Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Another thread on here was discussing the best Willie Mays card to use in Polo 41 (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=646561). Its always interesting and informative to hear how other people view cards. But, given that question, it got me to thinking about a bigger question in terms of park effects. I will use the Mays cards as the example.

All the Mays cards have 5 singles chances vs L and R. All of the Mays cards have 8 HR chances vs left, while the 1954 10.83M card has 7 HR chances v rights, and all the others have 8. All are 1 range rating, with various levels of e ratings, and all have -5 or -4 arms.

Given that 4 of the 5 cards are identical in terms of park effects (and I ask this not to be snarky but honestly to try to understand better how other people view these things) what difference does the park make in terms of which one to use? At least as I view it, the park will have the exact same effects on each of the cards (only slightly different for the '54 card) so the best card in Polo 41 would also be the best card in Petco and everywhere in between.

In my mind, the best card to choose would depend on 1) the budget you have, 2) your ability to afford a backup for the roughly 8 to 10 games of injury you would expect for all but the '62 card, and 3) your ability to tolerate the higher e ratings on some of the cards.

No question here, but looking forward to discussion

In Polo 41, you want to have a high OBP and hit a lot of HR's. The 11.69 Mays does both, plus leans right (If I was in a freak league with the majority of the SP's being lefty, I would use a different Mays)

I tend to agree with the original post. Since all the cards have essentially the same ballpark effect chances, I would think the best card in one park would be best in all. Sure, in Polo 41 you want a high OBP and hit a lot of home runs, but don't you want to do that in any ballpark? According to DD, against RHP the 12.69 Mays card is worth 24.62 NERP in Petco and 36.06 NERP in Polo 41 a difference of 11.44 NERP. Against RHP the 11.69 Mays card is worth 30.19 NERP in Petco and 41.60 in Polo 41 a difference of 11.41 NERP. I know that NERP isn't the ultimate measure of production, and I know I didn't run this for LHP, but I don't see any difference offensively between these cards that is ballpark dependent.

i forgot one other thing that would be of concern to me, and that would be the mix of starting pitchers in the league. Predominantly righties and I take the 11.69, predominantly lefties and I would look at the 12.69. But this exercise has me interested in considering some of those other cards a little more closely.

chris.sied@yahoo.com wrote:i forgot one other thing that would be of concern to me, and that would be the mix of starting pitchers in the league. Predominantly righties and I take the 11.69, predominantly lefties and I would look at the 12.69. But this exercise has me interested in considering some of those other cards a little more closely.

With just 4 LH starters in my division, I went with the 11.69 card. He will join McCovey and Bonds in the 3-4-5 spots!!

I agree. And it was interesting to me because I just drafted a minute maid team this morning and am using the 11.69 myself because I expect to see a lot of righties. But my point on it is more that if I had a lot of lefties against me, I would take the 12.69 card not because of the advantage it has in minute maid, but the advantage it has against lefties.

For Mays, for instance, I think the big card (12.69m) is slightly better defensively, and can only get injured for rest of game. I think the 11.69 and 11.11 cards are slightly better offensively. Since the difference in defense is slight, I usually go with the 11.69, unless I'm facing a lot of LHP, then I want the 11.11. I have a hard time paying for that extra dollar......

I generally agree on spending the extra buck but at the same time, it’s almost like a half dollar because you don’t have to have a centerfield backup which opens up possibilities for improved backups elsewhere.

I do agree with you in that a dollar here and a dollar there can add up though.

I want to bring this back to the original thought I had. If the players ballpark effects are the same between his cards, then what do you look at when choosing cards for different parks? For me it is probably defense. In a pitchers park, since defense is unaffected by park, a defensive liability is more likely to offset the offensive advantage. Injury is another, as is the R/L balance and the opposing teams pitching rotations.

For me though, I plug it all into the top-secret-cant-tell-you-the-secret-sauce formulas, tinker with the weighting on things a bit, and out pop the numbers. Then it just becomes a matter of maximizing runs scored, runs allowed, and putting together a pitching staff all on a budget.

Interesting conversation. Obviously there are a lot of variables in play (does league tend to have higher percentage of lefty or righty pitchers? ...what's the league salary cap, etc.?), but from my POV, the key to ballpark effects is how they affect the value of ballpark homers on batter/pitcher cards.

Thus, my basic philosophy for a small parks (i.e., with high numbers for BP homers) is to purchase the cheapest ballpark homers available. Here's an example of what that looks like at 80M salary cap: https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1512140

Perhaps counterintuitivly, cards with max "true" homeruns (like 2001 Bonds or 1998 McGwire) are best suited to pitcher parks like PETCO. Those cards will continue to hit a ton of homeruns regardless of the park and each homerun has greater value in a low-scoring environment.