- Posts: 523
- Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2012 1:35 pm
Thu Jan 10, 2013 4:03 pm
Hey guys!
First off, I want to mention that the 2012 ratings book and download will be available for purchase starting tomorrow on our website. You will be able to find it by going to the New Products section of our main website; or by following this link. If you play the current season this is a must-have tool as you no longer need to count card chances to get a true value of a player!
The guides break down SO, BB, HIT, OB, TB, HR, BP, CL, and DP for each hitter vs LHP and vs RHP. It also will give you a speed, steal, bunt, hit & run, and all defensive ratings for batters. The pitchers also have their card chances broken out the same as the batters (except clutch) along with their hold, endurance, fielding, balk, wild pitch, batting, bunt, steal, and speed ratings. Combined with Dean Carrano's Offense vs. Defense article (located here) you can get a huge leg up on your competition.
A thread popped up yesterday in the ATG forum talking about clutch and how much of an effect it actually has. As a reminder, a clutch situation in Strat-O-Matic is defined as any at-bat where there is a runner in scoring position and two outs. You can find a players clutch by reviewing the card and finding the $ symbol. A $ symbol followed by an out reading will turn into a SINGLE** in a clutch situation while the $ symbol followed by a base hit will turn into an out. Using 2011 Mike Stanton as an example, against LHP he has a $ on 1-2 and against RHP a $ on 3-4. He has a -1 rating in the clutch against LHP and a -3 against RHP.
I think most people under-estimate clutch as it doesn't have a huge impact on each individual player. The average player in the 2012 card set has about 4.5 clutch units on their card. Assuming a player gets a full season of at-bats, taking into account how often clutch situations occur, and that half the rolls will occur on a pitchers card, the average player would see a little less than 2 clutch rolls in a season. A positive clutch player will see outs turn into base hits while a negative clutch player will see hits turn into outs. Just looking at an individual player it does not have a major effect. But looking at a team as a whole is a different story.
For a whole team there will be about 17 clutch rolls in a season. Some teams will be higher and some teams will be lower but in general this is about how many you should expect in one season. Every single one of these rolls either score a run(s) or end an inning with runner(s) in scoring position. This means if you had 17 clutch rolls and all were outs, you are directly losing between 17-34 runs plus any additional runs had the inning kept going. That's a run every 5-10 games!
To show an example of how badly clutch can effect your team, let's look at one of my 2011 teams. I drafted this team fairly quickly and while doing so did not factor in clutch ratings. I ended up with only Alex Rodriguez (+2) and Josh Thole (+1) with positive clutch ratings while the rest of the team was negative, some extremely negative (Casey Kotchman: -14). Under My Team and the the Sim Misc. tab, I can see that my team suffered tremendously because of it. I had only 1 clutch hit while 26 clutch outs.
As you could probably guess this was a losing team for me, I finished with a record of 77-85; 13 games out of first place. Now going through my results, I had 41 losses by only 1 or 2 runs including 14 games that I lost in extra innings. 26 clutch outs cost me at least 26 runs and more likely around 45 due to multiple runners in scoring position and extended innings from base hits instead of outs. 45 runs! That's the difference between a winning and losing record for this team. Considering 1/4 of all my games were lost by only a run or two I could have tied or taken the lead in about 6 or 7 extra games! The wild card winner in this league finished with 83 wins, or about what I would have had if I had positive clutch hitters instead of negative. Clutch hitting could have cost me a playoff appearance.
Now obviously there are a lot of assumptions made in here that would not be true for every team. However it is clear that clutch hitting could make a significant impact on a team over a season and that it should become a factor when considering how to build a winning team.
As always if anyone has any ideas for future topics, please send them in to onlinegamesupport@strat-o-matic.com.
-John
First off, I want to mention that the 2012 ratings book and download will be available for purchase starting tomorrow on our website. You will be able to find it by going to the New Products section of our main website; or by following this link. If you play the current season this is a must-have tool as you no longer need to count card chances to get a true value of a player!
The guides break down SO, BB, HIT, OB, TB, HR, BP, CL, and DP for each hitter vs LHP and vs RHP. It also will give you a speed, steal, bunt, hit & run, and all defensive ratings for batters. The pitchers also have their card chances broken out the same as the batters (except clutch) along with their hold, endurance, fielding, balk, wild pitch, batting, bunt, steal, and speed ratings. Combined with Dean Carrano's Offense vs. Defense article (located here) you can get a huge leg up on your competition.
A thread popped up yesterday in the ATG forum talking about clutch and how much of an effect it actually has. As a reminder, a clutch situation in Strat-O-Matic is defined as any at-bat where there is a runner in scoring position and two outs. You can find a players clutch by reviewing the card and finding the $ symbol. A $ symbol followed by an out reading will turn into a SINGLE** in a clutch situation while the $ symbol followed by a base hit will turn into an out. Using 2011 Mike Stanton as an example, against LHP he has a $ on 1-2 and against RHP a $ on 3-4. He has a -1 rating in the clutch against LHP and a -3 against RHP.
I think most people under-estimate clutch as it doesn't have a huge impact on each individual player. The average player in the 2012 card set has about 4.5 clutch units on their card. Assuming a player gets a full season of at-bats, taking into account how often clutch situations occur, and that half the rolls will occur on a pitchers card, the average player would see a little less than 2 clutch rolls in a season. A positive clutch player will see outs turn into base hits while a negative clutch player will see hits turn into outs. Just looking at an individual player it does not have a major effect. But looking at a team as a whole is a different story.
For a whole team there will be about 17 clutch rolls in a season. Some teams will be higher and some teams will be lower but in general this is about how many you should expect in one season. Every single one of these rolls either score a run(s) or end an inning with runner(s) in scoring position. This means if you had 17 clutch rolls and all were outs, you are directly losing between 17-34 runs plus any additional runs had the inning kept going. That's a run every 5-10 games!
To show an example of how badly clutch can effect your team, let's look at one of my 2011 teams. I drafted this team fairly quickly and while doing so did not factor in clutch ratings. I ended up with only Alex Rodriguez (+2) and Josh Thole (+1) with positive clutch ratings while the rest of the team was negative, some extremely negative (Casey Kotchman: -14). Under My Team and the the Sim Misc. tab, I can see that my team suffered tremendously because of it. I had only 1 clutch hit while 26 clutch outs.
As you could probably guess this was a losing team for me, I finished with a record of 77-85; 13 games out of first place. Now going through my results, I had 41 losses by only 1 or 2 runs including 14 games that I lost in extra innings. 26 clutch outs cost me at least 26 runs and more likely around 45 due to multiple runners in scoring position and extended innings from base hits instead of outs. 45 runs! That's the difference between a winning and losing record for this team. Considering 1/4 of all my games were lost by only a run or two I could have tied or taken the lead in about 6 or 7 extra games! The wild card winner in this league finished with 83 wins, or about what I would have had if I had positive clutch hitters instead of negative. Clutch hitting could have cost me a playoff appearance.
Now obviously there are a lot of assumptions made in here that would not be true for every team. However it is clear that clutch hitting could make a significant impact on a team over a season and that it should become a factor when considering how to build a winning team.
As always if anyone has any ideas for future topics, please send them in to onlinegamesupport@strat-o-matic.com.
-John