Aaron Ardsma wrote:Chris,
What you say makes sense. To a degree. But here I am nearly halfway through a season, and Glavine's ERA is hovering around 5.00, more than twice the real-life number. I'm sorry, but even when ballparks and righty-lefty balances are taken into account, that just ain't right.
So I'm sticking with yep, it's BS, mostly luck. And counting on things to truly even out over the course of a season. If they do not, then I will know the product is lousy.
Sorry I took so long to respond. First vacation in 2 years and strat was not heavy on my mind.
So, I see Glavine's ERA is now down to 4.22. That is not too far off what I would expect. A couple things to remember. In strat as opposed to "real" baseball, he is playing against the 14 best players on the team all the time. No minor leaguers up for a week or two while someone rests, no September call ups when the team is out of contention. And in reality, its against the 9 best with an occasional injury substitution thrown in. Nobody gives their players off days for rest (or really, nobody should) so he is pitching against the best day in and day out. Second, the other team has strategy too. So, for example, Glavine is getting crushed by lefties (as one might expect based on his balance) and other good managers in 365 will see that balance rating and throw extra lefties in the lineup to take advantage of it. Moyer on your team has somehow managed to keep lefties below .200 despite having the exact same balance rating. Thats just how the dice roll. The fact that every pitcher on your team has a higher ERA than real life (save for Jeff Shaw who is having a magical season especially given his dice roll distribution) should suggest that real life ERA is a really poor predictor of how things will go in the online game.
In real life baseball, the odds say you send up righties against lefties, and vice versa on the other side because traditionally that's what gets you the best results, and managers are always going to go with the most likely thing (or they should at least). In strat, I already know that I have an advantage with lefties against Glavine, so, if possible, I am going to find the lefties on my team that give me a better matchup against the lefty Glavine. Thats the part of the game that comes with experience and why some managers consistently win and others consistently lose.
And finally...OF COURSE ITS LUCK! Its a dice game. By definition its luck. The strategy here is not to know what is going to happen based on real life stats, but to put the odds in your favor so that the randomness that comes with dice rolls skews ever so slightly in your favor. But to think that because Glavine cant match his real life ERA in this game makes it all BS is not really understanding the mechanics of the game at all. If that was all it took, then there would be 1 perfect team under each salary cap where you have simply maximized real life stats and whoever drafted that team would win.
If what you want is to see the season replicated, buy the computer version of the game, set it for replay mode so that each pitcher faces all the exact same lineups he faced during the regular season, and replay to your heart's content. I think that sounds like a really boring way to utilize the product and I much prefer using my brain to deconstruct the card chances and get players to do better than their stats suggest they should based on how I use them.