Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I'm pretty new to SOM365. I played the board game constantly as a kid but the ballpark factors came in after that. I understand that building your team to suit your ballpark is important. Doing so with parks that favor lefties or righties is pretty straightforward. Tonight is opening night for an attempt to use HR monsters with the Polo Grounds 1941 (0/0/20/20). But what is the team design that works for very low offense parks like Petco (1/1/1/1)?

I try to go with good defense, great pitching and i make sure my team has alot of speed to run the bases. But that's what i like .

Save money on pitching by picking cards that allow a few walks and BPHRs, most of which will go nowhere. Offensively, do the opposite and maximize advancement of the runners you get on. Steals, doubles, triples, bunts, clutch hitting.

First, I am assuming this is a 80 million league. There are fewer hits and fewer hrs in Petco so the key on offense is base advancement (hits not walks, steals, doubles,triples, AA runners, 17 base running guys and non BP hrs). On defense, pitchers who dont allow hits (you figure/hope walks will get stranded), good catching arm--maybe -3, possibly -4 or -5 arms in center and right. See Suzuki's 2001 card. Good overall pitching and defense. Almost all of the Willie Mays cards. Guys with 20 extra base hits are good. Some mixture of high-average, AA, run 17, 15-20+ x-base hit guys. An example of a possible pitcher would be Sam McDowell (1965) which gives up almost no hits to righties (he's a lefty) and is not crazy expensive. Blake Snell is much better but he's a non-asterik guy. Good luck and take my advice with a grain of salt.

Thank you all. I'm excited to try these strategies. My crazy brother wants to start a $200m league, so I'd be doing this with a huge salary level, but I think the same approaches apply, just with higher salary guys who hit for high average, run, defend and throw well (like Speaker, Sisler). And ... I'll add in a Josh Gibson or two because I can.

Mickey,
I'm trying the same strategy in our $100m league...for Petco I've got 4 good * starters, one stud closer, and a bunch of 1-fielding, high average, lots of XB hit (but not a lot of HRs), low injury hitters...we are post-WWII NL/AL only with no DL:
Marichal (66), Seaver (73), McLain (68), Maddux (92), Nen (00)
Pagnozzi (92), Mattingly (86), Biggio (97), Bell (79), Trammell (87), Raines (87), Cedeno (72), Suzuki (04)

I clearly zigged when everyone else zagged -- there are many teams in our 12-team league packed with high HR players. We'll see how my effort to play pre-1920 small-ball with modern-era players works.

Good luck to us both!

Is there a way to tell if a player is good at clutch hitting?

mickeybuhl wrote:Is there a way to tell if a player is good at clutch hitting?

It's the $ symbol in front some rolls. If it's in front of an out, the player is positive clutch and the out is changed to a SINGLE with two outs and a man in scoring position. If the $ is in front of a SINGLE, the player is negative clutch and the SINGLE is changed to an out under those conditions. Each player will only have $ symbols in front of SINGLEs or outs, not in front of both.

And clutch is NOT an indication of whether the player was a “clutch” hitter in real life or not. My understanding is that, since the actual goal of the cards is to replicate a specific season with specific parameters, HAL uses the clutch to tweak cards that aren’t exactly replicated as constructed. RBI guys with more limited HR power, etc

That may be poorly stated, but it’s my understanding.....

andycummings65 wrote:And clutch is NOT an indication of whether the player was a “clutch” hitter in real life or not. My understanding is that, since the actual goal of the cards is to replicate a specific season with specific parameters, HAL uses the clutch to tweak cards that aren’t exactly replicated as constructed. RBI guys with more limited HR power, etc

That may be poorly stated, but it’s my understanding.....

Yeah, seems like leadoff hitters are titled toward bad clutch and guys who batted in the middle of the order are titled toward good clutch.