1979 Larry Bowa card?????

Bowa hit 0 homeruns and 11 triples in 1979, yet his card has HR chances and against LHP he is a "N" with zero triple chances. what's going on here????????????

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/pl ... /70/348569

OK, I see this has been posted a couple times- has SOM responded?????

I can't recall that I've ever utilized Bowa in a 70s Mystery game, but when I looked at the card and realized that it didn't correspond to the 1979 season, then my assumption was that the wrong season's card was on display. After analyzing Bowa's 1978 season, it looks like that is the card on display.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... r=1978&t=b

He hit three homeruns that year, 2 against lefthanders. That would seem to jive with a LHP N rating but a RHP W rating. He had 5 triples against RHP. I would have thought that the chance for triples would be greater than indicated, unless the card is factoring those instances when a double is stretched into a triple.

I don't know whether it is still available, but a SOM Online player, Yountfan, at one time had a spreadsheet showing how all of the players had performed in numerous 70s leagues. I would be curious if those seasons revealed to be Bowa's 1979 season were statistically similar to his actual numbers. My guess is that they likely do, and that the problem is that Bowa's incorrect card for the 1979 season is displayed.

Thanks. It seems like such an easy error for SOM to correct.

Here is the link to the Larry Bowa page on yountfans stratrat site.

http://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=457 ... E:31139,70

I don't know what to make of those stats, and what season it would be an accurate representation of.

I guess they still haven't corrected it. I think his "1979" mystery card is really 1980, not 1978.

I generally play just 20xx, but noticed this post on Bowas card, as I just played a 1977 league.

It appears to me they pretty much used the 77 stats for the 79 card and almost cloned it--the 2 cards are almost identical in chances, though on different card patterns--The biggest difference vs LH one has a HR 1-4 chance on 5, and the other a 1-5, which is typical for season-to-season variations in cards. (79 may have had a few more overall HR chances on pitchers cards)

So, I guess in Mystery leagues you basically have two chances to get the 77 card, as the one labeled 79 is obviously incorrect.

The mistake means you've got 4 of 5, instead of 3 of 5, chances of getting a card better than the stats of his five year average, making him decidedly a better value than Rick Burleson, Mark Belanger, Bert Campaneris or any other similarly priced shortstop card from the mystery 70s.

If 1970's mystery Larry Bowa from his incorrectly coded final year ever gets injured for more than three games, then it would appear the incorrectly coded year in question is possibly 1980 and not 1977. Some 1970's cards have mystery years from the 1980's.

Otherwise, an SOM attempt at representing a similar 1977 card seems like a good bet as mentioned earlier.

My current mystery Bowa seems to be "suffering" from this misidentification of his final year.