Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

There's some nice newer players. Michael Brantley and Cody Bellinger. And Andrew McCutchen and Joe Mauer got new cards.

It was a little sad seeing Carew get so expensive. I think small ball is dead..???

Doubt it. The Mauer card you mentioned is a small ball catcher. And there will be plenty of people using the whole card set, creating those slap-happy single teams. Putting the ball in play more often requires players who don't routinely strikeout 150+ times a season. Brantley and Mauer are good, modern contact hitters. Cutch is reasonable. So is Bellinger, as far as K's go. But then you have someone like Ronald Acuna, who is a wiff hound (188 K's). Never ceases to amaze how often these guys get punched out. Somebody like Aaron Judge, good as he is, is the poster boy for modern baseball--50% of the time he doesn't put the ball in play (I'm wondering why anyone throws him a strike). You get whole rosters full of that ethos, that's a recipe for a really boring style of play to watch.

But, thankfully, there's radio.

Radagast Brown wrote:There's some nice newer players. Michael Brantley and Cody Bellinger. And Andrew McCutchen and Joe Mauer got new cards.

It was a little sad seeing Carew get so expensive. I think small ball is dead..???

I don't play a lot of leagues compared to some managers. But, I play enough of them to notice a trend (this is just my observation and could easily be wrong). The (nearly) vast majority of successful teams depend on power hitting to at least a moderate extent. Only the small salary cap leagues and the pitching oriented theme leagues have a higher rate of success for 'small ball' baseball.

What's interesting (to me, at least) is that small ball truly died in August and September of 1919. It was hanging on by its fingernails for about 1 year prior to that. But, the Babe was more powerful than the rest of baseball and conventional thinking combined. He wasn't even on the Yankees, yet.

Ruppert knew what was possible and Frazee was a very successful businessman who knew how to turn Ruth into the opportunity he needed to fix his investment in the Red Sox leading to the sale of the team in the early 20s for a sizable profit.

Denorien wrote:

Radagast Brown wrote:There's some nice newer players. Michael Brantley and Cody Bellinger. And Andrew McCutchen and Joe Mauer got new cards. It was a little sad seeing Carew get so expensive. I think small ball is dead..???

At 80 million looks like the old formula of cheap, effective SP's like Duren, Henry and hitters like Carew (9.54!), Wagner and others is going to have to be reworked. All the "Value" players for smallball got their prices upped. I don't think its dead but at 80m I think its definitely a new game and strategy involved in picking players

If ballpark choices are any indication, my first ATG9 league has only 1 Forbes. In ATG8, I'd sometimes see 3-4.

And then there's 2 Polo Grounds, 0/0/20/20. One of them has a rotation of Medich, Neilson, Lerch, Leal, and Conroy (in other words, it has no rotation). The power comes across the lineup with lower-priced players 3-5M range, with Reg's 1973 being the outlier at 6.9M.

The other Polo has Appier, Derringer, Lungren, Samardzija, and has plunked down 6M for Hoffman. Stanton, Mathews and Murcer headline, though I anticipate Lajoie will be dropped in waivers, as 11M can but a huge bat.

Interesting stuff... I think most of the small ball big bargains went up in price more than other players.

Radagast Brown wrote:Interesting stuff... I think most of the small ball big bargains went up in price more than other players.

Can't vouch, since I tend to run with balanced lineups. My top hitter usually caps out at around 9M, if I do buy a big hitter. I can say that the 5-6M range, which is usu my recruiting sweet spot, looks really nice with the new pricing system.