This Has My Attention: New Questions

I do not care about pythag. I do not care about its accuracy in real life or in Strat. I do not care about blowouts. I do not care about extra inning or one run games. What I care about is one sided distributions where there should be balanced tails.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/459627

I started to look at my BS Tour teams. Here’s team one. Led the league in run diff. Missed the wildcard by a game to a Starter level manager. That’s odd.

Then I started to look over the BS standings. Five of the Top 10 teams are Starter level managers. The other five are next level (Veteran) with one MVP level tied for 10th.

So, apparently I didn’t get the memo that I should be playing the tours with a Starter Level member name.

All I know is that THIS is total bullshit https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/462958
And when my credits are gone, I'm done.

Here's another good one for you:

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/463041

12 games under Pythag and instead of being 10 games up in my division, I'm 1 game back with 12 to play.

Oh, and my six BS pythags? -6, -5, -1, -4, -3, -3. Funny how that is always happening.

Strange that the BS Top 10 had a +6, +6, +9, +8 and + 10 all as Starter Level managers. Who could have guessed that?

All I'll say is that top level managers seem to pretty often get frustrated by stuff like this and find the outcomes suspicious/strange. I went to bat for this stuff months ago in a desperate effort to keep my friends from quitting the game and sadly, all of them have quit.

The differentials I consider fun to look at but they honestly seem to mean very little in the grand scheme of things. One league I was in there was a guy that missed playoffs and for a lot of the season he had a +200 differential, he placed third in his division. For the record, one of my friends complained about the worst teams in the league sweeping the best teams consistently late in seasons. I have seen this happen a lot too, coincidence or not I cannot be sure but some of these teams are atrocious.

I think a big part of the problem here is that relievers are absurdly overpriced. Especially when you factor in HAL's bizarre methodologies it's hard to justify spending big on the bullpen. Pretty much every time I do poorly it's because I get the bright idea of using expensive relievers.

Here’s a 200x tour team docked -8.

https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/expanded/461474

The teams ahead of me were (Starter) +5 and (Veteran) +6. Missed the playoffs because of it. Coincidence, probably.

At least there’s only two Starter level managers in the Top Ten in the 200x Tour. But there are more as you continue down the list.

Hats off to the managers winning under long time user names. They’re doing it with one hand tied behind their back.

I will run a complete + - on expected wins based on the manager experience rating for the top 50 placings in Barnstormers.

I will run a complete + - versus expected wins by manager experience rating for the top 50.

Not impossible that this is being done, however I think run differential is one of the worst ways to build a championship team myself as that is usually a way to win the most games in the regular season and it behoves one to build teams to play against likely playoff opposition. I have never been a fan of + - run differential and find it has limited predictive value in the leagues I enter. But if someone who wins 50% more awards than average claims they should be winning even more and have played as many games as P then I will see what it looks like. I don't trust programmers either and I have a suspicion of what is easily done to control games, but I don't think it's expected runs, but let's see. I do believe in Occam's Razor as right most of the time, but it is not fool proof. So many on these boards could never be convinced one way or the other.

Back in 2017, when Strat did the manager records and trophy case, they decided 117 wins would get a gold trophy. The record for wins in ATG9 is 112. One team in ATG 8 had 118. Why was the level set so high then, and it’s so much harder to achieve now? My guess is that they are constantly trying to fine tune some sort of “realism” out of a game that should be quite a bit more outrageous.

You can say the same thing about saves and a few other categories.

I do not understand what you mean when you say run diff is one of the worst ways to build a Championship team. In what circumstances would one not want to score the maximum runs and allow the fewest?

Once again, I don’t care if pythag is predictive. My problem is that luck should NOT be predictive.

Back in 2017, when Strat did the manager records and trophy case, they decided 117 wins would get a gold trophy. The record for wins in ATG9 is 112. One team in ATG 8 had 118. Why was the level set so high then, and it’s so much harder to achieve now?

117 would break the MLB record, that's why it was chosen. Lots of other Gold trophies were chosen on the same basis.

My guess is that they are constantly trying to fine tune some sort of “realism” out of a game that should be quite a bit more outrageous.

My guess is they improved their pricing. The salary cap enforces parity.

I don't understand how some of you guys can play in some many leagues. I do a lot of work for each league that I play in. I have spreadsheets built where I analyze my opponents. This leads to a lot of work on my draft lists and free agent picks. Each night I adjust my lineup taking into account the ball park, the opposing pitchers R/L splits, how many ballpark HRs are on the pitchers card. I adjust my strategies for the team I am playing, considering their arms, and whether I should emphasize small ball or not. In some leagues I spend time on looking at pitchers match-ups but that is mostly too much work. I don't understand why I don't win every game let alone every league

My conclusion is that real baseball and Stratomatic are way more random then we realize. Salary caps are a great equalizer. There are some things you can do to shoot your team in the foot, but against equal opponents there is no way to predict who will win. Therefore, the Bagger Vance line applies, this is a game that can only be played it can't be won.