Public leagues

The easiest, no tech way to cyber stalk another manager's teams is to just write down the ID's of leagues as they are forming and retain the records. But again, from my perspective, who gives a rat's ass?

I agree with you.

And BTW, I'm not accusing anybody of doing this or that. I am only highlighting how naive is the perception that SOM protects the information about teams.

I am doing exactly that. I've been in the last 7 barnstormers finals, and a big part of my draft strategy is knowing who the other managers love, and how early I need to take them. As Luckyman said, all of the info is available on the internet. My list is just an ongoing labor of love I've been tracking for three years. I do it the old school way. Each week there are only a handful of ATG strat leagues formed. In sequential numerical order, no less. So, for the past 3 years, each Monday morning I will click on the 5-10 new leagues, and record the team ID for a select 15 managers that I classify as really good managers and love to track. It takes me 5 minutes to do this on Monday, it is a great start to the work week. Riggio, Petro, Halle, Lab, Marc, etc, etc, the big boys. So for Riggio I have Team IDs for the 50 teams he has played in the last 3 years. When I saw his super high win pct that was completely off the charts, I started going through his top teams. That's when I noticed he just keeps repeating the same players on each team, and those players aren't on his INSANE STEALS list. So, I decided to call BS. In my expert opinion, half of the players on Riggio's list are truly insane steals, and the other half are truly pieces of crap. I think Riggio knows this too (as he doesn't use any of them). I could care less, I have my own set of ratings and they wouldn't change a bit based on the INSANE STEALS list. I just feel bad for those players who actually rely on his INSANE STEALS list, which is just as inaccurate as it is accurate.

Some of the ratings just blow my mind. For example, I have Ashburn58 as 1 of the top 3 biggest steals in the entire set. And Combs27 is the biggest POS in the set, and Riggio has Combs as +141 and Ashburn at +103 on his INSANE STEALS list. This is mind blowing to me. I cannot get my head around this discrepancy. And these guys are directly comparable. Both CF. Both semi weak arm. Both low injury. Both low BPHR. Both similar balance 1R and 3R. Any rating system that has Combs27 as any type of bargain what-so-ever is completely wrong. Period.

I actually tested this myself last week because I was so infuriated with Combs27 being the INSANE STEAL OF THE INSANE STEALS (excluding Lajoie and Wagner). Here's what I did, I painfully hand coded these two cards in the 2018 Strat game engine. Let each boy play, and track the average wins of each boy's team across a lot of simulated seasons. No weird assumptions, just throw each of these two in the actual Strato Windows game. The results exactly support my conclusion (Ashburn58 is way way way way way more valuable than Combs27). Now, on its own, I could care less about this finding. I'd just keep my mouth shut, and never draft Combs27, always go for Ashburn58, and laugh when some poor guy copying the Jet ratings uses Combs on his team. However, it just boiled my blood when Riggio effectively has Combs27 as a top 5 of his INSANE BARGAINS and NEVER uses him on any of his teams. There is no rational explanation for this, including the irrational explanation that Riggio actually provided, except that Riggio is playing possum and also knows that Combs27 is one of the biggest POS in the entire set and just misleading gents.

Okay, I have said my piece on this issue. I am back to keeping my mouth shut. But is it too much to ask to just have Riggio say, "Yes, Chrissie, I also think Combs27 is a complete POS too, and that's the real reason I never ever ever use him on any of my teams"? Would really help me sleep better at night.

Okay, I have said my piece on this issue. I am back to keeping my mouth shut. But is it too much to ask to just have Riggio say, "Yes, Chrissie, I also think Combs27 is a complete POS too, and that's the real reason I never ever ever use him on any of my teams"? Would really help me sleep better at night.

I swear to God, my ratings say he's a Rockstar! (...but sometimes I don't trust my ratings ). I actually just put him on a team. We'll see how badly I get burned?!? https://365.strat-o-matic.com/team/1535066

I don't see how anyone could not think that Combs is underpriced. His problem is , where do you bat him? Not quite enough OB to lead off, lots of hits but negative clutch. extra base hits but no real power.

Steve - Combs27 has slightly more than 50 OBP chances vs RH pitching. Why is that not acceptable for lead off? Only the very expensive elite players have more. What’s your lead off OBP criteria then?

Combs and Ashburn have equal cards vs RHP. Then, Combs is unplayable against LHSP. So, 40% of the time Combs is unplayable, and 60% of the time he's equal to Ashburn. That, in a nutshell, explains the difference between these two guys. Combs' price should be Ashburn x 60%.

Steve - Combs27 has slightly more than 50 OBP chances vs RH pitching. Why is that not acceptable for lead off? Only the very expensive elite players have more. What’s your lead off OBP criteria then?

He's ok there vs righties (I like 54 chances or better at leadoff) but now you need another player to lead off vs lefties (as Cristano pointed out). OTOH, Combs is a better fielder than Ashburn fwiw

I've got Combs playing in an all Forbes league, so an ideal situation for him. I'm going to use him as cleanup spot vs. righties, batting 8th vs. LHP.

Those 23 triples will be nice in the cleanup spot (especially in a league where not many homeruns will be hit). We'll see how many hits he loses because of that ugly clutch rating.

The left side of Combs card is worse than some 700k platoon CFs. Not only is Combs terrible vs LHP, it is actually a detriment to one's team to even have him in the lineup.

Assuming a league with 40% LHSP and 60% RHSP, I have Ashburn worth 0.2 wins more than Combs vs RHSP and 1.2 wins more against LHSP. That's a net impact of 1.4 wins in the aggregate!!! For the same price. Same spend, 1.4 more wins is such a huge differential for just one player. Of note, when I simulated these two guys using the 2018 Strat Windows Game, I got a differential of 1.25 wins, which is largely in line with the result from my ratings, given that ATG guys run better than 201x guys, which makes Ashburn's slightly better arm a little bit advantageous.

The interesting thing to me about this thread is Chrissie (the pot) calling Riggo Drill (the kettle) black.

Historically, in our classic trash talk threads,Chrissie is a consistent purveyor of disinformation. Disinformation, to be credible, needs to contain some truth along with the intended distortion. Given Chrissie's strategic use of disinformation, it is nothing short of hilarious to see him accusing Riggo Drill of the same thing, and, even better, getting all self-righteous about it.

One thing both of those guys have in common is severely truncated player usage - their favorites appear on team after team. In other words, they both draft from a very small pool of players even relative to other elite managers.

Ya gotta love the exquisite irony of it all.

I can't wait for this years finals to start.