Strat-o-matic should do away with the * pitcher rating

[Jerlins]

Indeed, I stand corrected. And with such I am in favor of no more * pitchers created by SOM.

[stevep107]

My vote (for what it is worth) is to leave the game as it is at the moment and keep the SP* pitchers.

[Woody5]

The game is flawed more than the * rating for pitchers. The problem is that a batter has a 50/50 chance of having the roll land on his card. If Randy Johnson is facing Ray Lankford for instance.....if the roll lands on Lankfords card, it's as if RJ is not pitching at all. I think in real life Lankford has about as much chance of hitting RJ as I have in dating Jennifer Antiston.

That would mean that there is no difference if Lankford is hitting against RJ or Matt Clement as an example. in real life in 2004 Clement was far less effective that RJ.

I think the * rating is there to make up the fact that RJ is not RJ almost 50% of the time. That is why the stats (with a little give and take) end up being very similar to real life. 20 game winners, strikeouts and so on. There are the extreme exceptions where RJ was a 32 game winner and Bonds hits 90 home runs but those are few and far between.


Keep in mind this is probably as good as a simulated game can get. There are inevitably going to be some flaws but they have it as best as they can and to me it's pretty good.

[JohnnyBlazers]

I agree with what Woody said. Since it is a 50% chance of falling on a pitcher card it diminishes the true impact of a dominant pitcher. The stats will eventually be close, but not the impact that a 04 Santana, Johnson or Gagne really have on a game. I'd like to see a rating system where the top "franchise" pitchers would get an A rating for example, and the probability changes to their card say by 75/25 instead of 50/50 hitter/pitcher. A B rating would be 60/40, a C 50/50 and so forth. Just an idea

[1crazycanuk]

That is a good idea actually. Maybe they could consider doing something like that. Actually, in baseball doesn't the pitcher have the advantage. The hitter has to hit the ball...and then put it where one of 9 guys can't get it to get him out.

[JohnnyBlazers]

What is the old saying "Pitching & Defense...". The history of the game has always been good pitching beats good hitting - look at last years White Sox, the late 90's Yanks. In my system, "franchise" pitchers "would really be the franchise in terms of the salary cap hit a team would take. That being said, I can't think of any dominating pitchers last year-just some very good ones like Willis, Carpenter & Clemens (when healthy). This rule would apply to pitchers who are virtually UNHITTABLE like Sandy Koufax in early 60's, Bob Gibson ('68?), Guidry in ('78) and Santana and to a lesser degree, R. Johnson in '04. Any other dominant type pitchers who make this cut?

[maligned]

I don't see why you need to do the 60/40 or 70/30 or something similar when the stats don't warrant it. That's why the cards are weighted so heavily as it is. Randy Johnson has only 1.8 hit chances out of 216 rolls against left-handed hitters (excluding X chances of course). This extremely miniscule chance of success is in place because it balances out the hitters' cards, not because lefties really only have a .010 average against Randy. If you went to the 60/40 system, you would then have to make Randy's card more hittable to balance out the final stats.
The only time you would need to have this sort of imbalance is with a pitcher whose allowed successes were less than half the rate of the success earned by an average player. For example, if the average OBP of lefty hitters vs. lefty pitchers is .330, and Randy holds them to a .200 OBP, you have to create a card that reflects a .070 OBP to make the overall OBP against him come out correctly. However, if in a given year, a pitcher would hold his opponents to less than half the average performance for that year, it causes statistical problems when you're trying to compensate. You can't create a negative OBP or AVG on a pitcher's card.

[1crazycanuk]

My head is spinning...:( lol

[maligned]

By the way, I haven't been playing the TSN game very long, have people tried to come up with creative ways to get around the *pitchers or 20% salary hit with free agent acquisitions?
What keeps people from creating private leagues in which 5-man rotations are required? You could create the league in a $120-million format, but require each player to spend only $80 million. Then, you could say that each *pitcher gets a 10% pay cut or something. This way, RJ gets paid $10.71 instead of $11.90. So, if RJ is the one *pitcher on your roster, you could have $81.19 million in salary from the computer's perspective, but the rest of the members of the league know you're under the required $80 mill. The computer lets you draft this way because it thinks you're almost $40 mill. under the cap.
This could work the same way with salary penalties for free agent acquisitions. Just create a private league that agrees to an $80-mill. cap, but set it up as a $120-mill cap on the computer. That way, when you do a free agent acquisition, you have the $40 mill. space to mess with from the computer's perspective.

[maligned]

I meant to say $100-mill cap...not $120-mill cap. But you get the point.