Lessons Learned

[GARYREININGER]

While I'm not the most seasoned voice of experience by far, I've taken my lumps over time and learned several valuable lessons. One of the most intoxicating/maddening things about strat is that you're never done learning. There is always a new strategy to be planned, a new player to try out, a fun experiment with the opposite of what you normally do. So, I thought I'd pass along some guidelines I've come to value over time...

1. Platoons are your best friend. There is no better way to maximize your lineup and efficiently utilize your budget.

2. Defense up the middle. Even if it costs you runs at the plate, the amount they take away when they're in the field will more than make up for it, with rare exceptions of course; Hanley Ramirez, Chase Utley, et al...

3. Build your roster to your ballpark. While having a star player is always nice, finding a hitter or pitcher with the right bpsi/bphr for half the $$$ will pay huge dividends.

4. Don't ignore clutch ratings. I was guilty of this for a long time. While you can go games at a time between a clutch rating coming up, measured over the season it can make quite a difference. Having a great hitter in the 5 hole is great, but if he has a terrible clutch rating, that can cost you dearly in crunch time.

5. Monitor the other teams in your division closely. If you're a fan of stealing bases, you better check who you're playing next. If you're playing against 3 pitchers with minus holds, or going against yadier molina, then it won't matter how many speed demons you have. Ditto outfielder arms and running settings. Even when you're in the finishing touches of building your own team, take a peek at the division. If one team is heavy on lefty hitters, better get yourself a lefty specialist. Treat it like an actual MLB GM. Your best bet is to gameplan simply for your division.

6. Versatility is golden. Give yourself the flexibility in the lineup and on the bench to adapt to any injury. This has saved my bacon more than I can count.

7. Don't let real-life dictate your moves. Barry Bonds has always been huge for me, and in the strat world I could care less what he did, but you'd be amazed how many times I've seen him floating out there, both in my leagues and others. Remember there is no PR in strat, if he's the best for you then go for it.

8. Come up with a pitching/hitting balance for building your teams. The average split is 50/30 H/P for 80mil leagues, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Once you find a balance that suits you, it will make breaking new card sets in much easier.

9. Last but not least, don't be afraid to throw out every rule you've made from time to time. It's fun to try something new, and at the end of the day that's why so many of us love playing this game...It's FUN!

I hope some of you may have found this useful. Thanks for your time. Oh, and don't forget to tell me everything I omitted/erred on! I can always learn something new.

[voovits]

A few comments on those points:

1. I would agree with the platoon point, but only if I was managing my team myself. I can not rely on HAL to sub out my lefty specialist with my righty specialist if the other team changes pitchers. How many times have you gone up against a lefty pitcher, knock him out early and have a righty come in, leaving your lefty guy in the lineup, not to get a hit for the rest of the game. Yeah, you scored off him early, that's great, but there's the whole rest of the game for them to come back, and many times they do.
On the flip side, if HAL does make the substitution, you're in trouble if you see another lefty pitcher later in the game.
I do agree that often times platoons work, but they are certainly flawed.

2. I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I almost always scour the players come draft time for 1's at SS and 2B (not so much CF) and at least a -1 throwing arm at C. I'll take a 2 if necessary and hesitantly take a 3 if the offense is worth the downgrade, but you'll never see me put a 4 out there willingly.

4. Don't overestimate the value of clutch ratings. Though I prefer a clutch hitter to a non-clutch hitter as well, those "$" rolls don't come up as much as you may think.
I know you pointed out that you could go games at a time between them, so I did a little test in the CDROM game. I set up a 12 team league using the 2006 rosters (most recent one I have) and had the computer draft a 40 man roster for each team. I then had the computer play out an entire 162 game season, then checked the clutch results.
For all 12 teams combined over 162 games per team, there were a grand total of 143 rolls that turned into clutch outs. The most any team had was 22, the least was 5. There were also a grand total of only 43 rolls that turned into clutch hits. The most was 6 by 1 team and several teams had 0. Maybe later I'll set up 6 teams with all positive clutch guys and 6 teams with all negative clutch guys and see the results then, that may be interesting. The point is, as you can see, it's not a very common result. Remember, it's not a measure of how many times a non-clutch player came up in a clutch spot, it's a measure of how many times that non-clutch player rolled a "$" result in a clutch spot.

5. This is kind of an extension of point 1. For that team in your division with a lot of lefty hitters, I don't trust HAL to use that lefty specialist I have on my team properly. Also, I can't trust him NOT to use him against the other teams who are predominately right handed. At least through my experiences, if I check "avoid right handed hitters" I may as well also check either "do not use this pitcher at all ever" or "Totally ignore that option" if such options existed. Those options are so flawed to me that I hardly ever use them. I can't wait for the bullpen upgrade, too bad the mystery card games are not getting them.

6. Good point, but be wary not to spend too much money on the bench, unless you're in a no-DH league.

7. I absolutely love it when someone does not draft a player for personal reasons, makes him available for me.
I am in a real life fantasy baseball league, where there are 2 managers who hate the Yankees so much that they refuse to draft players from that team. Heck, I don't like the Yankees either, but I'll take 'em. Anything to help me win.

3, 8, and 9 are all good points too. (Assuming you mean 70/30 on point 8?)

Overall you make 9 good points that could help new managers be successful.

[LMBombers]

[quote:4660d6c13a="voovits"]3, 8, and 9 are all good points too. (Assuming you mean 70/30 on point 8?)[/quote:4660d6c13a]

He is talking $, not %. 50M on hitting and 30M on pitching in an 80M league.

[voovits]

[quote:be7c284691]He is talking $, not %. 50M on hitting and 30M on pitching in an 80M league.[/quote:be7c284691]

Ahh, I understand. That makes more sense now.

After re-reading, I don't want to make it seem like I'm totally against platoons. That is far from true, I use them too. I have on average 1 platoon per team. I just prefer to look for better alternatives, they just aren't always available.
I just pretty much wanted to point out that there are certainly flaws with using platoons.

[GARYREININGER]

Thanks for the great feedback! You made some excellent points about clutch rating, I've yet to run any simulations on my cd game. As for platoons, I agree with you one hundred percent on HAL's "logic" when it comes to pinch hitting. It can seriously cramp my style since I prefer leagues without the DH.

[joethejet]

Platoons can be useful, but you can't over use them. One of the problems you'll run into with a big platoon team is injury subs. Your Lefty killer now gets to play both ways for 15 games. Oh Boy! :roll: Take a look at pure platoon guys and you'll see that they don't get *that* many ABs versus the wrong side, but they *can* get them at bad times for sure.

As for clutch, it's about 1 in 5 games from your numbers. Playing FTF, it seems a little more often, but that might be wrong. Of course, getting a hit extends an inning and can lead to more runs too. Don't forget that.

Jet
www.angelfire.com/games5/joethejet

[mightyquinnj]

Platoons can be very useful, [b:ad93947ad9]if I was running the team and not HAL[/b:ad93947ad9]. Consider this classic HAL maneuver, non-maneuver:
In a close contest at HOME, my team is ahead 3-2 in the bottom of the 6th with one out when the other team calls for some relief of their lefty starter w/ a righty specialist, one S. Camp (RP, balance 9R) to face my lefty catcher Baker (3R). Advantage mine, and Baker singles to load up the bases. :D At this point HAL is my friend, and thank you HAL, if I hadn't mentioned it before now. However, this is where HAL and I part ways, because next up for me is right handed hitting J.Keppinger (7L) to face the righty 9R in Camp. Not a very good matchup for my team, to say the least, and HAL stays with it!!! Result: inning ending DP. :evil:

The moral of the story: HAL giveth (Baker vs. Camp) and HAL taketh away (Keppinger vs. Camp) Therefore, [b:ad93947ad9]HAL thinks that it is GOD!! [/b:ad93947ad9]
and must be stopped!

But I digress. To be fair and in full disclosure, my team wins the game, eventually, in the 15th inning, 4-3. And, the opposing team did have a lefty in their bullpen to counter any lefty pinch hitter of mine that HAL replaces Keppinger with. However, looking at the possibilities that would have come up if HAL does put in a ph, they are ALL better than what went down.

Another moral to the story: HAL can't be trusted to think like me, or you, nor any baseball or non-baseball deity, that is for sure. Oh, and something that I keep forgetting: It is just a game! And a fantasy game at that. :wink:

[joethejet]

Yeah, not to say that Hal is very good at pulling guys, he will, especially if the setting "avoid" is used, but it does happen. Again, take a look at your platoon guys set to avoid and see how often the face the "bad" side. It's not as often as you fear I would think.

Jet
www.angelfire.com/games5/joethejet

[Valen]

voovits, your analysis of the clutch frequency of occurrance was good and interesting. But there is one factor you did not address. That is the impact the presence of the $ has on whether the hitter in front of said player is intentionally walked. I believe I read on the boards that HAL cares more about the clutch rating of the next hitter than his overall ability when deciding whether to issue an intentional walk.

If true this means having a negative clutch in #5 slot could take the bat out of your #4 slugger more often. It would be interesting to see if you can produce numbers to address this one way or the other.

[gutter huggers]

I would say, a platoon is not a good thing to depend on in the draft.

You need both players, say in the 3-4 million $ range to create an all star position.

To do that, you need both players to be in the top half of their seasons, in the mystery card game, the odds of that are 1 in 4. Not a good bet.

I make up a platoon, once I see a player leaning hard to one side, then look for the other.

I think outside the mystery card card, the ATG games, platoons are the way to go, since you can be certian of the card.