per-game lineups

I want per game lineups. Whether that is challenging or not is irrelevant. It would be more of a challenge if you set no lineup at all for the 3 games or left 10 mil on the table all season. I do not want challenge for the sake of challenge.

Bottom line no manger sits down and commits to a lineup for current game and next 2 regardless of who is pitching the 3 games. Real managers give the lineup to the umps just minutes before a game. I should be able to do that as well.

YES to per game line-ups!

While it may be realistic to present a lineup to an umpire just before gametime, it is not realistic for a manager to know, in advance, a team's 162 game performance before presenting the lineup each time from April to September. If a manager with greater lineup control can stack a lineup with left-handers 59% of the time against a right-handed pitcher who only faced left-handers 33% of the time in real life, I don't think you have a better product. But, that's what would happen if a manager could wait just before gametime to exercise his psychic powers of knowing the pitcher's full-season performance. Yes, this kind of individual control exists in SOM computer game, but, I don't think it makes for more realistic outcomes.

Stratomatic understands this and allows a greater degree of micromanaging in the postseason, in which you can set the lineup for an individual game, starting in game 5.

Yes, there is a distinction between baseball realism and Stratomatic realism and sometime, Stratomatic realism is a necessary evil to keep player outcomes closer to real outcomes.

By choosing a three-game lineup in advance, I would argue that this "unrealistic" constraint produces more realistic outcomes since it takes away a manager's unrealistic advantage of setting a lineup based on knowing a full-season history of a particular pitcher. To illustrate my point, is it realistic during the third week of a season to counter a one-two punch of Tommy John and Sandy Koufax by selecting a lineup of mostly left-handers against Tommy John and mostly right-handers against Sandy Koufax, two consecutive games in a row? In real baseball a manager wouldn't know early in the season that 1971 Tommy John might get creamed if he faces a stacked lineup of four or five left-handed hitters. He would only know at or toward the end of the season that a stacked lineup might work best against that kind of reverse pitcher.

If choosing a three-game lineup in advance reflects " managerial compromise" instead of "absolute control" and results in a a pitcher who faces left-handers 33% of the time to face left-handers 38% of the time instead of 59% of the time, for example, then, you have a better product. You'd have a better product because the Tommy Johns of the world would have a better chance of being successful SOM pitchers in a way that mirrors actual performance.