Anyone else concerned about this statement?

Sure we all have the option to leave a line up blank, but it doesn't seem right.

I totally agree. It just seams weak to me to try to gain an advantage in that way.

Hi Jerry, respectfully, I don't see it as gaining an unfair advantage, just using whats available to it's fullest. If HAL lineups go away, that is AOK, everyone gets the same tools.

To me HAL linueps in the mystery card sets is like using the ratings disks in single season card sets. No all managers buy them, but I know for sure that my team builds are better using it, it is an advantage that is available to all managers, but managers have an option to purchase it and use it or not. Leaving lineups blank in mystery games to get more information on my team is not different to me.

There are definitely two very polarized camps on this.

Now that they have announced this change . . . I want to voice that I think they could customize this a bit. Why choose a player by salary? That's going to suck when your DH played one or two games at SS and HAL slaps him there. It would be nice if you could choose priority at each position; in this case, defense first or something else. I guess you should just set your backups, but I also like this for drafts. How many times have you not gotten your pick in a draft, and it's replaced by someone the polar opposite of what you want? My most recent example was I didn't get Ryno, so it gave me Franco . . . it gave me a 4e17 instead of a 1e9. At positions like SS and 2B I will go for defense every time, so it'd be nice to be able to specify "Choose by best defense" instead of salary. You could pick WHIP or ERA for pitchers, or steal rating or OPS or whatever for batters.

I'm looking forward to trying 60s . . . I never leave my lineups blank so the change doesn't affect me, but it'd be nice to have a little more control over how the team is managed. It's all we have really, since we don't control the game for each roll of the dice.

Rob, your comment was right on. The only people who were really penalized were the rookie mystery owners who didn't know that there were clues to be had by leaving a lineup blank. Almost every fellow "leave the lineup blank" owner I have talked to has said this is better for the mystery game. Sure does change my drafting of players and possibly my keeper league decisions. Let's have fun!

Chuck

Hurray for the elimination of smart HAL!

Long live the dumb HAL!

Sure we all have the option to leave a line up blank, but it doesn't seem right.

I totally agree. It just seams weak to me to try to gain an advantage in that way.

I also agree. I don't mean this as a criticism to anyone who does it, but to me it is a "lazy" way of managing. You aren't doing the "work" yourself to discover which player is on what card. If I "choose" to put the 80s John Wockenfuss in my lineup as a platoon player, and he stinks up the place because it turns out that he is on that 1 awful season where he is rated 1R instead of being his usual lefty-mashing self... well, that is on me. It happens, and it is part of the game experience for me. Also, letting HAL do lineups can sometimes steer you completely in the wrong direction, because HAL will often favor defense over hitting, or make other decisions that either defy explanation or run counter to the way we ourselves would prefer to manage our team. If this is fact means that the option of letting HAL choose the lineups will be gone, I would have no problem with it at all.

Sure we all have the option to leave a line up blank, but it doesn't seem right.

I totally agree. It just seams weak to me to try to gain an advantage in that way.

I also agree. I don't mean this as a criticism to anyone who does it, but to me it is a "lazy" way of managing.

Conndor, That's one way to look at it, but once I started using blank hal for the 1st few series, I had a TON of information to analyze and spent 10x the effort trying to figure out what Hal did. I actually found it fun to try to figure him out over 9-12 games of lineups, almost like a puzzle. But I am a reverse polish notation HP calculator carrying, pocket protector wearing, would rather write code that talk to humans, computer geek, so that has to be factored in

None of it really matters in the big picture, already used up 2 of my 1st 5 pack and my willpower is being tested to not use up the rest by Friday night LOL. Really happy to have this new mystery card set whatever the rules are.

Conndor, That's one way to look at it, but once I started using blank hal for the 1st few series, I had a TON of information to analyze and spent 10x the effort trying to figure out what Hal did. I actually found it fun to try to figure him out over 9-12 games of lineups, almost like a puzzle. But I am a reverse polish notation HP calculator carrying, pocket protector wearing, would rather write code that talk to humans, computer geek, so that has to be factored in

You should see the charts I would put together after every series comparing percentages for all the players HAL put into the lineup in order to determine exactly what I had.
I could easily spend hours entering and analyzing all the percentages to make determinations.
And I tell you, I can't say I was never wrong, but I'd say my system was a good 95% accurate.

And that's not taking into account the number of hours I invested into entering every possible hitters card as a custom player into the CDROM game so I could have them there for easy reference for comparison purposes.

And that's not taking into account the number of hours I invested into entering every possible hitters card as a custom player into the CDROM game so I could have them there for easy reference for comparison purposes.

How much would you charge me for THAT roster disk Voovits!!!!

It's not quite what you think.
I didn't' enter the complete cards for all the players, just the relevant hitting rolls, so I could use it to compare the offensive percentages amongst all the players I want to compare to. The only exceptions would be if I have the season already loaded in my game, I would just copy the player over to the section I created for the mystery players.
Saved a little bit of time, but still time consuming.
Also don't have every player, just players I have used. If I ever played with a player I didn't have on my roster in the past, I would add him then. Still though, I have a ton of players from all 3 games. 80s and 90s especially.

It's not quite what you think.
I didn't' enter the complete cards for all the players, just the relevant hitting rolls, so I could use it to compare the offensive percentages amongst all the players I want to compare to. The only exceptions would be if I have the season already loaded in my game, I would just copy the player over to the section I created for the mystery players.
Saved a little bit of time, but still time consuming.
Also don't have every player, just players I have used. If I ever played with a player I didn't have on my roster in the past, I would add him then. Still though, I have a ton of players from all 3 games. 80s and 90s especially.

Smart stuff, wish I would have thought of it.