- Posts: 5
- Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:29 pm
The four man rotation is a throw back to the first 20 years Strat-o-Matic existed---1962 was the 1st year a card set was printed (I think--my first exposure to the game was around 1967--but with the 64 card set).
Four man rotations were common in MLB, and also the first few years of strat there were only 20 cards per team, usually 12 batters and 8 pitchers--by 69 24 players per team were available----so for the game rules any SP over 200 innings could be started every 4th game. It really should have been about 270 innings, but there were not enough cards printed to cover 1458 average innings per team per year.
Until somewhere around mid 1980's to 1990 some of the better SP routinely hit 270 IP and quite often 300 or more.
Some of the knuckleballers like Wood and Niekro even pitched on every 3rd day for a few years in the 70's.
For online I agree in principle it should be done away with, but it does add strategy to the drafts as generally a *SP costs 20% more for the same card as a five day starter---also there are no off days in strat, so the 5th guy can't be skipped in the rotation every so often as in actual MLB.