Bad strategies

I won't go over all the basics that most of you already know. Here is a few of the fundamentals of a winning team:

[*] Get the most innings out of your best pitchers
[*][*]aim 330 innings if your best pitchers are *S8-*S9, and adjust your choice of relievers accordingly
[*][*]aim 240 innings if your best pitcher is a R3 reliever, and adjust the choice of starters accordingly

[*] Don't overspend on relievers, you usually don't need 3 quality relievers, most often you don't even need 2. Once you have 1250 innings covered, you're good. You don't need good relievers to cover the 200 innings left for the season (a season has 1460 innings, give or take a few). So you can gauge, a 4 good quality 7M *SP (7) will cover typically 1100 innings in neutral stadiums, leaving just 150 innings left to be covered by a good reliever. A 4-very high quality (10M+ cards) will cover 1250 innings (and more) by themselves, in that case you don't even need one quality reliever. In this specific case, a sub 2M R2 is likely to do the job.
[*][*] Subtract or add 100 innings on your estimation of the number of innings covered by your starters depending you play in a highly offense-friendly environment or in pitchers' friendly environment.

[*]In 80M-100M leagues, look for good valued cards to fulfill many of the position players, without forgetting the basics: on-base at the top of the lineup, overall good offense cards (on-base and slugging) at the clean-up spots, and defense at the bottom of the lineup.
[*][*] Don't overspend on the bench, unless you have platoons. There is (usually) no benefit to spend 1M-2M on players who will start 30 games or less compared to spending the extra money on players who are regular starters
[*][*][*]Be careful though, there's a sudden drop of talent between 1M and 0.5M. Some players at or near 0.5M are really awful. Pay attention.

[*] Adjust your team to your stadium. But more importantly, adjust to your league opponents, and (in 12-teams league) especially your divisional rivals.

Now that the basics have been covered, I want to get on the (less important) bad strategies I see too many times:

1) Unless you've had your hands on atypical pitchers (without ballpark singles, for example), middle defense and hold rating should entirely determine whether you go with a stadium allowing a lot of singles or not. If you have 1s in the middle of the field and have an overall negative hold, you should maximize the singles of your stadium.

2) It cannot be the case that the best strategy for all 12 teams is to set their rotation from best to worst. Game theory dictates that some teams MUST have a greater advantage to do otherwise. In a recent team, I used Tiant as my ace: I had confidence that I would have most of the time the best match-up with my #1 facing other #1. But I didn't have the same confidence with my #2, so I set my #4 in the second spot, hoping to get the better match-up against opposite #3 and #4. Besides, schedules can be surprising. I have seen starters get up to 25 of their 40 starts on the road, because of capricious schedules.

3) I see teams use their cheap sub1M extreme reliever in front of their best relievers. Usually, this doesn't make sense to me. A 0.8M 9R or 9L typically allows more on their best side than the weaker side of the 4M+ reliever.

I agree with #1... the corollary would be don't be afraid to use 3's and 4's if you are in a low singles park. I've used Orta in a 2b platoon in Shea 71 many times and those teams have always made the playoffs.

#3 I don't totally agree with. I use Shag Crawford all the time in righty specialist role. If he can get me an out or two to get me out of an inning so I don't have to burn my ace reliever right away, then great. If he can't, then HAL is going to yank him anyway and bring in a better reliever. I'd rather do that than use up my ace reliever too soon and have to potentially rely on Crawford to close out a game against lord knows who.

FYI I only play 80mil leagues so take that for what it's worth.

marc when you play Shea 71 do you use LHSP or when you play Hilltop or Minute Maid do you use RHSP

I just recently starting playing my first ATG league (which amazingly I am doing ok in without bring familiar with the gazillion cards in ATG) and so I am much more familiar with 20XX strategy. But 20XX discussion is basically dead and this is an interesting topic to me so I'll try to say things that I think are applicable to both games.

First, I think the ultimate goal in developing a team is to get the highest possible (for want of a better name) Team Competitive Power. I guess I want to define this in an idealized way as how many games on average would a team win (given a certain salary cap and league size) if it were to play in an infinite number of leagues.

So how to maximize a team's competitive power? So I would list the following possible ways:

(1) If you can detect flaws in Strat's salaries for players that obviously gives you an advantage. That's not my way but certainly that's one way to gain an advantage.

(2) Exploiting your stadium to the hilt is of course important. I can't remember exactly which park Strat uses to value a player's card (the best park, neutral park, etc.) but however they do it certain cards will wind up having more value if you play 81 games at home with that card than in another park. BUT you do play 81 games in other team's parks. So a team that is too oriented to one park can be vulnerable on the road. How do you do both things? Well, the defense is still there no matter what. High-level pitching (low-WHIP, low-power given up) is there no matter what. Certain cards are effective in both power and and small ball parks.

(3) What inputs in starting pitching, relief, hitting and defense maximize a team's competitive power? This statement is too abstract to mean anything. So I'll try to be more concrere. Is it better to go four S9 aces and no relief given a certain salary cap and park...or go with some S7s and an elite reliever? What level of defense will make that pitching more effective? What balance do you need between OBP and power in a high power park? How much money should you spend on hitting vs pitching, starting pitching vs relief, defense vs offense on batting cards? Run scoring is not linear. This is why MP says only bother with 1s at 2b and SS in a park with high singles and negative hold so that you maximize the value of 1s. And I am sure he is right on that. HOWEVER, by putting a very strong defense together you might in a certain park with a certain pitching staff have a more bigger pay-off. I have more confidence in saying this is true (about strong defense as a whole having a disproportionate pay-off) in Great American or Marlins in the 20XX game. I am not sure this works in the ATG game but at least in theory it could in certain situations. The possibilities are endless here.

(3) In theory, focusing on match-ups in your own division is important but my focus is trying to build the best team possible that can deal with all comers. I just tend to find that I waste money when I focus on match-ups, even though having more team management is preferable because it keeps one engaged.

(4) Platoons. I think particularly in ATG this can be powerful. Yes, there is a downside when the other's team reliever comes in and screws up your line-up--and let's just say I don't have a lot of confidence in Hal making wise pitch-hitting decisions---but I am focused on getting the lead.

(5) The bench. A lot here depends on the injury ratings of your starters. If you have got a bench player who is going to get 300 abs, then maybe he should not be a 4 with a .220. .280 .300 line? And having a bunch of platoons doesnt work well with having high-injury players.

(6) Making sure you have enough relief. If your .5 guy is pitching a lot...that's not good. A team that has insufficient relief given its starters...gets lit up.

(7) If you're in a righty park and you have a righty line-up...how do you deal with that 9R starter? Again, you can get some cheap lefties to put in by adjusting your line-up settings when there is say a 3R or better or whatever. But I think having 2 or 3 good lefties instead of going all out with 9 righties and trying to go match-up is the better answer.

(8) Line-ups. I focus on destroying right-handers and having a good enough line-up against lefties. Given the variation in how many lefties I am going to face, I don't want to waste resources that might not even be used much. I am still not sure why I should focus on clutch at all when you get maybe 20 clutch hits/outs a season. It seems obvious to talk about line-ups, but high-on base at the top (and run stealing ability), high-average, on-base, power #3, big-time power with on-base number 4, pure power #5. If you're in a power park you might just keep having power guys all the way the line-up. Do you restart the line-up #6 and have another power guy #8? But frankly given that so much depends on the park you're in it's difficult to make general statements.

(9) Getting HAL out of it? A four aces strategy (10 million plus each SP) with a line-up of players who don't get injured much and are good at both lefties and righties...pretty much takes HAL out of the game. All the inefficiencies caused in HAL mishandling relief , or not having adequate relief or having bad subs, or bad match-ups...are gone. I have seen certain managers go with low-injury line-ups and it is something I want to look in more. Can a line-up of 4 great starters and 9 posituon players that dont get injured be successful just based on the fact that they reduce the inefficiencies/contingencies created by having to sub? Of course that has to be weighed against the negatives that you're drastically limiting the pool of available players, giving up the value of platoons, the value you can get from elite R3 relievers that can give you 300 innings, etc.


I guess that's it.

Great discussion.
I think that teams/ballparks in your division are a major factor---you not only need to win the division, but you face your division opponents more often than those teams outside the division.

The first thing I do once a draft runs, I look at, and breakdown all the ballparks by category---small ball parks, LH/RH small ball parks, neutral parks, power parks with LH/RH breakdown.
You can have a plan going in, but I once ended up in a league with 9 hitters parks and I was in Forbes--that requires some adjustments.

Finishing .600 at home is always the goal. If you do that, and be able to play .500/.475 on the road, you have a shot. First and foremost, I design my teams to win at home.

Then again--it is also important, once the waivers run, to count of the LH vs RH starters in the league, the check on the catcher and OF arms in the league, to see if there is anywhere you can gain an advantage.

The 4 dominating starter strategy has become very popular lately, and will become more so if they up the salaries of Murray and Sutter (which I think should happen)---but there are lots of ways to win.

sometimes, i put together teams to experiment, to try to win record book categories etc.

its fun no matter what

Or you could try my approach to team building. First I invoke the Ancient Ones and after appropriate sacrifices are made, they enter into Hal's neural network and then I allow HAL to select 25 players for me.

Works like a charm.

I don't go through all that sacrifice stuff but definitely let HAL pick for you he is a freakin genius

Druid. I don't know what sacrifices you invoke but I know you gots one hell of a gris-gris bag

#3 I don't totally agree with. I use Shag Crawford all the time in righty specialist role. If he can get me an out or two to get me out of an inning so I don't have to burn my ace reliever right away, then great. If he can't, then HAL is going to yank him anyway and bring in a better reliever. I'd rather do that than use up my ace reliever too soon and have to potentially rely on Crawford to close out a game against lord knows who.

The main point is: Crawford doesn't have a good card vs rh. Mediocre I would say: 20 chances of hits vs rh, 5 chances of doubles. 9R doesn't translate into "good card vs rhp" when we are dealing with sub 1M cards.

The question does become: how comfortable you are to have the game on the line with a mediocre reliever.

I use Garman in one of my team as a set-up man vs rh because I don't have a reliever worth over 3M. And I use all the settings I can so that my best starting pitchers reach the 8th inning and give the ball to the closer. And Garman is better than Crawford! My comfort line is pretty high, as you can see.