New Platoon PH feature

Was this just announced today by SOM?

1. New Baseball 365 leagues that draft Wed, 1/16/18 or later will have access to a new Platoon PH feature, which lets you assign players that would pinch hit for specific starters in your lineups! Read about this new feature here.

This new Platoon PH feature looks like a great advance--especially in 200M leagues and such. It has always driven me nuts when Gates Brown hits vs a LHP with the game on the line when I have a killer 6L on the bench. HAL just hasn't seemed to want to PH in 200M leagues and this feature will force him to--as well as in other leagues where it will be a useful feature.

This other fix is less important but will allow us to track the results:

3. The play-by-play logs for all future games have been enhanced to include the handedness of all relief pitcher and pinch-hitters, and it is now noted when pinch-hitters enter the game due to the existing PH vs. L/R strategy setting, and the new Platoon PH feature.

Sounds good in theory, but, now that 2.81 m Eddie Watt might be overpriced and that .75 m Gates Brown might be underpriced. Bye-bye RH and LH pitching specialists. Also, a starting player who can't hit lefties still, in real life
, can be counted on to face lefties 10% of the time. If that percentage drops to zero, that's not realistic.

A great addition that should, however, occasion a significant repricing.

I think I like the game better when the platoon-obsessed manager falls on his face because of roster moves that backfire. Now you've got HAL doing all he can to make every platoon manager a strategy genius and every RH or LH pitching specialist a bum.

Also, a starting player who can't hit lefties still, in real life, can be counted on to face lefties 10% of the time. If that percentage drops to zero, that's not realistic.

Gates Brown 1968 9R card shows him with 2% real life AB's vs LHP.
Thad Bosley's 1984 9R card shows him with 3% real life AB's vs LHP.
Jerry Mumphrey's 1987 9R card shows him with 2% real life AB's vs LHP.
John Lowenstein's 1982 9R card shows him with 2% real life AB's vs LHP.
Lowenstein's 1983 9R card (LF) shows him with only 1% real life ABs vs LHP.
Meanwhile, on that same 1983 World Champion Earl Weaver team, Jim Dwyer (RF), 7R, had 3% real life ABs vs LHP.

So real-life players (esp. LHB) can be found who have had the platoon advantage from 97-99% of the time. And Earl Weaver was doing something that up until now has been impossible for SOM managers--that is, getting the platoon advantage almost 100% of the time for some of his hitters (esp LHB).

I think this feature this will enhance realism and make managing more interesting. Up till now, HAL has managed platoon relief pitching reasonably well, due to the RH/LH Specialist feature. But platoon pinch-hitting has not functioned at nearly the same level of efficiency. For some reason, the problem of NOT pinch hitting in obvious platoon situations has been much worse at higher caps.

Druid may be right that this change should lead to a repricing of players. Whether it will or not is, of course, another question. But it does give managers more control, and in a way that I think is both more realistic and more exciting.

More stats from Earl Weaver's managerial career:
In 1979, Terry Crowley (LHB) had 77 PA vs RHP and 1 PA vs LHP: 1.3%
In 1980, Crowley had 259 PA vs RHP and 7 PA vs LHP: 2.6%
In 1981, Crowley had 165 PA vs RHP and 1 PA vs LHP: much less than 1%

Over this three year period 1979-81, Crowley had 509 PA. 8 PA were against LHP. That's 1.6%.

So it was possible over a period of three years for a real-life manager to maintain the platoon advantage for a specific player at an average of 98.4%. I don't see why this shouldn't be possible in SOM, and I'm pleased that this new design feature moves us in that direction.

Again, as Druid suggests, pricing might need to change. But that might be all to the good if this leads to a push for a reconsideration of pricing, which is needed anyway for a number of reasons.

Need to remember that Earl Weaver's numbers date to an era of different roster construction and usage. If SP are expected to pitch complete games, and you have 5 pinch hitters on the bench and at most 1 R & 1 L specialist in the bullpen, maybe you can get 95%+. Good luck getting 90%+ in 2019 against an "opener" who will pitch 1 or 2 innings, and then a parade of relievers (with only a couple pinch hitters on the bench).

Need to remember that Earl Weaver's numbers date to an era of different roster construction and usage. If SP are expected to pitch complete games, and you have 5 pinch hitters on the bench and at most 1 R & 1 L specialist in the bullpen, maybe you can get 95%+. Good luck getting 90%+ in 2019 against an "opener" who will pitch 1 or 2 innings, and then a parade of relievers (with only a couple pinch hitters on the bench).

Well, I think 2019 roster construction is a little bit nuts, for what that's worth. But in ATG8, or the 60s, 70, 80s & 90s mystery card leagues, there are a zillion ways to construct a roster. I think it would be refreshing to try out some different roster approaches under this new pinch-hitting system.

And even in 2019, a manager can order a PH if he wants to in a game situation. This new gadget would make that possible in SOM.

My personal goal would not necessarily be to get the platoon advantage 99% of the time. For Weaver this kind of platoon advantage was an obsession, and he structured his roster to make it possible. But under SOM rules, it's probably not really possible to approach 99%. I merely cited Weaver's example to show that such percentages are realistic--they actually happened in baseball's past. And, of course, ATG and the mystery card leagues do cover such periods. For most of baseball's history, CGs were common and teams routinely carried 15 or 16 hitters.

Anyway, it seems to me to be a good thing to be able to order a PH for an extreme platoon starter in a game situation. Managers have been doing that for more than a hundred years, and now, in 2019, an SOM manager can do the same.

do you guys really think RH and LH pitching specialists just became worthless?
please explain?

I think it just made backward relievers more valuable.

- The Sheik