THE TALK SHOW
Host: Glenn Guzzo
You can submit your question or insight on any
Strat-O-Matic game to SOMTalkShow@aol.com.
When you do, kindly include your name and town. Other gamers like to see that.
And the display format below works better that way.
Reminder: Send us your “Great Moments in Strat”
– your playing experiences that you just have
to share.
THE FUTURE CAN’T COME SOON ENOUGH
Has Strat
ever considered doing a projection disk for baseball? They could capture
the fantasy owner's market and people like me could play their favorite board
game with the season at hand.
Kevin Hennessy,
A fascinating idea, Kevin, and I think
Strat-O-Matic could do this as well as anyone. When I was a kid I liked to sort
players into their new teams. And Fantasy Leaguers surely would like to see how
SOM projects the upcoming seasons for hundreds of players. I think the main
obstacle is logistics. SOM’s small staff is on a very
tight production schedule year-‘round to put out four board games and five
computer games. After extending themselves for months to meet the demanding
baseball deadline, there is precious little recovery time before football must
be served. Presumably, the projection disk would not take nearly as much time
as the just-completed season. That’s if SOM just sticks with the current
fielding, running and some other “top-of-the-card” ratings, rather than trying
to anticipate the swings in such subjective ratings. But even that could be too
much, given that a projection disk would have to be out no later than March to
interest Fantasy leaguers.
MYSTERIOUS STARS FALL TO EARTH
I was a suscriber to STRAT FAN which was a great magazine. I
haven’t played a lot of Strat, but after finding my
STRAT FAN magazines, I went into the files and pulled out my 33 teams that
Strat-O-Matic sold, and the STRAT FAN cards. I have a deck of player
cards that I can’t quite identify so I would appreciate your help.
I have a set of National and American League
All Stars (apparently) and the team names are National and American. National:
Johnny Bench, Lou Brock, Mike Schmidt, Joe Morgan, Pete Rose, Ralph Kiner, Hack Wilson, Willie Stargell, Enos Slaughter, Willie McCovey,
Bob Gibson and Tom Seaver. American: Nolan Ryan,
Jim Palmer, Harmon Killebrew, Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew and Carl Yastrzewski.
Then I
have a set that are basically the same players with their best records.
Mike Mills
The set of 18 player cards (you list them
all) was in the quickly sold-out October 1992 issue of STRAT FAN. It contained
best-season and career cards for Hall-of-Fame players not in Strat-O-Matic’s then-existing Hall of Fame sets. The career
cards were created by SOM for a newspaper’s fantasy project. STRAT FAN then dug
out the best-season cards for each of those players.
OH, THAT TODD JONES
How does Strat-O-Matic
handle a paradox like Todd Jones, closer for the Detroit Tigers? On the one hand, he should be a reliable
closer – as of this moment he has converted 35 of 39 save opportunities. On the other hand, he has an ERA of 4.47
which sounds quite mediocre.
So what kind of pitcher
will he be in Strat-O-Matic a year from now?
Will he be a reliable closer (reflecting his save percentage) or will he
be a struggling pitcher (reflecting his ERA)?
Will Strat’s closer rating be enough to give
an accurate replay of Todd Jones?
Rooting for all the
Tigers,
Bob Riggs,
Relief pitchers, many of whom are carded
with 60 or fewer innings pitched (Jones has 54 at this writing in
mid-September) have the most volatile statistics because the statistical base
is so small. It gets crazier when a pitcher like Jones plays an important role
on a successful team while having roller-coaster success himself: the bad
outings can be bad enough to distort his whole card into something unreliable
for the role he played on the team.
Let’s look deeper: Realistically, Jones can’t be a dominant
closer because he hasn’t been. Despite having the
In 2005, when Jones saved 40 games with a sparkling 2.10
ERA, he led the majors in Tough Saves – he had all of 6 (only 5 of Mariano
Rivera’s 43 saves were “tough” and only 4 of Billy Wagner’s 38). Jones had 22
“easy” saves and 12 “regular” saves.
Now, on the optimistic side: His save total should qualify Jones
for a 6 closer rating. He has walked only 6 men unintentionally. Expect no
walks on his card. Jones’ next card will yield a lot of hits, but he can keep
most of those runners from getting very far. While he has given up 62 hits in
54 innings, not a single runner has attempted to steal, which should translate
into a nice hold rating. He has a high groundball/flyball
ratio, which could translate into a high number of gbA
chances.
So, Tigers fans, make sure to
bring in Jones to start the inning, rather than risking him allowing inherited
runners to score on the hits he will allow. In stock-team play, he just may get
his saves.
BETTER NEGRO LEAGUES STATS?
Recently the National
Baseball Hall of Fame inducted 17 members of the Negro Leagues. In the process
of determining the qualifications of these players a group, did copious
research on the statistics of the players. The work by this group is the most
extensive statistics work to date and is as accurate as it can get given the
data available. SOM might find it useful to check with the NBHOF to see if they
would share this information.
Mike Martin
I spoke with Hall of Fame Head Librarian Jim
Gates, who has been deeply involved with the work of the Negro Leagues Research
and Authors Group, which worked for five years to improve the quantity and
quality of data.
Alas,
after the most thorough search ever for elusive Negro Leagues stats, familiar
gaps in the data still exist.
From
Gates:
The research team concerned itself only with sanctioned
Negro League games, not exhibitions or unscheduled games. Using mostly box
scores published in 128 newspapers (both the “white” and “black” press), the
researchers found data on 3,000 players.
The data is 1920-54, with anything after 1947 being weak. Apparently,
after Jackie Robinson crossed the color line in Major League Baseball, interest
in the Negro Leagues as a separate entity declined sharply.
The 1920s data will be best. But the researchers faced the
familiar obstacles: No standard reporting systems, no consistency from newspaper
to newspaper or from town to town. For instance, some box scores show who
pitched, but not how much or how they did. Some boxes show no first names where
duplicates (e.g. Johnson) are possible. Some boxes were not published at all.
And the research conceded the scant hope for good data on pre-1920 games (which
involved all or part of the careers of such Negro Leagues greats as Oscar
Charleston, Rube Foster, Pete Hill, Pop Lloyd, Louis Santop,
Ben Taylor and Cristobal Torriente).
“Expect lots of caveats with any published info,” Gates
said. And expect a lives-long effort to supplement and correct the data now in
hand. Hopefully, Gates added, a printed encyclopedia of Negro League stats will
be published in 2007. All box scores may be published. Sales of the
encyclopedia will help offset the costs of the research.
“Ultimately, the data will be available to all in some
fashion,” Gates added. That likely would be online, though that has not
yet been arranged.
CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN
I've noticed that with the
pre-1960 football cards [board game only] there are only six teams per
season. Have you ever considered
producing all 12 teams? Since it costs just $18.75 for six teams, I wouldn't
think it would cost all that much more to produce the other six teams to have
the complete seasons.
Terry Ahner
Your suggestion has been sent to
Strat-O-Matic. It’s really a matter of pricing. Would $30-32 for a 12-team set
sell nearly as well if it was the only option? Would an add-on product of 6-6
and sub-.500 teams get many takers at all? Is it worth the risk to find out? I
don’t know. I faced a similar dilemma at STRAT FAN when considering the 12-team
NHL from 1967-68. I feared that a $35 set – much higher than any card set we
sold – would be too much to expect. For us, two of the three pre-expansion,
complete-league six-team sets at $20 were not an easy sell. Fear won – we never
produced ’67-68. Now that SOM has done so, I have supplemented the game
company’s six teams by using its print disk to print the other six teams on
card stock.
ANOTHER TAKE ON ‘70s BASEBALL
As a
veteran card and dice player (1966 season was my first), I'd like to give my
thoughts on past-season reprints. Regarding the early 1970s, Strat-O-Matic is
assuming that the super-advanced features are the only attraction to those
seasons. For me there’s more to it than
that: extra players. I own the original 1973
set with most of the extra players, but there aren't enough to keep me
interested in a replay. Joe Pepitone, Jim Fregosi with the
Mets, and Pat Dobson of the Braves are some key uncarded
players who would probably be added to a reprint set. That plus the super-advanced
rules would make the card set seem brand new.
I would
like to have the 1951 season as well as 1931.
I'm suprised there isn't more interest in the
latter as it would give the 1927 Yankees a worthy opponent. IMO the ‘31 A's were the best of the three
from 1929 to 1931 even though they were the only non-World Series winner. However, I think the 1971 set will be a big
seller and I hope it will convince STRAT to lean to more early ‘70s sets in the
future.
Sam Gizzi,
Excellent points, Sam. Yes, those 24-man
teams often excluded some hitters with more than 100 at bats and pitchers who
combined to start 10-20 games that would be missed in a replay. The buying
audience also includes those of us who will buy anything SOM produces. We’re
collectors, or people who have to have the latest and best in the hobby we
love. I agree that 1971 gives SOM its best shot at high sales for a ‘70s
update-set – and those sales probably will govern how quickly SOM returns to
the ‘70s for more.
For me,
1951 is a must, because it is a historic season. The Giants-Dodgers playoff is
one of the huge moments in baseball history. And it’s the rookie season for
Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Outside of
The ’31 A’s remain a favorite of many gamers who play the basic-only
Great Teams.
GET THE MONEY UP FRONT
There are
occasional polls done to ask which “old” season gamers would like to see
released next. This leads to the inevitable requests for seasons that aren't
listed in the poll. Or people ask for a certain season and the argument that
SOM couldn't make any money on it surfaces. Why doesn't SOM try something that
is prevalent in the war-game simulation field and offer a pre-ordering system?
This makes the customer put his money where his mouth is. Let's say that SOM
offers to upgrade/reprint the 1972, 1977 and 1979 seasons. The company lets us
know a minimum amount of orders required before they will commit to the project.
Once SOM reaches the “magic” number the cards are printed. I'd appreciate any
comments or thoughts on the subject.
Ed,
Revealing the
“magic” number might communicate more about SOM’s
sales to its competitors than it would like, but this might work without that
disclosure and if the number had to be reached within a specific time frame
(people writing checks would want to have a deadline, too). I suspect that a
question asking gamers to name their seasons would divide the pie too many
ways, and result in no seasons getting enough support. But if SOM announced its
next historic season and also pledged to do Season X after that if enough
gamers replied with their commitments by Date Certain, that would be an
interesting experiment.
Trouble is, SOM has staff and time enough to produce only one season
per year. Since SOM is already committed to doing so, ultimately we’re really
deciding preferences, not a schedule to create additional seasons.
UPDATING GREAT TEAMS
Is Strat open to reprinting the 36-teams-of-the-past-set
in the present day form? I realize there are teams from this set that have been
redone from their past seasons. However, it would be great to
have the ‘62, ‘68, ‘69, ‘70, ‘72, ‘73, ‘74, ‘76 teams to conform with the present day.
Phil S,
I’d rate this one a long shot. The process
of updating Advanced teams to Super Advanced teams is not as demanding as
creating a season from scratch, but it’s much more than a tweak here and there.
This would ask SOM to re-research at least eight seasons in order to produce
about a dozen teams. That’s not very efficient.
BUNTING FOR A BASE HIT
Any
suggestions on how to handle batters attempting to bunt for a base-hit in the
basic C&D game?
First, remember that a player card already
has its bunt singles built in. If you use your imagination, you can credit some
SINGLE* results as bunt singles. But as a strategy option, we have to innovate.
Simplest: Use the basic Squeeze Play
chart. That would yield a .176 batting average. For worse bunters, we could use
the Sacrifice chart, for a .083 average. If we use the player’s bunting rating
on the Advanced side of his card, and also use the Advanced Squeeze Play, an A
bunter would hit .205 on bunts.
If we want higher averages, innovate
further and change some “outcomes” on these charts to hits. But in any event,
if the defense pulls the infield in, I’d sharply reduce the chance for a hit.
STARTING PITCHERS AS RELIEVERS
I’m
playing Strat in a league and we use the super-advanced
rules. I want to know what is the rule
about starting pitcher use in relief if they don't have a relief rating? Are they relief(1)?
Martin L. Quebec,
Pitchers rated only as starters may be used
only as starters, according to SOM rule 10.2. However, the computer game will
allow you to put that pitcher in to relieve without immediate fatigue (assuming
he was rested at the start of the game). And many leagues adopt a playoff rule,
allowing an unused starter to relieve. I have seen these leagues give these
starters a relief(3) rating, because these pitchers
are suited to long relief. And once, all of the starter-relievers in SOM had at
least a (3) rating for relief. In leagues that anticipate such starters to be
used as closers, a (1) could be appropriate.