Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

As a tip of the cap to chaberlal for the "stupid question" thread, and one to kev for "trade secrets from the old boys club", I will ask a "stupid question" and see what yall think. OK enough with the quotes, joey.

With all the talk about the best way to structure pitching and particularly bullpens, my stupid question is about countermeasures for a couple of the primary pitching staff strategies that work pretty well--(1) Stud Starters with minimized bullpen and (2) Cheap one-sided bullpens. Neither is particularly new, but both have been made more prevalent since BP v3, because they are generally very effective.

Assumptions:
- The teams in question are either division mates, represent a likely playoff opponent, or represent a general strategy across multiple teams in the league, ie the opposing strategy represents a significant or key chunk of opposition.

Questions:
1. Stud Starters. If opponent(s) are using stud starters and a trash bullpen of minimized innings, do you consider this when constructing your team?
2. Cheap one-sided bullpens. If opponents are using cheap, heavily one-sided pens, do you consider this when constructing your team?

My thoughts are below. What are yours?
1. I do.
STRATEGY: Generally, the strength of the stud starters approach is for stud guys who are S8 or S9 it is very difficult to get their pitch count fatigue below F9...and even if you do, the impact on strong pitcher cards is not much worse than rolling the dice with a relief corps of lesser cards, fatigued or not. And a manager can greatly limit bullpen exposure now.
VULNERABILITY(?): Getting to F0 earlier
COUNTERMEASURE(?): So, my proposed countermeasure is to go with a team of top-to-bottom moderate hitters, rather than studs and scrubs. I want every guy to have a chance to tag an on-base event, increase the pitch count past the unknown max pitch count the game engine determined for that start, and get the starter to F0 as soon as possible. So if I have 60M to spend on 9 position players in a 100M DH league, I may have a lieneup of guys between $6M-8M, versus a few at 10+. Greg Maddux will be tough no matter what, but if I can bring on fatigue earlier, and then have guys who have a card worth taking advantage of that fatigue, maybe I have a better chance.

2. I do.
STRATEGY: This is another effective bullpen strategy because the one side guys are such great bargains, especially if you can beat the card's spread of strong to weak side events (ie a 9L card that was carded based on 50% lefties in real life...and you get that guy's actual splits to 75% lefties--some of it falls out in the pricing, but not on all cards. For instance, that same card, if you only get the actual splits to 30% lefties, you are not getting your money's worth).
VULNERABILITY(?): catching one-sided guys on their weak side
COUNTERMEASURE(?): My proposed countermeasure takes different forms depending on the cap and DH/No DH. But generally, I will pursue balanced L/R lineups with guys who are pretty solid both ways, and have a 5/4 spread for alternating the lineup as much as possible. Hoping to give HAL fits as he runs through others' bullpen roles/settings and just cause him to blow through relievers leaving me hitting against Calvin Schiraldi for three innings.

Maybe worthless, and I don't play enough teams to have a solid sample yet, but I am seeing how it goes. Your thoughts? Is this just pointless background noise? Do you disagree with the vulnerability significance?

FrankieT wrote:As a tip of the cap to chaberlal for the "stupid question" thread, and one to kev for "trade secrets from the old boys club",

Where is this "trade secrets" thread you refer to? I'd be curious to read it. Do you have a link?

Oh it was just a side comment kev made on the "Through the Years" thread. It should be near the top--just the past day or so. Sorry to spin you up. No Holy Grail!

Was July 13 on that thread:
..."With SOM, very much still learning the ropes. Hoping to become part fo this community but will admit, it does feel like an old boys club. Certainly encountered a few legends that passed on wisdom (am thankful) and understand divulging trade secrets.[...]"

Gotcha ... I thought I was missing some deep carnal knowledge or something ...

Havent really thought about counter-measures. Against the one-sided cheapies a balanced line-up, possibly with some switch-hitters could help.

How do you tire out those high-fatigue guys? Maybe a high on-base, high k line-up? Lots of walks, lots of ks should drive up the pitch count.

freeman wrote:How do you tire out those high-fatigue guys? Maybe a high on-base, high k line-up? Lots of walks, lots of ks should drive up the pitch count.

Ha...I think I answered that, but maybe was too general. I don't know exactly how the PCF engine counts pitches, but I definitely don't consider strikeouts. I am aiming for anything that isn't an out because that definitely increases pitch count--so that's where the strategy of not having scrubs comes in.

I aim to bat around--don't care if it's 9 singles, because when a guy starts going below F9, to quote the wiki...

Pitch Count Fatigue is a special system found only in SOM Online and the CD-ROM game that is a replacement for the board game's Super-Advanced Point of Weakness (POW) rules. It improves upon the all-or-nothing fatigue state of pitchers in the POW system by more realistically and gradually tiring pitchers as they throw more pitches and give up baserunners in a game.

In the Strat-O-Matic Online game, PCF is in effect for all leagues, and has been since the game's inception.
Suggested Pitch Count

A Suggested Pitch Count is determined for each pitcher at the start of each game. This represents the approximate number of pitches he may throw before his condition starts to deteriorate.

It is possible that a pitcher may have his Condition altered well before or well after the suggested number of pitches for him. For instance, if he gets his doors blown off early in the game he might have his Condition affected earlier. Conversely, if he is pitching a gem he might be able to go many more pitches before his Condition deteriorates.
Pitcher's Condition (F0 - F9)

The pitcher's Condition can be from F0 to F9. F9 means that he is operating on all cylinders, whereas F0 indicates that he has nothing left in the tank. Normally pitchers start their appearance as F9 and maintain that level until they approach or exceed their Suggested Pitch Count.

If a pitcher's Condition drops to F0 he will continue to fatigue the longer he stays in the game. His Condition rating will remain displayed as F0, but he will start to give up hits and walks at a higher rate if you leave him in the game.

The situations wherein a pitcher can reach his Point of Weakness (POW) as per the Super-Advanced POW rules do still apply, but in these cases he is not to be considered suddenly "tired", nor do all "@" readings automatically turn into SINGLE**. But this DOES significantly speed up the pitcher's Pitch Count Fatigue deterioration.

Otherwise, in general, if the pitcher hasn't reached his POW per the Super-Advanced POW rules, he will gradually start losing points in his Condition (e.g. F8 -> F7) as he throws more pitches, once he has exceeded his Suggested Pitch Count for the game. However, if he has been pitching particularly well in his most recent innings, this rate of deterioration will be slower.
How Condition Affects Gameplay

Similar to POW, PCF affects readings on pitcher cards preceded by an "@", but it doesn't automatically turn them all into SINGLE**. Instead, it is a more gradual effect, and the variety of the resulting penalties is greater. Basically, once a pitcher's Condition falls below F9 (full strength), the chance of an "@" reading turning into a hit or a walk increases incrementally with each point descending towards F0. The hits can be singles, doubles, triples, or homeruns.

When I was in the finals last year someone was mentioning that Graz went for low k guys to reduce pitch count. So thats where that idea came from. I dont know how Hal does pitch counts either, but presumably ks and walks have higher avg pitch counts ...

Here is his team:

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1611144

Hmm...mathematically why would it better to have a consistent line-up to tire out an elite F9...as opposed to a star and scrubs line-up, assuming that their overall numbers are the same? Arent they on average going to have the same impact on the pitcher, just that a consistent line-up is less concentrated in 4-5 players? I am not being critical...just curious as to the theory behind it.

Interesting. Can't argue with Cristano's management of the stud starter strategy.

Good question on the lineup. And heck critical is good--that's the idea. First my thought was if I am going to get pitcher card lookups reverting to the hitter, I'd rather not have any weak cards. I want every position to be a decent punisher.

Overall the average is the same. But the average is misleading. If you have 4 superstars @46M with 65 on base chances each, then the rest would be couple mil type guys by the original example. Odds are your four guys get on and the other don't. But if you had a lineup of 9 guys who were around 6M or so, there are not likely to be extremely weak cards.