New Players: Model of Skill Acquisition

I was going to post this in the "How Bad Can You Be?" thread now that it calmed down, but I decided to open a new topic to move the conversation forward with a fresh perspective.

Thinking about the original intent of where I was going with the other thread, If you still consistently lose more than half your games after you have played in enough leagues to expect improvement, what might you do to affect this situation positively? I decided to start from the beginning.

After doing some simple internet research for definitions of learning progress I came upon something called the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition (from wikipedia):

In the novice stage, a person follows rules as given, without context, with no sense of responsibility beyond following the rules exactly. Competence develops when the individual develops organizing principles to quickly access the particular rules that are relevant to the specific task at hand; hence, competence is characterized by active decision making in choosing a course of action. Proficiency is shown by individuals who develop intuition to guide their decisions and devise their own rules to formulate plans. The progression is thus from rigid adherence to rules to an intuitive mode of reasoning based on tacit knowledge.

Michael Eraut summarized the five stages of increasing skill as follows:

1. Novice
*rigid adherence to taught rules or plans
*no exercise of discretionary judgment

2. Advanced beginner
*limited situational perception
*all aspects of work treated separately with equal importance

3. Competent
*coping with crowdedness (multiple activities, accumulation of information)
*some perception of actions in relation to goals
*deliberate planning
*formulates routines

4. Proficient
*holistic view of situation
*prioritizes importance of aspects
*perceives deviations from the normal pattern
*employs maxims for guidance, with meanings that adapt to the situation at hand

5. Expert
*transcends reliance on rules, guidelines, and maxims
*intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding"
*has vision of what is possible
*uses analytical approaches in new situations or in case of problems

Whether any of this works as the best approach or not is not pertinent to me. I just thought it would be a simple framework to build our Strat-O universe off of.

If we can, let's start with Novice. Somebody wants to play Strat-O-Matic Online for the first time and their intention is to play regularly into the unknown future. What would we tell that person?

If he were to ask me, I would submit the following: First off, purchase a five-pack of teams because this is the most cost effective way to play regularly. If you should see any sales offers along the way which are discounts to the regular five-packs, purchase more teams accordingly. In the Novice stage you will be using at least five teams and maybe more. Play one team at a time. Do not start the second team until the first team's entire season is complete.

Read and understand the basic rules of the game. Then go ahead and purchase your first team. If what brought you to the game was your desire to see how many Houston Astros you could get on your roster to see how they would perform, by all means go ahead and do it. If you didn't come to the game with any preconceived ideas, consider letting the computer quick-pick your roster. BE AWARE of how your autodraft is ordered. Write it down, and after the draft is run, go back and record which original players you received in the autodraft. For those you did not get, record who the replacement pick was. As you gain experience with later teams, familiarity with the ins and outs of autodrafting will be extremely important to you. You should always be building your working knowledge of which players can be drafted at what rank in the order.

When the autodraft is returned, review your picks and prepare your selections for the waiver draft. Learn the basics here: where do you pick? If you pick first, you will automatically receive any player you want who keeps you within budget. If you pick last, 11 other managers might take the players you wanted ahead of you. Learn the mechanics of selecting your players, selecting the matching drops, and ordering the picks. After the waiver draft, review the entire list of results. Note things like who was taken first overall, second, third, etc.

Become familiar with the settings options. There are a lot of tabs to get to know and you will be drinking from a firehose. Don't worry about any of the particulars here except to focus on familiarity and education.

In addition, you will have to consider reading the boards to learn additional details of the game. Learn to navigate the threads in order to find information like "can both catchers be injured at the same time?" The more you can learn and absorb from other players' experiences, the less tuition you have to invest in your own education.

Simply let the season unfold in front of you. Review the boxscores each day, and especially review the rosters of the teams who are winning more. Learn from their player selections, learn from their ball park selections. Keep reviewing the available tabs on your team's home page. Review the statistics pages.

Do not worry about your team's particular performance. The job here is to build AWARENESS. You have no previous experience to draw upon yet. You have no way to recognize and identify patterns yet. You have no framework to base analytical decisions on yet. You must build awareness to develop all of these skills and be able to graduate from newb level.

Beginning with your second team (and even with your first team if you want) and through team five, you will follow the guidebook called veteran's best practices:

1. Spend approximately $32 million on pitching ($20-22 mil on starters, $10-12 mil on relievers) and $48 million on your hitters.
2. With regard to your hitters, try to spread out your salaries. If you have a basic framework of $9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, that equals $45 mil spent on nine starters, leaving $3 mil or so for five low dollar utility players.
3. With regard to defense, pay particular attention to 2B, SS and CF. Only use players who have defensive ranges of 1 or 2 at these three positions.
4. Select a neutral ballpark in the beginning, something like 2013 Wrigley, but read and learn about the advantages to playing in slanted ballparks like 2013 Progressive.
5. Do not drop or trade players once the season begins at this level (novice). Your goal is to be able to review your team at the end of the season for analytical patterns. If you break up your roster, in hindsight you might never come to understand the source of your corresponding success or failure.

Remember that as a Newb, you MUST adhere to these rules. You MUST NOT exercise discretionary judgment at this level.

Focusing on the NOVICE level only, please chime in with any additional comments. Then we can try and work through the other four levels accordingly and all in good time.

I read through all the advise with my first team---taking the 32-48 or 30-50 model & a neutral site is OK but most likely you will have an approximately .500 team. That's what happened to me three teams in a row.

Best thing I can say to a brand new player is don't be afraid to fail, and learn from the failures--if you take a neutral park and a 32-48 team--you aren't going to learn much.

After my 3rd team I just started experimenting with all types of combos to gain knowledge, and study the better teams. I took a few lumps, but learned quicker. It will take a few teams to learn how to handle settings--especially the pitchers--and there is more than one way to do things successfully.

On the other hand a lot of experienced guys love Progressive as it has the most potential for a big home field advantage--but a lot of times you will find a league with 3, 4 or even more of that park and everyone needing the same type players and drafts getting blown up--if you're brand new you can't hope to keep up in the frenzy grabbing the best players for your park. Experienced guys drop and add a lot in preseason to beat the teams in the division, and they can take advantage of new guys, especially in unbalanced parks.

I think as a new player you should go with a HR park, or a pitchers park--but a balanced one as far as BP effects L/R---I think it gives you the best chance of a good to very good team--or a bad to very bad team--but either way you learn the players you need in such parks quicker.

Thanks for all you contribute to the community JPav. Happy New Year as well...

I think lineup construction is also needed for the new player. ie. OB/gBA's/SLG etc...

Vis, I think you and milleram raise valid points...

If someone had told me after my first five teams I would be .500, knowing what I know now, I'd have taken that!

I disagree with milleram a little, in that if you try five experimental type teams you haven't developed any frame of reference in order to assess what is working yet. You would get a huge dose of experience with a lot of different players and scenarios though, and I do agree that during your first teams, as a manager, this will be the worst you should ever be, so just GO FOR IT!

The rules set forth above though, offer a pretty decent working framework for beginners. For your first teams, just do, don't think. If you hold your team to the basic tenets that define best practices, you can focus on your team stat lines and try and optimize avg/obp/slg on offense and ERA and WHIP on defense while holding most of everything else in something of a constant state.

There's plenty more to add to this after five teams and as the manager transitions to advanced beginner, but hopefully we can get a little more newbie advice first. Any and all opinions are welcome!

And thank you visick, Happy New Year to you and yours!

Agree with Vis...you continue to bring insightful and intriguing topics and posts.

I agree with Milleram about not starting in a neutral park. I think it makes for a more difficult learning curve. At least if you go with an HR park, a Pitcher park, or a slanted park, you can focus on a certain side of the equation. I think a neutral park can cause a new manager to try to solve all team makeup issues at once, rather than focusing on specifics to fit his/her park.

Going back to my newb days, I know that was a trap I'd fall into. Things started to click when I eliminated cards I KNEW would or would not work...avoiding # pitchers in HR parks, finding hitters with # for those same parks....then finding the right mix of power and OBP, etc...

My dos cents.

This is a great topic. I will try to contribute as best I can along the way. The model is very interesting and I think does apply to Strat learning and success.

I used to play 2xxx (as waldenhd in the TSN days) but now play more ATG. Sorry if I throw in too many ATG examples for those who just play 2xxx.

I suspect that many on-line players move fairly quickly from the "Novice" stage as described in the Dreyfus model to the "Advanced Beginner" stage - especially if they have previous experience with the board game. So Novice may only really apply to totally new Strat players in their first 3-5 leagues??

I like the 5 rules for novices but also have reservations about the optimal ballpark selection for the Novice. I have always thought that a HR park was easiest to win in for the Novice since getting a grasp on ballpark HR flags comes pretty early. Following a simple rule of getting as many HR flags on offense and as few as possible in pitching can lead to some success early on.

I have always considered a neutral park the park of the expert. If you can win in a neutral park against others playing in more extreme parks then you are quite proficient. Another reason I like the HR park for the Novice is that it gives an emotional rush at times - sometimes with wins, but also with some impressive HR stats, and I think a Novice sometimes needs those emotional rushes to stay involved long enough to learn the other stuff that contributes to winning against the experienced players. Guys in ATG play RH HR parks like Minute Maid and LH HR parks like Penmar all the time and it can be tough to win against them without a ballpark edge of some kind.

Looking forward to advancing through the stages!

Advanced Beginner

So, we have completed five leagues at Newb Stage. After three leagues we were comfortable trying to build a team to a slanted park. We tried a hitter’s park and a pitcher’s park in addition to our three neutral parks. No harm in that.

First of all, we have five Championship teams to look at. Look for patterns. What do they have in common? What type of park did they use? What was their rank in runs scored (offense) and ERA (pitching)? What about doubles, home runs, walks, stolen bases? Then you can really get your fingers dirty…what about double-plays? X-Chart outs (percentage)? A single comprehensive list is probably too cumbersome, but have at it!

Now, how did your five teams compare? What were your ranks on offense and defense? Were you last in home runs but first in hits? Did you have 50 stolen bases but were caught stealing 51 times? Add, subtract, multiply, divide, compare, contrast, assess. Learning is a feedback process, and you now have a bit of “frame of reference” and experience to draw from.

The danger in moving out of newbie stage is myopia. If four out of the five Championship teams you looked at used Coors, you’ll swear you cracked the code. You didn’t. But you won’t believe it until you learn it for yourself, so you have to keep going… add, subtract, multiply…

What’s next? Maybe you don’t like your player selections as much as you think you should have. No problem. You’ve Googled a couple things and found the Strat Tournament Players Club website at:

http://strattpc.com/star/2014_star/2014 ... aments.htm

This is a national face to face tournament league, but hey, if I click on the Average Pick Sheet link:

http://strattpc.com/star/2014_star/d_anal/aps_main.htm

…I now have an ordered system of 50 drafts used by some likely very good players! Let’s set up a salary construction chart. Here is a list at each position with a player listed in approximately each price range (9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1). I left off the more expensive players ($10+). Each position has the player most favored by the Average Pick Sheet at each corresponding price range (more or less, XXX if no one fits the bill):

C XXX, Molina, Mauer, Navarro, Castro, Salty, Pierzynski, Norris, Hanigan
1B Votto, Freeman, Moss, Craig, Johnson, VMart, Lind, DMurphy, XXX
2B Cano, Zobrist, Kipnis, XXX, Phillips, Infante, Utley, Miller, Punto
3B Donaldson, Wright, Seager, Machado, Headley, ARamirez, Alvarez, Lemahieu, Lucas
SS Tulo, Hanley, Iglesias, YEscobar, Drew, Gregorius, XXX, Reyes, AEscobar
LF Car-Go, XXX, Marte, Harper, Nava, Brantley, Denorfia, RDavis, XXX
CF Jones, Gomez, Elklsbury, Crisp, Rasmus, Parra, Span, XXX, XXX
RF Puig, Werth, Stanton, Bautista, Victorino, Beltran, XXX, XXX, XXX

Using this as our player reference (endorsed by the greats!), let’s see if we can come up with a workable lineup that follows some good basic salary construction guidelines…

How about Hanley (DH, and he's really a $9 man), Werth (RF), Mauer (C), Harper (LF), Rasmus (CF), Utley (2B and endorsed by Marcus!), Lind (1B), Lemahieu (3B) and A. Escobar (SS)?

I'll look at the pitchers and do the same thing (you can try out your own chart here!)

Then I’ll put in a draft card:

1. Werth
2. Hanley
3. Mauer
4. Harper
5. Escobar
6. Utley
7. Strasburg
8. Lind
9. Liriano
10. Rasmus
11. Lemahieu
12. Avilan
13. Ross, T
14. Hudson
15. Kluber
16. Rzepczynski
17. Diekman
18. Punto
19. Hanigan
20. Teixeira
21. Wilhelmsen
22. Lucas
23. Bowden
24. Davis, R
25. Loup

I’ll put them in Dodger to tilt toward the lefties, in a park that’s somewhat on the “more friendly side of neutral.”

This is how it came out:

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1393044

I got 13 of my first 13 picks!
I missed nine of the next 12 picks! What a newb!

So there’s still a little meat on the bone here…

What additional advice do we have for our Advanced Beginner who's starting to stretch his wings?

Well, for my taste way too much potential for injuries. I don't think the Star tour uses injuries, or if they do, they're always for remainder of game only. I generally like my most expensive player to be no worse than a slanted 1 injury rating.

If the star people do not use injuries that skews their draft lists some. One might wonder being a tournament format what other rules they have that might skew those preferences.

I would practice caution determining desirability of a card based on a draft that had no player value assignments and no cap on spending. There can be a huge difference between who makes a good top draft choice once you overlay say an $80 mil cap. For example I may be drafting 9th in that star tournament and not care a card is overpriced if it is still the 9th best card. It might not even be available for drafting 9th if it is a top 5 card. But might fall to 9th in a capped league if it were priced too high.