ATG 9 Too Flawed?

Most of the "unplayable" cheap cards were added as part of all-time great teams; that is how ATG got its start. Many of these cards do get used in theme leagues played with all-time teams.

Not sure why that is even an issue. Just use the cards you want to use and leave the rest for the franchise league players, etc.

Many relievers from R-3 up are now overpriced due to the ATG9 repricing and the associated bullpen rule changes. Overall I believe the ATG9 repricing was done very well, but many of the higher-end relievers seem to be priced for the old bullpen rules.

Honestly what I dislike most about the extreme junk cards is that there is a ton of them so I keep clicking on them over time as I can't remember which ones they are. There are no filters to block them and there is no way I can memorize thousands of cards. I think think this is the kind of thing that may be overlooked or considered a non-issue but my opinion is that the cards are troublesome. Plus some cards like the ones I mentioned previously are completely useless and can only harm your teams. I guess if they're relevant in theme leagues they have a place but I'm still gonna hate them

Throw away the analytics--we have a new pricing algorithm. Of course, it has to be done subjectively for each player against another player, but I think SOM can get that done in 1000 years or less and then we can all rest well knowing that Molina is updated at 530K.

Thank goodness SOM doesn't take action based on these boards. In the OP opinion and feeling of what is best, these are troublesome, useless, harmful cards that should be removed or replaced. Meanwhile there is a way to do that--create a custom set.

I am just one person but this is the last thing I would want SOM working on--and there are many in a long list of things.

The difference is the OP does not accept having a single vote here--further showing a clue that their outsized opinion on a minor issue probably matches an outsized playing investment for their main persona and we are being trolled.

content removed by FrankieT for lack of relevance

Not that this resolves anything, but I have been playing in a random shuffle league for about 9 seasons now. 1000 cards (a little bigger than ATG1), different sets every time, different stadiums. Easily the most fun and challenging ongoing league I have been in some time. You have no choice but use new cards and different strategies because most of your faves won't be there.

That does sound very cool goffchile. I kinda wanted to get involved in Barnstormers but I don't think I have the time to study so many different sets let alone practice for them. That's intense! Some kind of custom league is probably next for me. I wanted to take a peek at how to create an ATG9 - platoon league but couldn't figure out how to get started. As in I don't know where to look

'Bout time to end this discussion, which went way down the dark rabbit hole of .50 cards. Who cares!

ATG 9 is my favorite. I play 80M DH and one thing that I find very unfortunate is how cheap STRONG platoons are. Particularly on the L balance side. There are a bunch of lethal $1M players that have hitting cards comparable to MUCH more expensive players. Yes I realize there are less lefty pitchers but I feel this is extremely unbalanced. For a while I would only play righty pitchers just because I was so tired of it and low and behold the rings were coming in for me. And yes I do realize these platoon players are imperfect but they're tremendously overpowered and that's why 80%+ of the top managers are using them every single league. Running as many platoons as possible.

Another thing I'm not a fan of is how atrocious the vast majority of catches are. Their pricing seems to have very little rhyme or reason to it and some cards are extremely strong versus others in their price range. A lot of the 6M catches are terrible and it makes no sense.

The pool of cards is enormous with huge batches of cards coming in more and more. Is this the final ATG? All this is doing is making platoons stronger and more easily attainable. In a regular league there are 4+ teams abusing platoons. I don't watch real baseball but I have to assume there is a lot less platoon usage than in this game. It gets silly when there are 5+ pinch hitters in a row and 3+ relievers - nearly 10 players switched out to hit the ball once. Then HAL just leaves in a 9R against a lefty when there are other relievers to use.

Another issue I see is the droves are suboptimal cards flooding into the game. What is the point of them exactly? Tons and tons of awful and ridiculous cards such as Mountain Goat Spencer. Meanwhile we get Bengie Molina... it doesn't add up. I am considering switching to No DH leagues or a different set altogether for the sole reason of seeing a reduced usage of platoons. Anyway that's it: Poor card balance and way too much platooning. If you have fun with it then great but I'm tired of it. Curious what you guys think

Putting my efforts behind previous complaints about too many lefty, righty platoons, I created a custom set by deleting all hitters with a balance rating of 5R/L or higher. No Blowers, no Duncan, no 61 Norm Cash, etc. Will LH pitchers become more valuable or are there still enough 4Ls to terrorize? Will RPs become less valuable? Will more teams chose small ball?

Let’s see if anybody will join my first league using the set. https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/472465

MaxPower,
I am interested in your view that platoons don't work well at 140M. Given your success rate, I figure you know what you are talking about. Could you expand on that a bit? It seems that that higher cap would give you more flexibility to use platoons, especially in DH leagues where the SPs tend to pitch more innings, giving more opportunity to exploit a platoon edge.

At 140, you can afford a "real" player who is good both ways instead of that platoon. I agree that the problem with high platoon use is greater at an 80m cap than at 140.

The best enhancement SOM has yet made to ATG 9 was the addition of the card Usage rating, visible in the ATG Stats History (Info/Help>Player Set Browser>Stats History tab).

With this, I was able to generate a spreadsheet that filtered out all of the players with a 10 Usage rating (i.e., most used). Not surprisingly, most with 10 Usage ratings are the ubiquitous platoon buddies (Duncan, Gates Brown) and cheap, extreme slant RPs (Kittredge, Sambito).

Then I created a custom player set: https://365.strat-o-matic.com/playerset/browse/100740.

We are just finishing our first season: https://365.strat-o-matic.com/league/471751

Findings:
- Much more realistic player statistics
- Reduced offense across the league
- Most surprisingly, still plenty of platoons! (Teams still managed to find ways to pair 9R Lou Whitaker with 4L Bucky Harris at 2B, for example)

To me, this was the fairest way to mitigate the unrealistic platoon problem while still keeping to the traditional $80M/No DH format. There was no personal judgment - all cards with 10 Usage ratings indiscriminately were torn in half (length-wise, to hurt more) and then burned.

(Funnily enough, it also meant the end of many of the most popular .50M SP (Tim Conroy, Randy Lerch, etc.), who were over-leveraged as part of the "4 Aces" SP strategy.)

One man's useless nickel card is used at least half the time at $60m