Life, the Universe, and Strat-O-Matic
Volume I, Number 6
May 23, 2001
Can you remember back when Strat-O-Matic
cards didn’t have all those symbols next to the numbers? You can? Then you’ve
been playing this game way too long. Just kidding. But, until the mid-‘80’s,
cards didn’t feature little annoying symbols like triangles and horseshoes. All
they had were hits and outs. If someone slugged 35 homers in a season, he’d
probably have a solid HOMERUN on a 5, and maybe a HR 1-13 on a 6, or some such
thing. Nowadays, since the invent of the ballpark single and ballpark homerun,
that same card might have a solid HOMERUN on a 4, a HR 1-6 on a 5 and a HR 1-13
on a 10….except, the 10 will have a black diamond next to it. As will
the 11 and 12 in that same column. What does this mean? Well, if you roll 1-10,
instead of getting a HR on a split chance of 1-13, you might get it 1-15 if you
play in Texas, or 1-6 if you play in San Francisco.*
The ballpark numbers are supposed
to reflect the home stadium, average number of homeruns hit in that park over
the last three years, and number of homeruns that individual hit during the
season. Ever look closely at a Vinny Castilla card during his tenure in
Colorado? If you play with BP hit chances, you probably notice he rarely had
much straight HR power (actual HR’s on his card), a great portion of it coming
from BP HR chances instead. On the other hand, if you looked at his card
ignoring the diamonds, there were several solid and partial HR chances right on
the card.* So, if you played in a draft league, as I’m pretty sure a majority
of Strat-O players do in one form or another, Castilla would never produce his
actual numbers if you played him a stadium like the Astrodome. Annoying, ain’t
it? For this reason, one should always try to select or design a ballpark that
suits his team. And remember, not only do hitters have BP singles and BP HR’s,
but so do pitchers.
* Please note, these are arbitrary
figures, so don’t bombast me if they are not accurate.
I can remember back to the
mid-‘90’s when I had good hitters with decent power on my team, but never had
an all-slugging lineup. Of course, back then you didn’t have teams with several
40 HR guys on them. I put up good numbers with the likes of Piazza, Olerud and
Ventura in the lineup. But, there were a couple guys in my league who seemed to
corner the market on heavy hitters. They always fielded team featuring the
likes of Canseco, Bonds, Matt Williams, Mo Vaughn, Salmon, Castilla, McGriff
and on and on. In this league, we design our own BP numbers each season. Upon
realizing their accumulation of long ball hitters, they experimented with BP HR
chances of 1-16, 1-18, and eventually 1-20. There was nothing more annoying
than playing their parks only to see Mariano Rivera, who only surrendered four
HR in 80 IP give up four in a four-game series. Conversely, one member of the
league, who always felt he missed too many BP chances no matter what the
numbers, changed his BP to automatic outs whenever a BP single or HR was
rolled. What a pain.
I have generally kept a moderate BP
myself, originally built as single 1-8, HR 1-11, modifying it slightly each
year to reflect increased batting average or HR in the lineup. However, a
couple years ago I fielded a team including: Sosa’s 66 HR card, Piazza, Jaha,
Jay Bell, Devon White, and several other players with 25-40 HR power. Since I
like stats, and I had horrible pitching which would keep me out of playoff
contention, I said what the hey, and made my HR 1-20 that year. I finished with
one of the worst records (thanks to no pitching) but slugged 350 HR’s, give or
take a few. I had so much fun, I kept the BP HR the same last year when my
lineup included: Piazza, Shawn Green, Juan Gonzalez, Carl Everett, Bell,
Delgado, and Galarraga. Once again I slugged in excess of 350 HR, and since I
actually had pitching (Millwood, Benson, Hampton, Rosado, Rivera to name a
few), I made it to the finals.
This year, my team’s power has
dropped a bit, as it has around our league as a whole. Only one team has really
maintained a ferocious lineup. Several of them (including mine) have some
potent bats in the lineup still, but for every 40 HR power guy in the lineup,
they have a batter who will be lucky to hit near 14 HR. So, to protect my
outfielders from straining their necks watching my pitchers surrender the long
ball, I have lowered the HR this year to 1-14, still giving Delgado, Piazza and
Galarraga a good chance to slug their hearts out, but robbing the likes of
Manny Ramirez and Barry Bonds of the occasional dinger. I’m sure I’ll be
kicking myself in some games when Delgado rolls a 15 when he could have tied
the game in the bottom of the eighth had it only been a solid HR on that 1-3
roll, but I figure I’m sure to keep from losing a few games that way too.
Besides, Jeff Cirillo, Barry Larkin and Adrian Brown, three of my mainstays
this year, aren’t exactly covered in black diamonds. I’ve even lowered my
single to 1-8 to further protect my pitchers from giving up those !@#$%&
singles to some .260 hitting catcher who has only one solid hit on his card.
If we had actual fans coming to the
games, they might be disappointed at the higher grass and pushed-back fences,
but, hey, we’re here to win ballgames, not just entertain.
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