2018 BS Finals - The Last Druid is 2X Champ!

Before I moved to California, I used to travel here frequently struck up a friendship w/ Brool. I'd drop by his house in Redondo Beach for an afternoon of FTF strat (usually Orioles vs. Giants). He was a math major in college and I introduced him to Bernie when I got tired of all the work it took to calculate salaries.

...and yes the prices stuck. The "committee" was a bunch of guys who played a massive number of leagues. All I could offer Bernie was logic and data - guys like you, Nev, and Bobby Moretti were funding the game!

FWIW, someone else did prices for ATG1. I did pitchers, but not hitters for ATG2. Then I did all of the salaries for ATG3. ATG5 was Brool. Can't remember which one of us did ATG4

In a purely distal sense, one could argue that I inadvertently created Cristano.

Sounds like cristano is the love child of you and Bernie Hou. ROFL

There is a fatal flaw in the relative pricing of hitter and pitchers. Briefly, assume that the average hitter gets 700 PA's per season. A SP* pitcher that pitches 280 innings with a WHIP of 1.25, will face about 1190 hitters. So the difference in price between two similar SP* cards that are 1 NERP apart must be (1190/700) or 1.7 times the difference between two hitter cards with a difference in production of 1 NERP. But if you do that, then high end pitchers will be perceived as very expensive relative to high end hitters. I suspect that the early pitcher prices were, in fact, correct but the voices of the crowd shouted down the math.

...assume that the average hitter gets 700 PA's per season. A SP* pitcher that pitches 280 innings with a WHIP of 1.25, will face about 1190 hitters. So the difference in price between two similar SP* cards that are 1 NERP apart must be (1190/700) or 1.7 times...

I basically agree with that, but it gets more complicated for several reasons, not the least of which is fielding. E.g., a shortstops will have ~ 200 x-chart chances during season.

The way SOM set the cards up, the pitcher who faces 1190 batters will only influence .361% of the dice rolls while the offense is a more robust 50%. So, in theory, the pitcher would only influence 430 of the outcomes, the batters card would determine 595 outcomes and the rest would be defense. That is still more influence on outcomes than the 350 rolls on hitters cards that a hitter is expected to have in 700 plate appearances but way less than Craig's 1.7 cited above, or am I missing something? Nev and I felt that hitting was way too predominant when pitchers cost much more, which is why we argued for pricing reductions for starting pitching. The fact that starters can be manipulated to pitch 350 innings radically alters their value, when used in that manner, and was an unintended consequence of those reductions which ultimately gave birth to the efficacy of the 4 Aces strategy.

No, Bruce, you're wrong. I wasn't talking about how many rolls the pitcher card influences. I was talking about the NERP for the card. The fact that the pitcher's card generates its NERP allowed on 78 (really 80 when the pitcher's defense is accounted for) rolls rather than the 108 on the batter's card has absolutely no bearing on what I said. I agree that the X-charts are controlled by the defensive ratings of the fielders, but that gets accounted for in the evaluation of the batter cards. And that (nearly always negative) contribution of the fielder's defense to the equation is in turn totally unrelated to the fact that a position player influences 115, or 114, or 111, or 110 rolls rather than 108.

Do most of the managers that you guys consider the cream of the crop play in Barnstormers or skip Barnstormers? If skip, what do they play in instead? For example, I remember reading a couple years ago that Nevdully was one of the better, yet he consistently dodges Barnstormers.

The oldest spreadsheet I have is the 2006 Tour and Nev played on it. Only 56 total players listed on that tour and he did not win it. Nev did not make any more Barnstormers appearances after that. I don't have a record of how he did and TSN/SOM didn't start making a page for the tour until 2012. Some of the best players just have disagreements with the rules or with me and boycott it. But I'd say we still get a majority percentage of them playing. After all, there are some nice prizes available.

Chrissie, he doesn't dodge Barnstormers, he simply doesn't care about it at all. BTW that was not a well-written post. Were you sniffing glue when you wrote it?

Nev boycotted Moose after 2006. He did not make the finals that year either. 2006 was my first Barnstormers and I lost to Oddysey Tigger in Game 7 of the Championship finals.

Nev was on a cruise at the time of a draft and was pressured to put a team in which greatly annoyed him and so he ended his involvement with the tour and never looked back. Since then Moose has made a habit of mocking Nev whenever he threatened to quit the game which really sealed matters, especially after Nev actually did quit for a couple of years and only returned about a year ago after some cajoling from yours truly. The real irony is Moose just pulled a Nev and quit himself, only to return. Anyway, I believe Nev plays almost exclusively high cap leagues and many of those are quick 6 leagues.

Although I don't recall details of this incident (or anything that happened 13 years ago) , deadlines are deadlines and no one is special. As far as "mocking" Nev, the one liner "Didn't you quit" seemed appropriate due to his monthly statement that he was leaving the game - AGAIN. Meant to be humorous - surprised that anyone could actually take this as an attack or be hurt by it. And as I recall, Nev and I patched up our differences years ago.

I haven't played regularly in many years, I only have one team going, a Barnstormers filler team so that we could wrap up event 1. And yes considering that SOM was finally willing to give in to many demands that have been lacking and make the tour "better", the return was justified - maybe even planned. Hopefully, their live draft app will see some upgrades soon or it's back to retirement.

Interesting discussion- reminds me of the TSN days when threads got lots of people contributing.

In any case, yes Druid would regularly draft Schmidt in the 5th round - and yes, after the war thread a couple players like that did start to go early- and I think a couple other players like maybe Mays? started going later- much to my delight- as he became a bargain when he didn't go 7th anymore.

Now as far as copying goes- its not always so obvious as you might think- but in live drafts you can see where folks pick guys and therefor where there value is to that person.
So, lets say a certain person takes either Bobby Shantz' 9L card in round 25 or on waivers every time, b/c lets face it - if you valued him hed be gone before round 25.
Next thing you know, someone starts taking him in first in round 23, then round 21, then 19 then 15- because they know the initial person values him - of course anything about 21 is really too early- but the person copying doesn't really know what the value is.
that's often how it works.