How Bad Can You Be?

However, once in a while a team will suddenly get "hot" (read that as "lucky") after some player moves, and thus the dream of turning around bad teams through the "skillful" movement of players is kept alive for future teams.

Some teams get lucky after making player moves. However, many managers actually make skillful moves and turn a losing team into a winning team. I assume Coyote is a veteran, so I'm surprised he doesn't know this. I've seen many managers, including myself, make smart successful moves and turn losing teams around. I've also seen losing managers do nothing and watch their teams fade into darkness.

It's just another example of skillful managers working to make their own luck and less skillful ones letting luck dominate their own efforts.

Coyote,

Not off topic at all.

In fact, if you assume perfect player pricing, then every penny not spent to the full $80 mil allowed actually reduces the odds of maximizing net run production. Over a zillion trials of two equally talented managers, a $79.97 roster will outperform a $79.85 roster. Each drop would further accentuate the differences.

However, no one will play a "zillion" games, and player pricing probably isn't "perfect" either. And if you're worried a penny of salary equates to 0.000000001 runs, then you are definitely too far into the weeds. But if you're not winning games, all else being equal, you probably shouldn't be spotting other managers any amount of salary if you can possibly help it.

Coyote, But if you're not winning games, all else being equal, you probably shouldn't be spotting other managers any amount of salary if you can possibly help it.

Firstly, if you're not winning any games, you definitely don't want to stay with your current roster. All it will do is continue to not win games. Secondly, the problem with comparing teams by percentage of original salary is it assumes all collections of players on an 80m roster are equal. We all know they are not. We also know a 75m-79m roster can be superior to an 80 m one. This is because some players priced lower are better than others priced higher. It's also because some cheaper players are better fits for your team than your present more expensive ones.

Therefore, making moves from an inferior roster of a higher pct of original salary to a successful one of a lower pct. of original salary is a smart move. The purpose of the game is to field your best possible team and win the most games. It certainly isn't keeping more of your original salary than your opponent's.

I was intrigued by the original discussion

"J-Pav wrote
How bad can a manager be, averaging over all teams played, if he played every team like he intended to win (but he had the worst luck and didn't win)?*

* By that, I mean, you play a full salary team, without excessive in-season drops, without playing a bunch of 5s in the field, without playing 50 cent starting pitchers, etc etc. Assuming the top managers win 55% of the time, does this mean the "average" manager wins only 45% of the time, or does he always hold a 50/50 proposition?


So from this I drafted a team of players , who in my research, tended not be drafted in 80 Million dollar drafts very often.
I assume they may be overpriced or overvalued
The team I have is :
C. Santana
1B. V Martinez
2B Zobrist
3B. Seager
LF. J.Upton
CF A. Jackson
RF W.Venable
DH Campana
Surprisingly enough I got most of my picks in the autodraft.

So I will play the season without drops and try to win as best I can. I can assume from the discussion above I will have a losing record. Any thoughts?

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/1393021

I think it's cool you're willing to put a credit towards the discourse, but I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to accomplish.

What exactly do you think your team's result will show?

Young is a better DH than Campana, who I would drop and then upgrade Martinez at 1B. You'd need to add a second catcher then, too.

Overall, it is a collection of players I wouldn't often use myself, but really it's not that bad of a team. If the point is to demonstrate that card reading is overrated, this isn't a bad attempt. My guess, assuming that everything from here is run as efficiently as possible (settings, lineups, no drops, etc), would be that this team will finish above .500.

But that is kind of a difficult thing to cheer for.

The better option would be to use a stud pitching staff, so you're operating with some kind of an edge at least.

But if your team has any real success, we might have to look harder at the Any Group of $80 Mil Guys Is As Good As Any Other Group of $80 Mil Guys thing, although testing anything with one team will hardly tell us the whole story.

If the point is to demonstrate that card reading is overrated, this isn't a bad attempt.

Again, Salmon, kudos to your offering your team up as a test case for the forum. However, one team can't really prove much of anything. It's far too small of a test sample whose results could be attributed to a myriad of variables.

Also, card-reading can never be over-rated. It's the prime and primary skill/activity of an SOM manager, and learning (if not mastering it) is a prerequisite for SOM success. Is it always the most important skill for success? Not always. An excellent team-builder/team-shaper could overcome poor card reading. However, if he doesn't know how to read/interpret cards well, it is unlikely he would team-build well either.

So, in short, card-reading is extremely important.

One thing I've always wanted to do was to organize a board draft (12 teams @ 25 players plus stadium) and then randomize the teams among the 12 managers. You might get your own team that you drafted or you might get a team that you would never have thought of even considering. No drops, no trades. (Actually, I had thought this might be fun with a "draft the worst team possible" twist).

Bill

I like to say the element of luck in the SOM world boils down to one run games. One swing of the bat, one key throw to the plate, one 5% X-chart result. One run games usually settle, what, about 25-35% of all games played?

That is one area where strat is a lot like real life. I remember reading in one of the baseball annuals an analysis of teams record in one run games. They associated high win % in one run games with luck and argued it was a predictor the team would come back to earth the next year and regress record wise. They also claimed the opposite. A team losing a majority of one run games could be considered as exeriencing bad luck and could be expected to rebound the next year independent of any other roster changes.

If you played one season a day at 50/50 odds, you could expect 81 wins +/- 13 (ie, the square root of 162).

Interesting but have a nosy question. Why would the square root be the +/-? Wouldn't that be based on some standard deviation calculation? Figure when I completely do not understand something there is a chance to learn something.