Welcome Aaron!
chris.sied@yahoo.com wrote:I think you are putting way too much emphasis on "real life" stats. Glavine may have been an excellent pitcher in 1998, but Fordyce doesn't look like a bad hitter against lefties. The reason his 1998 season stats are so poor is that he had nearly 60% of his real life at bats against righties, and against whom he was atrocious. If you look at his 1998 splits from baseball reference, he hit .302/.371/.492 against lefties, with 2 homeruns in 70 at bats. Thats not a bad hitter. So, yes, when that bad luck of getting a hitters roll for a good hitter against lefties comes up, every lefthanded pitcher is going to look bad against him. But that is all part of learning how to read the cards and recognizing how you can get value from your players by finding hidden gems whose cards are better than you would expect based on their salary and real life stats.
That comment from chris is key. It is a card game first and foremost. Understand the cards.
https://365.strat-o-matic.com/help/rules/baseball#understandcardUnderstand the rules as adapted for 365/online play, which is different from the board or CD ROM games.
https://stratomatic365.fandom.com/wiki/Strat-O-Matic_365Understand how to assess value of a card in your lineup, park, division, and league.
For example, for hitters...Lineup value: where will he hit? Lots of OBA? Hits? Lots of double plays and fielder's choices? Effect of your park, where he will play 50% of the time. Effect in opponents' parks. Positive or negative clutch? (comes up rarely as a direct issue, but comes up often for HAL determining whether to intentionally walk the guy ahead of him) etc.
Understand your schedule, intra division, and the rest.
For a 12 team league, 72 games (12 H/12 A against each) will be in your division.
So, when you begin to look at your roster after the draft, you can figure out whether that Glavine card would be seeing a L/R split similar to his card or not. The pricing is where this game is the difference between positive and negative outcomes over the long run.
For instance, on your team: Jeter is your highest priced player. He is a huge investment at a key defensive position. But he is not a good value in your situation. Why?
Most of your hitters are shaded to hit LHP better. But you are only seeing about 25% LHPs (which is close to typical).
So your highest price guy squeezes out about 35 hits (5 XBHs) against righties, which is OK if he cost 6M but not at 9M+.
Look at the other hitters in his vicinity at 9M. He is atrocious (for the price). Now if you had 3 Shawn Greens in the lineup, maybe Jeter makes sense...
Now, you may correctly say that defense up the middle--particularly range, is important. And looking at your fielding stats you are right. Recall that every pitcher card has about a 28% chance of rolling a fielding chance (30 "X" chances" on each L/R side) and it is always the same ratio by position for each card (SS gets 7 chances, 2B gets 6, etc).
So, the pitching card is actually only about 70% of the pitcher--30% fielders. Yet you have paid almost 44% of your total salary on pitchers.
While not always incorrect, in your case it is not a good fit. As a rule of thumb, if you take that 70% and multiply it by the 50% expected rate of pitcher card chances (vs hitter card, assuming an even split, which is nominal), you would arrive at about a 35% weight for pitcher card outcomes attributable to the pitcher (instead of the fielders)--which would be a starting point for your salary investment (ie, 80M cap x 35% is approx 28M on pitching). But again--will depend on the league and your fielding investment.
Back to Jeter--if his major value is that 1e10 since he is a SS--another way to view this is invest in the defense at SS, but then pay for the hitting somewhere else. Against righties, your best hitter is probably Shawn Green in most parks...with 75% of your opponent's pithcers being righties, you should have more shawn greens and less derek jeters, in a nutshell.
FWIW--I'm not a fan of this 1998 Jeter card batting second. If you analyze the card, you could see why. It isn't the absolute worst, and it hides his poor clutch, but this highlights the conundrum of Jeter's high price tag--he is not a force in the lineup. As others said--his 1998 card in a 1998 league is likely a bit overpriced in most situations.
But the game has an endless amount of strategic methods that can be employed to win--there is not one formula. That link from Palmtana is a huge start though toward a guideline. We used to have a newbie guide many years ago on the old boards, but the link he gave is much more current.
Stick with it--a nearly .500 record on your first go--that is pretty impressive. Seriously. Good thing is--if you want to learn the game inside the game--there is plenty to learn and try. I think the fun part is that there is no secret formula. Everything has context.
Good luck. And welcome.