20.3 Results

I'm good with some type of a cap. It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. Six seems perfectly reasonable to me anyway.

I'm glad that some kind of cap sounds good to you. The main argument for a cap of six is that this seems that no current player has more than six cards, so those players won't need to lose cards--and cards can still be added for those who now have four or five, but these adds won't go on indefinitely.

Why not? And better yet, why can't we just have access to ALL the cards? It's a freakin' computer!

And better yet, why can't we just have access to ALL the cards? It's a freakin' computer!

ALL the cards? Yikes!
Baseball-reference.com indicates that there have been 19,690 total individual MLB baseball players since 1871. I don't know how many full seasons these 19,000 players produced, or how many of these seasons have been turned into Strat cards, but the number is bound to be in the tens of thousands. Perhaps Andy could tell us the exact number of Strat cards currently in existence, if it's not too much trouble to count them.

There are currently, I think, more than 5,400 Strat cards. Many of these cards are never used. What if providing every Strat card ever made brought this total to 35,000 cards? Would that make for a better game? I'm not so sure.

Just how realistic a possibility is it that this onslaught of cards could take place, or would be welcome? For one thing, all these new cards would need to be priced--and priced accurately. Ryne Duren shows us that even a few badly priced cards can throw the game out of whack. Could we enter all of these new cards into Diamond Dope? Or would D-dope simply collapse under the strain?

And how many of us would really want to take the trouble to keep track of--say--35,000 card, or whatever the actual number is. I personally feel that some condition of scarcity--even if that scarcity is defined to include a total of more than 5,000 cards--actually makes the game more interesting.

Beyond all of this is the stark and well-established fact that it takes SOM months to deliver the twenty-five or so cards that we choose with each vote. How realistic is it to expect that Strat could or would agree to deliver 20,000 or 30,000 or 40,000 accurately-priced new cards at any time in the foreseeable future?

So, given that it's highly unlikely that we're ever going to get every card in the set, and given that having every card in the set might even be desirable, I come back to me earlier suggestion. If we only get to vote in about 25 cards in any given round, and given that some baseball greats already have as many as six excellent cards, why don't we consider limiting the number of cards for any one player at six. There are a lot of players with long careers to have no cards. There are a lot of excellent players who have only crummy, unrepresentative cards, And there are a lot of franchises that are still under-represented in Strat.

Why don't we consider taking care of these needs before we add a seventh Mike McGwire or Al Kaline?

"There are a lot of excellent players who have only crummy, unrepresentative cards, And there are a lot of franchises that are still under-represented in Strat.
Why don't we consider taking care of these needs before we add a seventh Mike McGwire or Al Kaline?"

A-frickin-MEN

I'd like to see ALL MVP & Cy Young seasons added.

Why limit the number of cards? This is America ! Honestly, if Strat-O can make em, let's see them.

Let's see....So whenever the 20.3 card addition actually takes place, we will have six Kaline cards, five Mantles, four Troskys, and three Cochranes, Vander Meers & Dom Dimags.

I know we currently have five Cobbs, five Ruths (including the SP card), five Musials, five Ted Williams, five Willie Mays, and five Barry Bonds.

When 20.3 comes in, Kaline will tie with Hank Aaron as the holder of six cards.

So...does anyone know if any other player has six cards or more—or will Kaline share honors with Aaron as the multi-card record-holder when the new add occurs?

Why drag Vander Meer into this? He currently has two garbage cards. That is the problem with generalizing players with cards versus those with no cards. Having a card or cards doesn't mean much if those are not the better years.

"There are a lot of excellent players who have only crummy, unrepresentative cards, And there are a lot of franchises that are still under-represented in Strat.
Why don't we consider taking care of these needs before we add a seventh Mike McGwire or Al Kaline?"

A-frickin-MEN

I'd like to see ALL MVP & Cy Young seasons added.

I feel this what the approach is but they are allowing us to vote on them. So we are, in part, contributing to this. If we all felt this way, then we would of nominated the remaining map/cy and all voted on them. on the bright side, SOM is activity adding new cards so perhaps in time.

Let's see....So whenever the 20.3 card addition actually takes place, we will have six Kaline cards, five Mantles, four Troskys, and three Cochranes, Vander Meers & Dom Dimags.

I know we currently have five Cobbs, five Ruths (including the SP card), five Musials, five Ted Williams, five Willie Mays, and five Barry Bonds.

When 20.3 comes in, Kaline will tie with Hank Aaron as the holder of six cards.

So...does anyone know if any other player has six cards or more—or will Kaline share honors with Aaron as the multi-card record-holder when the new add occurs?

Why drag Vander Meer into this? He currently has two garbage cards. That is the problem with generalizing players with cards versus those with no cards. Having a card or cards doesn't mean much if those are not the better years.

I agree. It's kind of like saying Alex Johnson already had 2 cards, yet we don't have his batting title year

Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about Vander Meer having three cards. That's fine. What I'm recommending would allow for SIX cards for Vander Meer, if people want to vote for them.

McGwire, Kaline and Aaron already have six cards. Since we've already allowed six cards for these three players, my proposal would be to simply adopt that number as the working limit in future for a given player's cards.

What I'm proposing would in know way get in the way of adding better cards for players who are now badly represented. In fact, it would HELP them to get better cards. It's very much to encourage finding ballot space for under-represented players and franchises that I'm proposing that we limit any individual player's total cards to six.

Really, this is about as un-radical as a proposal could possibly be. It currently affects only three players: McGwire, Kaline and Aaron. Everyone else could add at least one more card--and in the case of Vander Meer, three more cards.

I don't see why we can't have all the star cards that already exist as a computer card?

The way this is done is so bush league and 20th century. Hell it's kind of 19th century.

Like Steve F. said there is a computer, it's not like they are making these by hand.

Why shouldn't we have more choices of modern stars especially? I want half a dozen Jason Werth and Michael Young cards.

Anyone thinking about getting into this game who is on the outside looking in at the process for new cards would think this is a joke.

With the Boomers in charge and 2/3rds of new cards coming before expansion you will never hook new younger paying customers to keep this game alive.

People born after 1970 don't want to play cards from the 1800s.

They want the stars they grew up watching, not some stiff who batted .440 in 1880 when they pitched underhanded.