The Super Reliever Fiasco

I would guess many of the nominations were based on a card being usable.

I would guess many of the nominations were based on a card being usable.

Exactly. Though, technically, any card is usable based on cap.

I'm still not sure what you mean. You would have Strat concoct a "career average" card? As I said, you can count me out on that.

Now, if you wanted to add his 1966 card which comes closest to his "career average", then I would have no problems with that

(Beckert's career slash is .283/.318/.345, ops+ of 82; 1966 slash is .287/.317/.348, ops+ of 84, plus he finished 23rd in MVP voting). It's quite remarkable when you look at Beckert's career. In 1971 (the one where he batted .342, the one we are voting on), his ops+ was only 108, which is the same 31% better compared to his career ops+ as Maris' 1961 year is to his career ops+. Man, if only Beckert could take a base on balls from time to time....

Actually that would be the simplest way to do it. And it would still cut down on all the BS. Honestly I love the idea when you put it that way.

For those who come to SOM online desiring realism, I point to the sign hanging over the entrance to Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope ye who enter."

I am a baseball purist who has been a StratOMatic fanatic since 1968. Toward the tail end of the original online ATG game, I decided to give it a try. With my very first team, i was such a purist I would occasionally rest my hitters to keep them sharp for long haul. I also lost 97 games. I decided next time I would try a little harder to win. That was the first smudge on my purity. But i soldiered on. I started having quite a bit of success and enjoyed having pitchers like Koufax win 25 games with a sub 3.00 ERA. Then along about ATG 4 or 5 Koufax would struggle to win 15 games with a season ERA around 5.00. The joy of watching a dominant pitcher in real life have a dominant season in ATG was fading.

The player pool was operating on the law of astro physics, ever expanding. And as it expanded, Koufax shrunk. As did players like Yaz, about whom one of the old timers chided me very early on, "You just dropped Carl Yazstremski; no one ever drops Carl Yaztremski! Do you realize how many managers in this league had Yaz on their draft card and lost him to you?!" That Yaz card is still in the player pool but if it's been used in a public league in the last decade, I'll eat my hat.

As someone who grew up with Bob Gibson an his idol, I love dominant pitching. But with the burgeoning player pool and expanding ball park options, I finally had to accept that on any given day my Sandy Koufax could lose to his Bert Maxwell in a blowout. That's about the time I made the deal with the devil and decided to start using the super reliever plan.

I don't like the super reliever but I like to win. Since I gave in to the siren song, my super reliever teams have won at a clip of about .550, almost %75 making the playoffs and about %40 winning championships.

I would be fine with SOM coming up with a redesign that does away with super relievers. But to me, the root problem is the gargantuan player pool and park choices. In a slugging park, I'd much rather have Brickyard Kennedy knocked out in the 2nd with Dale Murray on to relieve for five innings than have Koufax knocked out in the second and hope Daryl Patterson can come in and last an inning or two before he gets knocked out and I'm down to Greg Cadaret in the 5th.

I highly doubt SOM will take any action on this issue. Too many managers like to drop into public leagues and watch Bonds and Ruth hit their 80 HR's. Getting back to realism would be bad for business. So long as it's an option for other managers, I'll have my two relievers who between them will log 300+ innings, have a combined 30-10 W-L record, and enjoy watching them ride in the championship parade.

Or maybe I'll have an attack of contrition and buy my soul back from the Devil.

Kevin A

A really neat aspect of these leagues is that we can form leagues with any caveats that we wish. Certainly we do it with salary caps but there have been many formats. Getting tired of home runs dominating I formed a league with a max of 19 home runs( sort of an old timers league using some modern players also.) Despite a poor performance by my team the league was a lot of fun and received positive comments.

Thus, we can simply announce-No Wilhelm no Murray even no Sutter. End of problem. Create any caveat you want to try and obtain the type of game you want. Its still an equal opportunity for each manager within the confines of the rules. If the league doesnt fill then members arent that interested and just move on.

i use murray often but never get these results. HAL hates me

For those who come to SOM online desiring realism, I point to the sign hanging over the entrance to Dante's Inferno: "Abandon all hope ye who enter."

I am a baseball purist who has been a StratOMatic fanatic since 1968. Toward the tail end of the original online ATG game, I decided to give it a try. With my very first team, i was such a purist I would occasionally rest my hitters to keep them sharp for long haul. I also lost 97 games. I decided next time I would try a little harder to win. That was the first smudge on my purity. But i soldiered on. I started having quite a bit of success and enjoyed having pitchers like Koufax win 25 games with a sub 3.00 ERA. Then along about ATG 4 or 5 Koufax would struggle to win 15 games with a season ERA around 5.00. The joy of watching a dominant pitcher in real life have a dominant season in ATG was fading.

The player pool was operating on the law of astro physics, ever expanding. And as it expanded, Koufax shrunk. As did players like Yaz, about whom one of the old timers chided me very early on, "You just dropped Carl Yazstremski; no one ever drops Carl Yaztremski! Do you realize how many managers in this league had Yaz on their draft card and lost him to you?!" That Yaz card is still in the player pool but if it's been used in a public league in the last decade, I'll eat my hat.

As someone who grew up with Bob Gibson an his idol, I love dominant pitching. But with the burgeoning player pool and expanding ball park options, I finally had to accept that on any given day my Sandy Koufax could lose to his Bert Maxwell in a blowout. That's about the time I made the deal with the devil and decided to start using the super reliever plan.

I don't like the super reliever but I like to win. Since I gave in to the siren song, my super reliever teams have won at a clip of about .550, almost %75 making the playoffs and about %40 winning championships.

I would be fine with SOM coming up with a redesign that does away with super relievers. But to me, the root problem is the gargantuan player pool and park choices. In a slugging park, I'd much rather have Brickyard Kennedy knocked out in the 2nd with Dale Murray on to relieve for five innings than have Koufax knocked out in the second and hope Daryl Patterson can come in and last an inning or two before he gets knocked out and I'm down to Greg Cadaret in the 5th.

I highly doubt SOM will take any action on this issue. Too many managers like to drop into public leagues and watch Bonds and Ruth hit their 80 HR's. Getting back to realism would be bad for business. So long as it's an option for other managers, I'll have my two relievers who between them will log 300+ innings, have a combined 30-10 W-L record, and enjoy watching them ride in the championship parade.

Or maybe I'll have an attack of contrition and buy my soul back from the Devil.

Kevin A

I rarely ever use the super reliever strategy but the few times I have Ive had mixed results. The last time I tried to use was in mid season with a team that was plodding along not quite getting over the hump to success. My bullpen was dismal except for the fact I had Norm Charlton amongst the subperforming crew. I decided to turn on the super reliever switch with Charlton and suddenly he and the team made a vast improvement. Im all for realism but I second everything Kevin said. How real is it to have your ace starter win 20 plus games with an ERA hovering near 6.00 while giving up 60 home runs. If you have issues with the super reliever because of its lack of realism than to be fair take note of the various unrealistic numbers found in every league that involve both the hitters and the pitchers. There is no way you can tell me these numbers for Sam Mcdowell are realistic.I randomly plucked his season off the results from one of my leagues.

Sam Mcdowell 1968 30 30 8 12 0 0 171.0 192 144 135 98 184 56 7.11 1.70 3L 9.60M

In this same league Walter Johnson's 1913 card gave up 75 home runs! :O In 21 major league seasons Walter Johnson only gave up 97 home runs, over 5914 innings pitched.

Years ago I ordered the HOF card set from Strat O Matic, The cards were two sided but not advanced. Each player had a basic card for their best season and a career card of their all time statistics. I've often wondered how the career version of the player would have worked in All Time Greats.

I guess you could decide when setting up the league to go with complete results or the best individual season of each player. Those who do like the inclusion of Murray, Brown and hopefully no time soon Freed could play the individual season cards. The others could set up leagues using all time statistics of each player.

Lots of great posts and proposals. I believe Strat will only act on any proposed remedy if it is both easy to implement and leads to increased (or at least not decreased) participation. With that in mind, there is a process in place for adding cards to ATG8. Some players disagree with the selections, but the community votes on the selections, and IMO the process works pretty well. (Thanks Rosie!) So my proposal is this: Have the community also vote on cards to remove from ATG8. Lots of ways this could work, and somebody would have to run it of course. But perhaps keep the number of cards around 4700 or so and remove the same number of cards as are added.

There's not going to be a perfect solution. But I think this one is achievable, fair and addresses a big part of the problem.

The issue is people vote in for cards that are exceptional in some way and then complaints start when a card turns out to be exceptional in some way. Look at Bagwell’s card which is a 7L, no other seasons are very close to that 1.2 OPS, nearly 20% better than any other year and a large number of teams have ridden that card to championships but apparently that card is ok.

We add the Honus Wagner 1900 card and it is only 6.55 million and all that card does is hit,hit hit and has become one of the most popular--- Tommy Davis we add his best season and I see him bat .380 with 130 runs scored and 165 RBI’s in a 80 million dollar league for 4 million, it is nearly as egregious as Gates Brown — the best seasons for the player is selected for interest in what they can do and lo and behold— it is easier to manage and count on hitters than starting pitching which is becoming a crap shoot so …., those that use computer programs to sort the cards and park combinations to maximize values and optimize pitching staffs clean up until the masses catch on and then the computer group claims this is unfair use since they can no longer easily draft and don’t want to face them, eliminating the Gates Browns and Dale Murray’s will have no effect — the computer folks will just move on to the next thing, eventually the strategy comes out, is emulated and then woe and misery befalls us all as the commoners now use the same strategy as the elites and that must be squashed--..and eliminating the only pitching that can slow down the hitting seems to be crazy as well. When you can get 1.1 OPS cards for 4-6 million (and Daniels 1.05OPS for 3.98 MIllion!) which also places the hitter in the top 100 OPS seasons of all time if only the at bat’s qualify, one can see how this leads to 7 ERA’s for cards representing the best pitchers of all time. Relievers, trick spot starters, and good fortune are the tools for a pitching type of team. But soon we will have even more trick players and combinations to make the game ever more interesting….

In a most recent league I used the super reliever strategy I had Kid Speer and Rich Bordi as starters and they had better ERA’s than Herb Score - Mickey Lolich Christy Mathewson and Hal Newhouser and that is before taking into consideration my league leading ERA Bruce Sutter superreliever and Al McBean my mini-superreliever ---who for 1.39 million had 223 innings with a lower ERA than Three Finger Brown, Pete Alexander, CC Sabathia, Bob Feller etc…. all for only 900 K over a total scrub and he can come in day after day, when Bruce Sutter didn’t feel like pitching.

My proposal would be to raise the minimum hitter salary to 1.5 million, with prices of all hitters going up a similar 1 million dollars and to allow only 23 players again, which would cut down on the number of players available for a good platoon and put any team that wanted a team full of platoons financially disadvantaged against teams that go with a solid lineup. Likewise all relief pitchers should go up 1 million dollars each to increase the value of starting pitching and cut down on the number of great relievers that could be successfully used, leaving starting pitching the same price. But I suspect scoring ever more runs will be the way to go in strat