joe a while back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UDnTJcjPhY

First of all, the sum of the pitcher and catcher hold ratings is truncated to a range of +5 to -5. Second, there are a lot of * guys with a first number of 19 (and about a dozen with a first number of 20) and then of course the non-asterisk 20's. So all these guys are going to have a 70% plus chance to steal. Finally, if you don't hold the runner, the pitcher hold rating does not come into play.

SOM's stealing system is not entirely realistic, but it's really hard to think of a better one within the context of keeping the game relatively simple. APBA had an interesting stealing system where the guy got a letter and number rating - some letters could only steal with a big lead after the 7th. But that game was very cumbersome, and not very mathematically accurate.

Also note that if these two guys have played approximately the same number of games and innings) the game is doing a wonderful job of simply suppressing steal attempts, which is what you wanted when you put Roseboro with those pitchers, wasn't it? 7/8 is not mathematically significant in terms of figuring out what the aggregate odds of successful steals is against a good P-C hold combo, and I suspect that if you got to about 80 steal attempts against comparable hold rating combos the success rate would be pretty small.

Also, HAL runs pretty recklessly against big plus combined hold ratings. Usually in ill-advised situations. I have seen HAL try a straight steal of 2nd against a +9 hold pitcher when the chance of a successful steal was 7/20.

For a shining example of small sample sizes with rate stats, consider that Adrian Gonzalez is currently hitting .609 and D. J. LeMaihieu is hitting .517. We all expect that to continue over a full season, now, don't we?

"Finally, if you don't hold the runner, the pitcher hold rating does not come into play."

I think the pitcher hold rating is always applied even if the runner is not held, against the catcher arm, with the sum limited to the range of -5 to +5

For information purposes: If a stealer has a "20" good lead steal rating and he is held and the pitcher catcher combo meets or exceeds -5 then the runner will have a 13/20 or 65% chance of succeeding. You subtract 2 more for being held. However if the runner is not being held, the runner automatically is granted the good lead and if the result is 20 or more if the pitcher catcher combo was zero or positive the runner is automatically safe and the limit of 19/20 is removed.

Wow!