ATG 8 vs ATG 9 - After 2 years playing experience

Extreme ballparks....so what?
There are extreme power hitters.
There are extreme power pitchers.
There are extreme platoons.
There are players with extreme OBPs and BAs.
There are extreme cheap pitching staffs.
There are extreme lineups.
There are extreme defensive players.
There are extreme throwing arms.
etc. etc.

So what?
Shall we get rid of everything that is extreme?

Come on guys....part of the strategy is building your team to fit your park, the teams/parks in your div, and the teams/parks in your league. If you can't adjust and compete in that mode, go play ABBPA baseball or parchesi.....

I'm in the camp that thinks the bullpen settings should have been left alone. PRICE should be the only determining factor. Butt hurt about Murray's usage? Make him $10 . Easy fix

Ballparks are part of the strategy, but we primarily see the extreme ones. And I can’t recall a league - in a long time - where I didn’t see at least one Forbes, outside the random stadium leagues I run. There’s a lot of choices, but my guess is we see various versions of the same number set. The most annoying one? Extreme lefty park, roster of all LH pitchers and batters.

Yeah…talk about not real life…

The Yankees basically did this for about 30 years. Enough to wear Charlie Finley tried to copy the formula in Kansas City

Yankees of the 50s and early 60s had plenty of RH’ers. I don’t recall a 100% lefty roster anywhere. So, when exactly did they do this?

Extreme ballparks....so what?
There are extreme power hitters.
There are extreme power pitchers.
There are extreme platoons.
There are players with extreme OBPs and BAs.
There are extreme cheap pitching staffs.
There are extreme lineups.
There are extreme defensive players.
There are extreme throwing arms.
etc. etc.

So what?
Shall we get rid of everything that is extreme?

Come on guys....part of the strategy is building your team to fit your park, the teams/parks in your div, and the teams/parks in your league. If you can't adjust and compete in that mode, go play ABBPA baseball or parchesi.....

No one said to get rid off of everything. Just that what we see here isn’t realistic. If folks want to dump a bunch of lefties in a skewed park -or not- it’s their money.

Freeing up the switches might bring back super relief. But it also might allow for some real interesting modern bullpens, considering all the 1 inning RP’s we now have.

Yes. Bring back the ATG8 bullpen rules, keep pricing of the super relievers such as Murray, at their current salary.

This ATG game will never be realistic or like real life. End of story. Trying to change the rules in futile attempts to do so, only creates un-anticipated worse problems

Yes. Bring back the ATG8 bullpen rules, keep pricing of the super relievers such as Murray, at their current salary.

This ATG game will never be realistic or like real life. End of story. Trying to change the rules in futile attempts to do so, only creates un-anticipated worse problems

Yup. Trying to "fix" the super reliever had the same genesis as some of the comments here regarding realism.

It simply isn't real, Babe Ruth vs Dwight Gooden. Or Lady Baldwin against ARod. Or any number of things. And our perception of "realistic" is inherently biased toward our contemporary experiences--which may not have been realistic at all during the eras of these players. So many examples I don't think I need to identify them.

Each year is normed to reproduce its year as played. There is no way to create realism when mixing cards of eras that didn't keep track of the stats that they keep track of today. Lots of card holes have to be filled on those old cards, hence the Super-Adv cards etc.

I would just like for well-intentioned changes to be scrutinized --both for understanding what is the purpose of the change and what are the second and third order effects.

Otherwise, we are just repeating what we did with the BP V3 in ATG9.

Excerpt from Bill James article on Finley. The new Yankee stadium was "grandfathered" a short right field porch that would be illegal in ANY other ballpark. My point is if the Yankmees can have the rules bent to their advantage, why can't we?


Finley constantly fiddled with the dimensions of his ballpark, until it reached the point of absurdity. His first year he thought the Kansas City pitchers needed help, so he moved the left field fence back 40 feet. By 1964 he had determined that the Yankees won every year not because of their great talent, but because of the dimensions of their ballpark: deep in most of left and center fields with a short distance in right. Finley decided to make his right-field configuration identical to that in Yankee Stadium.

Unfortunately for Finley, as of 1958 the rules decreed a minimum distance of 325 feet down the foul lines with the exception of those parks already with shorter dimensions. Never one to be put off by something as silly as the rules of the game, Finley ordered that his fence conform to the Yankee Stadium dimensions from center field to right field until it reached a point five feet from the foul line and 296 feet from home plate (the Yankee Stadium distance). From there, the fence angled sharply back out so that it was exactly 325 feet away when it reached the foul line. He thus neatly skirted the rule, which stipulated the distances only on the foul line, not the distance five feet from the line. He painted “KC pennant porch” on the new fence (which was exactly 44 inches high, as it was in Yankee Stadium).

After two exhibition games, American League President Joe Cronin told Finley that all of the fence must be at least 325 feet from the plate. Finley moved the fence back to 325, changed the sign to say “One-Half Pennant Porch” and painted a line on the field that represented the Yankee Stadium dimensions. He then ordered the public address announcer to call out, “That would have been a home run at Yankee Stadium” for every fly ball that went past this line.9

Incredible excerpt on Finley. Today's owners are so boring by comparison.

Great piece Steve