Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Strat-o-matic recently announced that it "made changes in an effort to moderately curtail the 'Super-Reliever' phenomenon." The implementation of those changes in the ATG game is expected to be made in approximately mid-April. Those changes could result in managers placing a greater emphasis on starting pitching.

When I first started playing the online ATG game years ago I was appalled by the softball like ERAs of the starting pitchers, but soon realized that it was all relative, as the most costly starting pitchers generally performed better than less expensive hurlers, but just had higher ERAs than their real life counterparts.

With online SOM using a uniform schedule of 3 games per night, on any given night at caps of $100 mil and up it is not unusual to see Greg Maddux pitching against Ed Walsh, Pete Alexander pitching against Walter Johnson, Pedro Martinez pitching against Three Finger Brown, Silver King pitching against Christy Mathewson, Dutch Leonard pitching against Sandy Koufax, etc, etc. With no variation in the schedule, for managers using a 4 man rotation, it's ace pitcher vs. ace pitcher night in and night out. As one might expect, the nightly ace vs. ace matchups have a negative impact on the W-L records of such aces. As a result, it is not unusual to see a $10 mil pitcher with a sub .500 record.

Ace vs. ace matchups are far less frequent in MLB than in the ATG game. There are a number of reasons for this, such as managers juggling rotations, minor sore arms and other injuries, pitchers pitching on short rest, rain outs and disparate schedules from team to team.

Personally, if I'm going to spend $9.5 mil or more on a starting pitcher, I expect him to win far more often than he loses, but we all know that's not always the case.

So the question to my fellow managers is whether a staggered schedule, where all teams would play 2, 3 or 4 game series and/or have simulated off days at different times, should be adopted by SOM to reduce the number of ace vs. ace matchups, which would arguably improve the W-L record and value of elite starting pitchers.

Please post your thoughts on such in this thread. - Bernie

P.S.: Be cautious, be safe and stay healthy.

for the sake of brevity...yes

While I don't see it ever happening. Yes, I like the idea.

Don't like the idea especially the days off part. Good starting pitchers can routinely rack up 350+ innings as it is and having days off would only increase that which is only realistic for seasons prior to 1920.

As far as a staggered schedule, I prefer a fixed number of games per night although I would prefer that starters be announced in advance so that a lineup could be constructed independently for each game in a series.

c

I agree with the Druid on both points. Not a fan of a staggered schedule at all...

As I remember it in the good old days of real baseball The ace match-up were common, Sandy v Juan was the one I most remember and in the days of the four man rotation the 1-4 match-ups seemed like they always fell that way especially getting the two #1 guys to match-up. In the big $$$ leagues you have 4 aces on every team so a staggered schedule probably is of little value. In the 100 mil and less the match-ups are a crap shoot because teams are making different decisions on how to balance the money spent on pitchers/hitters. I happy to hear that the super relief pitcher is being addressed, hopefully the value of an ace starter will get a boost.