Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Do you know anyone who has achieved success with a team that focuses solely on fielding? I mean, really good fielding teams with very few errors and the right X rolls, etc.
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felixandrea wrote:Do you know anyone who has achieved success with a team that focuses solely on fielding? I mean, really good fielding teams with very few errors and the right X rolls, etc.

It isn't enough to just focus on fielding. It is more that great fielding can be a key for an already well conceived team. There are not enough X rolls on the combined pitcher and batter cards (none on batter cards) for fielding to be a big difference maker, in my opinion. There is no such thing as the right X rolls. Every pitcher card has the same number of X chances. Eric Gagne's best ATG card is an example of an extreme pitchers card (all strikeouts where possible except for X rolls) illustrating the uniformity of X chances (30 X chances).

For example, a good pitching team requires both capable starters and a full bullpen -> enough middle relievers and a closer so that no one is continuing to pitch at low / 0 fatigue. Fatigue is critical to win late / close games. Having a spot starter who hammers RH batters for those teams that don't have a sufficient LH batting presence can help, too.

Great fielding can accentuate the success of a good pitching team. A HR poor ball park can be leveraged by high average / high on-base batters who don't have many ballpark HR chances. Bringing small advantages together on a team such as lineup balance, pitching balance, and a favorable ballpark (whether small ball or HR weighted) is how a team can increase chances to win. Good fielding up the middle certainly helps.

Great fielding teams can make $5M starters pitch like $10M starters. I've had teams with $25-$30M spent on the pitching staff lead the league in pitching.

But, good fielding, like everything else costs money, so it's hard to cover every spot in your lineup with exceptional fielders who can also create offense. So it's a balancing act.

I can tell you from personal experience that a great defensive team with a $40M-$50M pitching staff will struggle to score more than 2 runs a game.

And it's not just about errors, range is key as well. For example: a 2e4 Second Sacker is reported to be the equivalent of a 1e22.

Look at this team for an idea about what a truly good defensive team looks like (not saying it' a great team, just that it's a great defensive team): https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1776595


And you need to consider EVERYTHING including: catcher throwing errors, passed balls, catcher arm, outfielder arms, pitcher hold ratings, pitcher WP & balk ratings. All of those things go into building a good defensive team.

One way to possibly counteract the lesser offense could be by using good fielders with some injury risk. Guys with a 2 injury rating or greater. There’s plenty of options at each position. Guys like Pudge, Votto, Inglasis , Kiermier with 3’s 4’s and 5’s you’ll get even more of a bargain hitting wise. Of course there’s the possibility of them missing significant amount of games too.

For what it's worth, I find that it's much easier FOR ME to construct a team with good-value pitching, good-value hitting, and OK fielding than to emphasize fielding as a primary goal, especially at 80 or 100M caps.
It may be that I simply understand how hitting works and how pitching works on a team level better than how fielding works. Also, it seems to me that in ATG9, fielding is slightly over-priced.
By contrast, I used to play the mystery card game Back to the 80s when I first started playing Strat. Then I also played Back to the 70s when that came on. In those mystery card games I emphasized fielding much more, in part because there were a lot of pretty well-priced range 1 fielders who also hit well. I sometimes had an outfield of, say Winfield, Dawson, and Murphy--all 1s, and maybe Trammell at SS and Carter at C. And with the mystery card, the fielding rating applied to all five cards, so if you happened to get a 1 fielder's bad hitting card, the fielding would still be there. I did try a few "all 1s" teams in the mystery card leagues and they did OK.
But with ATG, I tend to focus more on hitting and pitching, though a great fielding card is always welcome, of course. This is just my two cents. A lot of this is a matter of personal style--what do you feel comfortable with?
It would be interesting to hear other opinions.