Hit and Run

Is the Hit and Run

 
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Postby cummings2 » Sat Mar 18, 2006 4:17 pm

Does anybody know what situation is supposedly the best to try the H&R? With 1 out or no outs?

I believe HAL is running the play mostly with 1 out.
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Postby cummings2 » Fri Mar 31, 2006 5:12 pm

As mentioned before there are two teams that I'm running with this H&R experiment. I believe I've gathered enough info to run a H&R team properly and make a run for a ring, remains to be seen whether I will or not.

As it could be expected the third team (Rain Dogs in the team links) is benefiting from the accumulated info and is running a fairly O.K. season 20 games over .500 by the game 75 mark. It sports a fairly productive offense, efficient and effective. Cross referencing the Dogs with the more extreme experiment (Carbone Quatorze in the team links) has proved to be quite beneficial.

There are several tidbits to share here to consider when using H&R, most of which are simple and quite easy to arrive by the use of simple deductive processes, so in case you feel I am simple stating the obvious I apologize beforehand but here are a few bits:

HAL seems to be much more inclined to run the H&R with 1 out and a man on 1B. The implications of this are two-fold: on the one hand when planning a H&R lineup the B rated H&R hitter should not follow the OBP/*trigger, there should be a hitter with a higher average and TB sandwiched between them. Also, because the strategy more often than not, moves the runner to scoring position at high possibility of an out, the following hitter's clutch is triggered, therefore, an ideal H&R segment of the lineup goes as follows:

1. High OBP hitter *running
2. High Avg/ TB hitter
3. B rated H&R
4. Good avg, neutral or + Clutch

If the 3rd hitter is a C rated H&Rer and is upgraded to a B HAL will run the H&R and the efficiency of the strategy will suffer greatly.

It seems like with the right settings you can get HAL to run the play even with poor runners on the bases, however an element that HAL seems to factor heavily (much more than the runner's ability to steal safely or get a good lead) is the Pitcher's HLD & catcher's arm.

Apparently the biggest relation in settings that affect the H&R performance is the bunting settings. If you set your team to conservative bunting, HAL will run the H&R more often, if your lineup is not suitable for the strategy this will cause some problems.

There are ways of adjusting your lineups and settings (overall and individual) to turn the strategy into a useful tool. If the right players are in place and the right matchups come up, I believe it is perhaps desirable to run the strategy at a rate of 2 ATT per game, as mentioned, IF the setting is the right one the extreme use of the strategy will yield very productive results.

What are those conditions? Unfortunately there are many variations, but for one: a division with BPs under 50% BPHRs, defenses of 2 or higher up the middle, pitcher and catcher's ratings of +1 or higher, ideally higher OBP enviroments, a lineup with LHH with higher AVG; TBs coming from the pitcher's weak side. Opp OFs without elite throwing arms.

One very important element to remember is the Slugger, the way that Luckyman mentioned earlier in the thread. Ideally, the slugger has as many direct hit HRs as possible.
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Postby Mean Dean » Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:21 pm

Thanks for this info. It's intriguing to learn when Hal prefers to H&R. I'm not sure why he prefers 1 out to 0 outs -- seems like it should be the opposite, for the same reason you bunt more with 0 outs than 1 -- but I guess that's his affair.

I don't think, though, that the H&R is going to be an essential part of a winning team. Simply put, if you're carrying players whose best play is often to H&R, that is just not going to be a lineup that is productive offensively overall. (At least in 2006, anyway.)

So I can't really put stock in a "H&R team". But, if you know you're going to be carrying a glove man (e.g. Jack Wilson), the info here can give you a better idea of how to maximize his limited offensive usefulness, since that is the type of guy whom you [i:5fc95341a3]will[/i:5fc95341a3] want to H&R.
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Postby cummings2 » Sat Apr 01, 2006 5:55 pm

You're absolutely right Dean. The extreme use of the strategy through the lineup yields very poor offensive results. Sadly I say this from experience. However, as you pointed out it can help maximize the offensive production of some defensive oriented players.

I was also operating under the assumption that the most optimal time to run the H&R would be with a man on 1st and no outs, I ended up finding out this issue by mere accident. An injury forced me to change lineups and that change produced some relults that helped explain some of the head scratchers, like for example why the H&R wasn't being executed from the two spot in the first inning. I've gone back and reviewed rather closely ABs from the three H&R teams and I'm quite certain the play is more likely to be ran with 1 out (though not exclusively). BTW, bunting does seem to happen more often with no outs.

The main relation between Stealing and H&R, as far as settings go, seems to be that if the runner is tagged to "do not steal" it lowers greatly the odds of HAL executing the H&R, for example in a team, with the exact same lineups: through 33 games with "do not steal tags" and conservative bunting on the H&R ran 6 times; without the "do not steal" tags and conservative bunting the H&R ran 23 times in the following 33 games.

Once I tracked the H&R happening with 1 out I adjusted the lineups, the result is in every player having an increase of about 15-20 points in their BA. This is most likely a fluke of rolls but still it's data that will have to be reviewed and cross referenced.

Several little tid bits like this have kept me from utter boredom with the 05 set.

All best of luck with your tour team Dean, looks really solid. Hope you were in another division, but glad to duke it out with the Deanster :wink:
Last edited by cummings2 on Mon May 08, 2006 3:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby cummings2 » Sun Apr 16, 2006 11:47 pm

As the two experiments in H&R near the end of their respective seasons and my H&R blog is nearing it's closure I thought it pertinent to post here some of the additional little tid bits of information I've found of some use:

1. When running the H&R if the result comes from the pitcher's card, Ballpark effects (>, #) and Defensive effects (Gb x) are calculated as in any normal AB.

2. Not every runner rated * will automatically trigger a defensive HLD. However, in late innings of a close game HAL is more likely to hold runners, even those good runners w/o a *

3. I have found it useful to use the following as reference:

A Hitter rated A executing the H&R has 27% chance of getting a hit, or 29.25 chances of a hit from his card (29.25/108)

A Hitter rated B executing the H&R has 25% chance of getting a hit, or 27 chances of a hit from his card (27/108)

A hitter rated C executing the H&R has 21% chances of getting ahit, or 22.75 chances of a hit from his card (22.75/108)

4. When the result coming from the H&R is BMP the runner is forced to steal with or without his lead BUT the AB continues for the hitter, originally I interpreted the BMP as a strikeout, which is not the case.

An "A" rated H&R hitter has 17% chances of BMP.

A "B" rated H&R hitter has 22% chances of BMP.

A "C" rated H&R hitter has 33% chances of BMP.

5. All Lineouts and Flyouts resulting from the pitcher's card fail to move the runner.

6. HAL does not seem to factor in the makeup of the pitcher's card when deciding whether to execute the play or not, it seems like the main elements are Hitter's rating for H&R (1), Runner's ability to get lead (2), combined pitcher's HLD and catcher's ARM (from -5 to +5)

7. As mentioned earlier, if the runner is tagged to "Do not steal" it greatly inhibits the chances of HAL executing the H&R. It would be interesting to find out if with "Do not steal" checked the defense doesn't hold runners and thus the hitter is not upgraded.

8. Also as mentioned earlier, HAL seems to give preference to Stealing and Bunting prior to H&R.

9. In a conservative setting the H&R thresholds/benchmarks seem to be quite high/safe: An "A" rated H&R hitter, a runner with 40%+ chance of getting a lead and 80%+ chance of stealing 2B.

10. Even if the overall chances of stealing 2B are over 80% HAL will not execute the H&R IF the chances of getting a lead are under 40%.

11. As mentioned earlier, HAL seems to be more inclined to execute the H&R with one out (though I can't say exclusively inclined to) this can have quite an impact if the second hitter after the good runner is B rated for H&R and if the third hitter has high clutch in his card.

12. In my experience tracking over 200 H&R plays in 3 teams not once has the result been that of runner CS on 3B, I am assuming that HAL will hardly execute the play with a man on 2B but I am sure there are many exceptions to this.

13. I have found fairly effective to run the H&R by combining a conservative Steal and Bunting with normal H&R settings. In addition I've tagged the appropriate hitters to "Do not H&R". If my runners have less than 40% chance of getting a lead the only way I've found of triggering the H&R is by doing as above but with a Very Aggresive H&R setting and "H&R more" checked in the appropriate hitters.

These observations come from observing both the on-line game and the CD-Rom game (under super advanced rules), there's enough info to back these notions but they are afterall merely observations which for all I know are widely known to everyone else or they are a bit off here and there. Hope the are of some help.
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Penultimate 05 update...

Postby cummings2 » Sat Apr 22, 2006 6:07 pm

Well, the more extreme experiment in H&R finished it's season with a rather pedestrian and dissapointing 82-80 record.

Some stats:

Overall Record: 82-80
Record at Home:45-36
Record Away: 37-44
Record in games decided by 1 run: 22-34
Games when hitting at least 1 HR: 43-20
Games when failing to hit 1 HR: 39-60
team Ks: 1020 [ 6.29 p/game]
Team GIDP: 109 [ .672 p/game]
H&R total attempts: 85 [1 every 17.1 innings / 51 outs]
Team LOB: 1121 [6.91 p/game]
Team RS P/game: 3.96
Team RA P/game: 3.69
Team OBP: .326
Team SLG: .357
Team Avg: .252
ABs: 5494
R. Proj. vs. R. Scored: +4 RS

Pyth. Record= 83-79

Team Rankings:
RS: 7th
H: 4th
2B: 11th
3B: T-10th
HR: 12th (-30 from 11th)
BB: 4th

A few toughts:

The trigger-H&Rer approach seems to be fairly flawed. The offense relies way too much on the so called triggers, if they struggle the whole offense struggles and losses pile up quickly.

Echoing a couple of Luckyman's initial suggestions:

1. Re: Sluggers,

I kept track of record when hitting at least one HR and when no HRs were hit, as the records indicate above there seems to be no better way of showing the importance of the sluggers by the reflected winning pct. When hitting a least 1 HR the win % was .682, when failing to hit a HR the win % was .393


2. Dominant Closer,

Lucky chooses his word carefully (and I don't pay enough attention). He did say a dominant closer...in my ill designed team, I chose Percival to close out games going on 1 inning. I thought that his low WHIP in a low HR BP would produce good results...well, the results were so-so good but not dominant, he blew 10 saves and my win % in games decided by 1 run was .392

The very fact that this team struggled so much to trigger the H&R and use it effectively (it hit a paltry .211 Avg off H&R plays while moving the runners at an abysmal 68%) helped me understand a little how HAL goes about the H&R and how to optimize the play.

It is true that this team had particularily the case of the bad rolls but the main lesson from this team is that in order to run effective H&R teams you should use some of the best runners available that will pull the defense to hold, even at the expense of OBP, speed is quite the key to trigger the play and have the better results.

Still, as with all strategies the H&R merely increases some odds and reduces others, if the goal is to move a runner an A rated bunter is by far a better solution, while if the goal is to get a hit, letting almost any hitter swing away seems to be a better fit. The H&R is somewhere in between the two. It is true that it helps avoid double plays, in this particular case the team grounded into 12 double plays less than the rest of league's average, this translates into 1 DP every 13 games...IMO this is almost negligible.

The final 05 H&R team is 21 games behind, it's built in a similar fashion but with speed at the expense of the higher OBP this team was supposed to have.

Will post final update on that team as soon as the season is finished, some numbers from that team in relation to this team illustrate better the previous point re: speed and H&R.

-->Edit to correct Percival's numbers
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Postby cirills » Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:33 am

Thanks for the effort Chuck! :wink:
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Postby cummings2 » Mon May 08, 2006 3:40 am

Well... H&R team #3 [url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/team/team_other.html?user_id=57733][u:17e745c08d]Rain Dogs[/u:17e745c08d][/url] Thanks to a few lucky bounces managed to win the championship in game 6 last night. 8)

I'll follow with a few thoughts in a post later on but for the mean time, I'll leave some links:

[url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/league/stats.html?user_id=57733][u:17e745c08d]Season Stats [/u:17e745c08d][/url]

[url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/league/stats_manager_profiles.html?user_id=57733][u:17e745c08d]Manager Profiles [/u:17e745c08d](season) [/url]

[url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/playoffs/scores.html?user_id=57733][u:17e745c08d]Playoffs[/u:17e745c08d] [/url]

[url=http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/baseball/stratomatic/2005/playoffs/stats_manager_profiles.html?user_id=57733][u:17e745c08d]Playoffs Manager Profiles[/u:17e745c08d] [/url]

Sandy, thanks for the note...who knows, maybe you were the lucky charm :wink:

As always, big shout to Lucky for all his great input 8)
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Postby MARCPELLETIER » Mon May 08, 2006 8:07 pm

Nice stats. Congrats for the championship.

hits tries advance
18 62 43

18 hits in 62 tries: I would take that any day.
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Postby cummings2 » Sun May 14, 2006 8:14 pm

Thnx Lucky 8)

The team was on pace for a better succ. rate with the H&R throughout most of the season but as you said, I'll take those numbers without qualms.

Most of the thoughts to be shared re: H&R have already been shared so there's little to add here, however there is one thing I've been looking at and I think I need the help of some of the guys that know more than I do about stats and numbers:

I am trying to determine the percentage of times each runner on base turned into a run scored. The idea is this, if the Hit and Run is a one run strategy aimed at moving the runner over then the proper use of the strategy would imply that the runners were moved to scoring position more often and supposedly the potential "sacrifice" of the hitter translates into runs, hence the percentage of times a runner scored in re: to the times he got on base should be fairly high, at least that would be the goal.

What I've been doing so far is for each hitter on my lineup to take his total hits minus Home Runs plus walks to get the Times on Base (H-HR+BB= Times on Base) and for Runs scored I take the total runs scored minus Home Runs (RS-HR). With those two numbers I can deduce the % of RS in re: to the ToB.

So with these numbers here's what I've found:

Lineup Vs. RHP (% RS : ToB)

Roberts (42.65%)
DaVanon (32.54%)
Thome (29.44%)
Ichiro (31.54%)
Figgins (35.89%)
Crawford (36.90%)
Castillo (29.57%)
A-Rod (26.53%)
Schneider (25.80%)

To put these numbers in perspective, the % for Roberts leading off is higher than all my other leadoffs batters for the 05 set, with the exception of Pierre in my only Coors experience, in that team Pierre scored 46.21% of the ToB.

Back to this team, I know the lineup was not the most orthodox but it was designed so as to have the right runners trigger the right B rated H&R hitters.

The main trick of the LU was the 6th slot Crawford/7th Castillo, the idea behind it was to test the IBB theory re: clutch. It seems to have payed off in some way, Crawford had a pretty good OBP with several IBBs (5th in the league) and IMO that helped turn A-Rod's production numbers up a bit.

The one thing that this team helped confirm is the importance of speed to trigger the H&R and HAL's tendency to run the play with 1 out.

Individal settings:

Roberts - Don't H&R
DaVanon - H&R More
Thome - Don't H&R
Ichiro - Don't H&R
Figgins - H&R More
Crawford - Don't H&R
Castillo - H&R More
A-Rod - Don't H&R
Schneider - Don't H&R

Manager settings:

Stealing: Conservative
Bunting: Extra Conservative
H&R: Very Aggressive

Due to injuries to both Davanon and Roberts the numbers dipped a bit but, the idea is to have two spots where the H&R is executed more often, the 2 spot and the 7 spot. Followed by SLG capable of driving runs in with sacs (Thome and A-Rod)

BTW, Figgins H&R att. must've been quite low since none of the two players in front of him had the stealing capacities to trigger the play on a more constant basis. This was a bit confirmed through the playoffs when I lost DaVanon in game 1 of the semis after 1 AB all the way through game 6 of the finals. Not 1 H&R att happened through the playoffs then BUT, as soon as Da Vanon came back for game 6 there were the only 2 attempts that show up in the link. However, the make or break element to this team was IMO Keith Foulke - the dominant closer that Lucky pointed out earlier in this thread.

One final observation is about what the nature of the strategy does to the team stats: Production has a tendency to be spread out, as you can see in the team link not one player has more than 100 RS or 100 RBIs but the production up and down is fairly even.

If anyone has a better way to help me calculate the RS:ToB, and could direct me to it, I'd love to get a hold of it.

The next step (team 4) is currently underway (06 set), what I am trying to do with that team is find a way of increasng the success rate of Hits off H&R, my belief is that for this allowing HAL to run with a "normal" setting is the best way. Then, once I find a consistant way of hitting around .300 - .315 off H&R the goal will be to trigger and execute the play at higher rates (1 or more att. per game)
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