The Quantum Law Of SOM

To make my point i just completed a 70s season (with yount fan) and 2 pitchers outperformed their cards, one was a push and 22 underperformed their WHIP. the park was Veterans Stadium, so pretty neutral park. I would note i bailed too early on McGlothlin and Tekulve. (and yes I used 25 pitchers with 15 (60%) of them being carded with their 4th or 5th 'best' seasons).

yes I used 25 pitchers with 15 (60%) of them being carded with their 4th or 5th 'best' seasons

I recently finished a theme league where each team was limited to players from two franchises. Ranking years by OPS, my team had 0/24 hitters on their best OPS years. The odds of that are a little less than 1/200. Only 2 players were on their 2nd best years. 9/24 were on their worst OPS year.

Since I've played over 200 teams, it's entirely reasonable that I had a team where none of my first 24 hitters were on their best year. But while I was managing that team, it didn't seem reasonable to me.

Just a quick postscript to my original post regarding Gerald Young's year. An injury revealed him to be his 2nd best #2 1988 year. A far cry from #1, but serviceable enough, and he has > 600 ABs, so long injury proof. However, that team, due to series of Lemony Snickets unfortunate events is destined to struggle to win 70 games this season. I estimate that my over-under line for wins for the full season at the halfway point is 68. Just one of those things. I'd rather not discuss it

The best to pick u someone else’s discard and have it rock your team.

Absolutely! Nothing better than that. But conversely, there is nothing WORSE than dumping a player that you've lost patience with after 24 games, batting . 194 (as I have done with what I was certain was the worst 80's Alan Trammel, but with no obvious reveals, and have someone pick him , see him immediately go on a tear, and have him finish the season at .318.

I hate when that happens. But back to the physics / statistics analogy that I began this thread with (minus Franky's tangent , when lacking hard evidence/reveals, we make decisions based on a probability curve. The .194 hitting Alan Trammel was PROBABLY his worst year, maybe 95% based on his first 100 ABs, but not for sure, and in that case was NOT. And more power to the guy that decided to take a chance on your released stinker frog that turned out to be a prince.

Just part of the fun/torture , pleasure/pain of playing the SOM MC games that only a few of us can truly appreciate, we who are willing to spend (waste?) a fairly significant amount of our leisure time with this labor of love/hate.

As for me, SOM MC games somewhat made this past plague-riddled year tolerable and provided a sense of normalcy during the darkest days of physical isolation.

And while I'm spewing, I have no real idea who you guys are in the physical world, but having been a part of this SOM Baseball game community for these 20 past years, more or less stealthily, you who have contributed to this thread, as well as other veteran players, have been almost like extended family, highly respected, well spoken, well educated family, and your writings and gameplay over the years make it clear that we all have share a lot in common, esp with our love of this silly game.

Now I've got to get back to work trying to figure out how I can possibly squeeze a 75 win season (probability < 12 % ) out of my now-putrefied and likely irredeemable 80's Tourney team. Somehow I managed to pick up a virgin George Bell at game 75 that, seems to be his darn good #1, and now with Al Nipper also added at game 78, his first start stunning performance immediately makes him the ace of my staff (as it were), I'm hoping to surprise that league (myself included) in the 2nd half with a current roster value hovering around $63M. Yeah, right.

And YountFan - might you be able to send me the link to your old SOM song that you shared years back. I've lost track of it, but it was absolutely brilliant and I'd like to hear it again, just to cheer me . You're a talented guy! Plus, the apex website that you so painstaking had published so long ago now, continues to function flawlessly and continues to be my primary source of information when evaluating players given the huge year by year performance sample sizes. It's brilliant, and I would be happy to donate to your Patreon page if you have one, based on my usage of it!

Lee

I would completely disagree with your theory as it pertains to pitchers. The pitchers don’t mean revert or come particularly close to their carded seasons. In part because they’re pitching against more of an all star lineup. I check my teams performance against their carded seasons and would estimate that 80% of the time pitchers WHIPs are higher than their seAson

Jayhawk, I must completely agree with your disagreement regarding pitcher cards converging on their carded stats. It is more likely to see that happen for hitters. As is clearly borne out in the Yountfan pitcher stats compilation. It seems that pitchers tend to pitch to about a 1.00 - 1.50 higher ERA than their cards, more or less, much due to the reasons you cite. But it's still pretty cool when you get a near-perfect correspondence of simulated vs real stats. But as you say, it happens much less so (never?) for pitcher than batters. There are so many variables that effect the season-long simulated results. Fun stuff.

Sorry, post unintentionally bumped. This is old stuff.

Sorry, post unintentionally bumped. This is old stuff.

No need to apologize. This was one of the more interesting threads ever posted here, and I enjoyed skimming through it again. In fact, I'm a bit curious if you managed to squeeze out your 75-win goal with your hard-luck team.

Sorry, post unintentionally bumped. This is old stuff.

I agree with coyote above. I either missed this or forgot it (age showing?). At any rate, glad it is back to the top & would like to see more posts here.

Sorry, post unintentionally bumped. This is old stuff.

No need to apologize. This was one of the more interesting threads ever posted here, and I enjoyed skimming through it again. In fact, I'm a bit curious if you managed to squeeze out your 75-win goal with your hard-luck team.

Yeah, thanks for reminding me. That 80's MC tourney team was just a bad penny. That happens sometimes, where every one of your high priced stars is a dud, and every personnel move is the wrong one. After a 34-47 in the first half, I somehow managed to improve to 37-44 for the second, finishing at 71-91. By all rights that should have put an end to my MC Tourney aspirations, since there's no lowest-team drop in the MC tourney. But I rallied in the 90s and squeezed out just enough wins in the 2000's league to just slip into the MC Finals league by a couple of points.