Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Barry Bonds new 2004 card has injury rating of 2.  Why ?
Yes he only has 373 atbats but 232 walks, 
He played in 147 games that year!

Scott Rolen  played in 142 games in 2004 for  St Louis.  SOM gave him an injury rating 1.
Ryan Freel played in 143 games in 2004 for Cinn. SOM gave him an injury rating 1.
Both players had less total plate appearances then Bonds that year.

Did he have more potential PAs and lose more? Does Strat consider that?

In other words, a combination of a lot of runs scored and batting position could mean his spot was up a lot, and he actually missed more PAs.

Games played can be misleading because of pinch hitting, etc.

He had only 7 games where he only pinched hit.
Again, his total plate appearances was greater then most players with 1 injury rating.

This Bonds, like the Dickey card , is ITALicised 2, meaning that while he has 2 chances , neither one can be for more than 3 games max.

Now, if you ask me to explain why they do that as opposed to giving him a "straight" 1 chance, I have no idea

This is the third thread that folks are puzzled by Bonds card, and the answer to the puzzle is always related to the same issue: intentional walks. The first thing that SOM calculates when creating a card is plate apparences minus intentional walks. Everything else is calclated afterwards. And Bonds got 142 intentional walks. Injury rating is based on the assumption that he had only 400+ PA once you exclude IBB. Usually SOM system works fine, but It got a bit wild in Bonds case due to its extreme case.

Still, it defies logic that intentional walks should factor into an injury rating. Obviously, you're not missing games/injured if you're getting intentional walks. So, SOM should redo its equation in that regard. Dumb.

Hack Wilson wrote:Still, it defies logic that intentional walks should factor into an injury rating. Obviously, you're not missing games/injured if you're getting intentional walks. So, SOM should redo its equation in that regard. Dumb.

Also, intentional walks actually ARE plate appearances. If a play gets an IBB, he was standing at the plate, bat in hand. If he hadn't been walked, he would have gotten a hit, made an out, or made a regular BB or an HBP.
Still, Bonds does get credit for the PA in terms of his 600 PA injury risk limit to 3 games--so go figure.

I just see it as a bit of an anomaly, like the Dickey card. And it's not as if there aren't other Bonds cards that could be used.

I'm still trying to figure out why we needed yet another Bonds steroid card.

I think that the SOM cards should reflect what actually happened and not even take into account intentional walks. So many walks are intentional yet because they don't involve actual pitch outs they are not categorized as intentional. I can understand the logic of not counting IBB's in the creation of a card but I'd rather just see the card reflect what actually happened, especially with ATG where Bonds will not be routinely not pitched to. I was looking forward to this card precisely because of all the IBB's, who ever had an OBP over .600 and hit .360+ for power? It is an historic card and for that reason alone deserves inclusion in ATG IMHO.

It seems to me that one of the biggest problems with SOM cards is the injury issue. Many players who play in every game of the season still have injury chances on their card. There are wild inconsistencies with how SOM deals with injury ratings. The new Aaron card will also be an example, just like the 2004 Bonds card there are two points of injury despite close to 600 plate appearances. One point of injury with the 15 game injury risk should suffice to replicate his playing in 139 games.

The other piece with the injury problem is that relative invulnerability to injuries (worst that can happen is removal from the game with no future games lost) is triggered by 680 AB's plus walks. This punishes people who hit in the middle of the order as opposed to the top of the order. I would rather see, at minimum the 680 figure to include all plate appearances.

Finally, the injury system makes sense with the board game but it is based on categorical, non-linear risk. Most variables in life are better captured by a regression analysis rather than a dichotomized multivariate analysis. A linear regression model could easily be incorporated into the computer game for injuries, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

SOM should let the community compile a list of players who should not have any injuries on their cards and then fix those cards. But that fix would involve the admission that they screwed up, plus would involve some effort on their part, so given their stellar track record of customer service, hell with likely freeze over before we see any changes with the deeply flawed and anachronistic injury system.