ATG 8 Card Pricing

Completely agree with a 25 card reprice. This is a low effort / high value approach to the issue, and directly addresses my biggest problem with the game - which is how much it peeves me to have to either draft or face the vastly underpriced Gil Heredia, Kirk Rueter, Joel Pineiro, Ryne Duren, Don Sutton, Gates Brown, Kal Daniels, etc., etc.

Magic the gathering does this when a certain card is destroying tournaments. They ban it. Then a few sets later they bring out a new card that is similar but higher casting cost so it isn't so broken like the old card. It works there so why can't we do that here? We can't ban cards but we can change the price.

If Gates Brown and Dale Murray are being used on title winning teams all the time then its time to up the price. The cheap Wagner should be priced higher as well. If Strat can just get the data on player usage then they can adjust the prices that way.

They don't need to adjust the prices to Jim Bunning to get him used. They need to up the prices to the cards that are always used to make him a bargain compared to them. The card prices are a joke right now and it makes the game really boring when you always see the same players league after league. I actually am surprised so many people have stuck around through this.

I'm still around but I only play unlimited cap leagues in large part to avoid the pricing issues. I like to focus on team building and matchups as opposed to seeing who gets the highest number of underpriced players in the auto draft.

To me, it's looking at price in separate bands. For example, look at the 10M plus cards - cards used >90% of the time (or some selected %) are underpriced, cards used < 10% are overpriced. Then, go to 8-10M and use the same test.

Probably would need to do this based on caps - a different test for 60-80M leagues, one for 100-120M, one for 140M-160M, and ignore the 200M + where every high priced player is used and no low priced players.

I'm oversimplifying, but I think the usage rates are a good representation of the maximum potential mentioned by Nels earlier in the thread.

Yep, the ultimate test of the pricing is the usage in my opinion. Players of this game are not stupid and if a guy is a value/bargain, someone will find him and use him and then others will copy that.

Conversely, if guys aren't being used, it is because they aren't worth the cost.

Data from Strat would go a long way to this. It wouldn't have to be a continuous ongoing thing but rather a once in a while thing.

And yes, the league cap greatly impacts that. Personally I still prefer 80 mill because that is how the players pricing was originally set up.

Yep, the ultimate test of the pricing is the usage in my opinion. Players of this game are not stupid and if a guy is a value/bargain, someone will find him and use him and then others will copy that.

Conversely, if guys aren't being used, it is because they aren't worth the cost.

Data from Strat would go a long way to this. It wouldn't have to be a continuous ongoing thing but rather a once in a while thing.

And yes, the league cap greatly impacts that. Personally I still prefer 80 mill because that is how the players pricing was originally set up.

I agree. I think $80M has the best pitcher/hitter balance. I like my pitchers to have good stats. Maybe this is why I struggle at higher caps, because I really don't like caps where my ace pitcher has an ERA over 5.00.

Yep, the ultimate test of the pricing is the usage in my opinion. Players of this game are not stupid and if a guy is a value/bargain, someone will find him and use him and then others will copy that.

Conversely, if guys aren't being used, it is because they aren't worth the cost.

Data from Strat would go a long way to this. It wouldn't have to be a continuous ongoing thing but rather a once in a while thing.

And yes, the league cap greatly impacts that. Personally I still prefer 80 mill because that is how the players pricing was originally set up.

I seem to remember (and the noggin' ain't that far gone yet) a time when you had stats for actual performance at diamondope.

Anyone else remember that? What happened?

I agree. I think $80M has the best pitcher/hitter balance. I like my pitchers to have good stats. Maybe this is why I struggle at higher caps, because I really don't like caps where my ace pitcher has an ERA over 5.00.

At the high caps, no one ever plays near their card. Hitters are watered down by all the stud pitchers and pitchers are watered down by all the stud hitters. It's interesting, but I very much prefer 80 mill as that seems to yield the most accurate and predictable results. Hell, every now and then HAL hits a home run and you get guys to very nearly match their stats which is cool.

I seem to remember (and the noggin' ain't that far gone yet) a time when you had stats for actual performance at diamondope.

Anyone else remember that? What happened?

Adrian got too busy to run the crawler software that generated the database. And the database got so big that he was going to have to pony up more money every month out of his own pocket for the storage.

As to the 25 card repricing, If you price Pineiro and Duren in a neutral park, they are pretty reasonably priced. I have said many times, and will say again, pricing all the cards off of one formula just doesn't work. Players need to be priced in the following (synthetic) ballparks:

SI L SI R DI L DI R
10 10 10 10
0 0 0 0
20 20 20 20
20 20 0 0
0 0 20 20
0 20 0 20
20 0 20 0

I don't think there's much utility in pricing them for

0 20 20 0
or
20 0 0 20

But they should be checked for completeness.

Then each player's price should be the 2nd highest from among his collection of prices.

In each of these ballparks, the top end cards should be referenced to a couple of very strong, balanced cards. I think for hitters, it should be Ruth and Hornsby, whose prices would then be fixed and they would be neutrally priced in all ballparks. For pitchers, I think Maddux and Dutch B. Leonard for starters and Gagne and a synthetic LH R1 reliever with a similar card would be necessary, since the top end LH relievers are all pretty lopsided.

The top 500 cards should further have their prices adjusted so that they fall more or less into line with their consensus draft order in high cap live drafts. The remaining cards, including all secondary cards for the top end players, down to about $1 million, would be priced referenced to their relative production of the top end cards at their position. Guys rated at multiple positions would be initially priced at all of them, as would pitchers with S/R ratings (although the starter ratings would usually dominate). The sub-$1 million cards should mostly be linearized to the bottom 5-10 cards ad their position in the $1 million plus group, with no more than a dozen or so 50 cent guys at any position (so scrubs would no longer be cheap unless they were totally useless).

Platooners are given the larger of 30% of their card vs. LHP or 70% vs. RHP as long as their prices differ by more than 25%; the rest are priced as "balanced."

I could do all this, but it would be a hell of a lot of work and I wouldn't undertake it unless I was paid. I don't think anyone else could do it at all, maybe Joe the Jet.

The end result of this would be a card set where 80% of the cards were priced "for $80 million" whatever that means. (I take it as using a consistent pricing model. Joe takes it as pricing everyone as though they were never platooned.)

Some of my pricing assumptions are arbitrary, and so of course those of you who use arbitrary assumptions for other card data, or different assumptions for the same data than I make, would find "edge" in my set of prices. But I'd bet that nothing would be nearly so gross as Gipson or Atley Donald or Kirby Higbe.

The reason why the players must be evaluated in multiple ballparks is simple. I think that most of you know that it's very difficult to win in "neutral" parks. Years of Barnstormers records back up this assertion, the best performance in a neutral ballpark in almost any event is much worse than the best performance in most of the other ballpark groups.

The reason for this is simple. Cards are priced for their performance in a neutral park. If you take the card set, all priced in a neutral park, and select cards that will perform better in a non-neutral ballpark, you have many options for finding players who will perform above their salary. So it's possible to build a potentially winning team in extreme ballparks.

By pricing all of the cards in a judiciously chosen set of ballparks, then giving each player his 2nd, or 3rd, highest price, you make it harder to find values in extreme ballparks, and playing in a neutral ballpark becomes a more viable option.

On reflection after making the post above, I think the cards should be priced for the following ballparks.

SI-L HR-L SI-R HR-R
10 10 10 10
16 16 16 16
4 4 4 4
4 16 4 16
16 4 16 4
16 16 4 4
4 4 16 16
4 16 16 4
16 4 4 16

Why? For several reasons.

One, this divides the ballparks into nine "regions" - think of the strike zone display on MLB's Gameday, for example. And we're now rating the cards on the middle of each region, rather than in a neutral park. There will be more of an advantage to having the right guys for your park, and more of a penalty for trying to force Bonds or Ruth to play in Forbes 57. This will, I think, lead to a bigger variety of ballparks in common usage. No more leagues with 5 guys in Minute Maid and 3 in Polo 41.

Two, even if you play in, say, Polo 41, you have to play half your games on the road. So the "average" ballpark your players play in is going to be a lot closer to 4 16 4 16 than 0 20 0 20.

Three, this does allow you to find some edge for your big boppers, or your ace pitchers, by putting them in Wrigley 59, or Petco. It's just going to be tougher, since there will be less edge available.

Four, you will have to pay more attention to lineup construction and allocation of your cap money. This will make the game more of a test of GM and managing skill than bargain hunting.

Five, because of four, the game will be easier for new players to pick up, because most new players have an understanding of how real baseball teams are constructed and real lineups are set.