NLD 33

Any analysis is always enjoyable to see.

I was on vacation last week and only had time to keep up with my team. Back on the forums now. Did you miss me?

Now that A-Rod and the rest of the dopers are going to serve a long vacation away from baseball, I'm going to follow the Brewers' promotional ploy by allowing all my games to be viewed for free.

We've got to keep people in the seats or my guys might wonder too much about their jobs come 42 games into the season.

Cano promised to drop his salary from $11M to around $8M if I keep him on the roster.

Sorry Semper, even if Cano drops his salary, the league keeps the rest in a slush fund for the post-season party.

For what it's worth in NLD 32 he pitched 302 innings and was tied for 3rd in wins and top 10 in SP ERA (3.87) in a ballpark whose BPHR rating was 16,19.

I've seen such variability from season to season and in sims that I think relying on them can be very suspect. Ratings aside, Cueto is a hard RHP so, assuming he's goign to face a bunch of RHB he's goign to give you a lot for the money. it's hard to argue that the following RHSP aren't better:

Medlen, Beachy, Verlander, Lohse, Dickey, Havey, Fister, hernandez, peavy, Strasburg (at least in an average park), Grienke, Vogelsong. If you just look at the straight numbers from the Data disk I'm not sure you can really argue those.

that's not including HR guys like Griffin and Ramirez, tillman, or Cain. Or super hard Niemann who is harder than Cueto and about the same v LHB.

Now, many of those guys aren't * pitchers so if you're limiting to them, Cueto moves up. And, as far as a bargain, you might be right, but in terms of overall numbers? He's just not at the top.

If you limit to * RHSP you'd have to put him no higher than 7th behind Grienke IMHO. He's in a group than includes Cain, Shields, Kuroda, Gallardo, Wainwright and Burnett. Which one you like better from that group depends on park and opponent make up.

Joe's ratings haven't been terribly accurate historically

I don't know that is true. Team ratings in a very competitve league like this are going to have some anomalies for sure, but usually there are only 1-2 outliers. In terms of individual players, I doubt seriously that my ratings are all that different than most of yours and they are very close to the ones used by TSN to come up with salaries.

Joe,

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Given the suspect history of SOM online i'll take a lengthy sim over "raw data" any day. Too many times the numbers don't add up to what they are "supposed" to be. I gave you the numbers for the sim in regards to those pitchers you mentioned, so i'll stick to my original thought.

Anyway, these are the discussions I love. Thanks for taking the time to post. Welcome back from vacation!

Corky,

Can't say that your logic makes much sense to me. The 10 sims over raw numbers? That's like saying you played black jack for 2 hours and won a lot of money hitting 16 all the time. The odds are the odds. You can ignore ratings which take into account more fuzzy factors, but there isn't a lot of debate over the OB/Hit/Slugging numbers.

All I know is that I had Kontos in our last NLD, he went 15-4 with 3.71 ERA and 1.25 whip in 158 IP. I had him in an AD league and he 14-10 with 4.74 and 1.46 in 175 IP. Oh, and the first numbers are in National Stadium and the second in Kaufman. His ERA In National was 3.40 versus 3.96 in Kaufmann.

Wineman and I used to run Sims and would find a LOT of variability from Sim to Sim.

That's not to say that Cueto isn't a good bargain. He might be. However, if there is no cap, you take the guys I mentioned before you take Cueto unless you're going to see a LOT of RHB.

Welcome back Joe!

You can ignore ratings which take into account more fuzzy factors, but there isn't a lot of debate over the OB/Hit/Slugging numbers.

Joe if we were playing face to face you'd be 100% correct. But we're not. The difference is our individual beliefs in the "game engine". You believe in it, unfortunately I do not. It's hard to deny that things just don't add up, a simple search of threads will tell you that. I'm not saying the sim is the end all be all but it gives great statistical data from actual played games in a short amount of time.

I play ATG a lot...I can't tell you how much hair I've pulled from my head knowing I had superior teams to some others based on raw data only to see the same inferior players outperform them time and again.

Welcome back Joe!

Thanks GB.

Interesting to note:

Everyone in the Central has a neg run dif
Only one (each) in the East and West does
Biggest dif to pytag (positive) - Ottawa (4)
(Negative) - Pile Drivers (-5)

One runners are very close EXCEPT AT + 8 and Keyz -9

Stoney, Corky, and Big A are great on the road
JTJ and GB good at home

I have to say I'm surprised we have the best record at home. I don't know that we're *that* suited to our park, but maybe i'm wrong there. I'm not suprised that GB is very good at home. I expect him to have a big home/road differential.

Interesting to note:

Everyone in the Central has a neg run dif
Only one (each) in the East and West does
Biggest dif to pytag (positive) - Ottawa (4)
(Negative) - Pile Drivers (-5)

One runners are very close EXCEPT AT + 8 and Keyz -9

Stoney, Corky, and Big A are great on the road
JTJ and GB good at home

I have to say I'm surprised we have the best record at home. I don't know that we're *that* suited to our park, but maybe i'm wrong there. I'm not suprised that GB is very good at home. I expect him to have a big home/road differential.

I agree Joe, re the Bronx Bombers. The home-road differential is also amplified by the fact that 2 of the other ballparks in the west are pitcher parks! But the truth is, I have not often used hitter parks, or especially home run parks, for my teams very often. I am a bit of a novice for these kinds of teams. Basically, I tried to throw everything and the kitchen sink too into my efforts to get ballpark home runs for the hitters, and built in as many left handed bats as I thought would pass muster in actual gaming (without facing lefty specialists for 4 innings at a time!).

My extreme approach to this might not be the best approach. I did try to select a number of players with good on base percentage (like Zobrist and Ethier), but I maybe should have picked one more guy like that for the team. My pitcher selection was also a bit extreme, with heavy weighting to the RPs, and low weighting to the SPs. I am happy with the lack of ballpark homeruns on the pitcher cards.

But overall, for me, this feels like a bit of an experiment, since I tend to use parks with either low ballpark homerun chances, or else unbalanced parks with a L-R differential. In that respect, I like the format of random ballpark selection, since it forced me out of my normal comfort zone. (I realize that Yankee is an interesting park with some nice L-R differential too - I'm sure a lot of the group would have liked to get Yankee stadium in the draw).

In the past few years, when I've picked a hitter's park, I've had only rare successes. I've had bad results, for example, at Coors. So I feel like I'm still getting the feel for using a hitters park. It will be very interesting to me to see how this team's season goes. I am having lots of fun watching the home run results! It's a very fun experiment team!

I have the highest team Batting Average and the 4th lowest OBP. So my guys are swinging the bats.

Also, Corky's team OBP is under .300 yet he's 4th in Runs Scored.