New Features in Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2026

Most of our new features were suggested to us by game players like you.  If you have a suggestion or feature you would like to have added to Strat-O-Matic Baseball, please e-mail us at support@strat-o-matic.com

LIST OF NEW FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS IN STRAT-O-MATIC BASEBALL 2026
1) Quick Play Improvement – In addition to Quick Playing to the top of a particular inning, you can now choose to Quick Play to the bottom of any inning.

2) Computer Manager Update Dialog Improvement – The Computer Manager dialog has been improved in the following ways:You can now see up to 27 batters or pitchers on the left-side of the screen.  Previously you could see just a handful of players listed, and you needed to constantly scroll to get to the player you wished to change.You can now also see up to 27 games listed on the Starter Schedule, again making things easier (previously only 15 games were being displayed).When a player in the minor leagues was used in a role (such as long reliever or pinch runner) it was hard to read his name on some monitors.  That is because we were using light-blue text on a white background.  We have switched to black letters on a light-blue background, which makes it much easier to read.

3) Filter by BALANCE rating – Sort Players has been improved to allow filtering of players by Balance Rating.  This will allow you to identify players that are better vs. lefties or righties.  That will come in handy when trying to assemble a balanced draft team.   To use this feature you enter in the “From BAL” and the “To BAL” and only batters and/or pitchers whose balance rating falls into that range will be displayed.  For example, say that you are looking to add a batter to your bench who is a “lefty killer”.  In that case you might set the “From BAL” to “9L” and the “To BAL” to “4L” so that only batters who are much better against lefty pitchers will be displayed in the free agent pool.

4) Undo Last Play Improvement – In many circumstances the Undo Last Play feature now allows you to delete only the substitutions (and not the preceding play).  Optionally you will also be able to delete the preceding play.  However, due to the way the game code is structured this capability will not be available in certain circumstances, such as when an injury occurs on the play. Also, if multiple substitutions have been made, they will be batched together and deleted as a group (but even in that case you won’ t be forced to delete the previous play).

5) Pre-Game Notes – If you are using Automatic Transactions the pre-game Game Notes report now sorts the list of the current day’s transactions by team.  This will group all of a team’s transactions together, making it easier to see the roster changes that each team has made.

6) Reports – The size and positioning of reports is now saved.  Your preferred size and positioning is automatically used when you open that same report type the next time.  This will be especially handy if you are using non-default font settings, as that previously might have required re-adjusting the size of the report every time you opened it.  Customized size and positioning is available for the following reports:Team ReportsLeague ReportsTeam Stats ReportsLeague Stats ReportsPlayer Stats Report

7) Computer Manager – The Computer Manager has been changed to better constrain excessive pitch counts from being accumulated by starting pitchers.  Additional logic has been added at the start of innings that checks if the starter is beginning to or likely to experience fatigue due to exceeding his target pitch-count, and if so he will be replaced by a reliever.  Note that if you have manually assigned Remove if Pitch Count Exceeds for the starting pitcher then that will be used instead of his target pitch count when making this determination.  

8) Automatic Free Agent Transactions – The Automatic Transactions system now supports claiming and releasing players from the free-agent pool.  The addition of free agent transactions allows for more flexibility when constructing the .TRN files for modern seasons, which have dramatically many more transactions than in previous seasons.

9) Awards Voting Report – The League Stats Awards Voting report has been improved so that Designated Hitters are now included in the All-Star Voting and Silver-Slugger award sections.

10) Player Information Area – The player information area located at the bottom of the main game screen and other dialogs was only showing the player’s first initial and last name.  It now shows the player’s first and last name.  

11) Ballpark Photos
SPECIAL BALLPARK BONUS – BRISTOL MOTOR SPEEDWAY!
On August 2, 2025 MLB held the MLB Speedway Classic, a specialty game between the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds.  The game was played in the infield of Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee.    
The inclement weather and physical layout of the temporary field made photography difficult, but we are including some pictures for your use.

Here is a list of the new pictures included with this year’s game:14 new ballpark pictures – Chicago NL (day), Cincinnati-Bristol (day), Cleveland (day and night), Detroit (day and night), Milwaukee (day and night), San Diego (day and night), Sacramento (day and night), Tampa Bay Steinbrenner Field (day and night)32 new ballpark entry pictures – Chicago NL: 3, Cincinnati-Bristol: 1, Cleveland: 7, Detroit: 6, Milwaukee: 7, San Diego: 2, Sacramento: 2, Tampa Bay Steinbrenner Field:4

12)Play-By-Play Thanks to the amazing efforts of Ren Petrie, there are now more than 171,000 hand-crafted player nickname play-by-play accounts that ship with the game.    The game also includes over 34,000 hand-crafted lines of play-by-play that describe play in amazing detail and with great situational specificity.   All 30 team play-by-play files have been edited and updated for the 2025 season.Trivia questions and answers have been refreshed and expanded.Errors in the play-by-play text that have been reported have been cleaned up. 

These play-by-play improvements have been provided by Ren Petrie, one of our most loyal contributors.  For more than two decades Ren has been writing new play-by-play accounts making the game ever-more realistic and enjoyable!

13) New Seasons – Support for the following new rosters has been added:2025 Season2026 Daily Data Season1952 (Deluxe Super-Advanced) Season1985 (Deluxe Super-Advanced) Season1939 Negro League SeasonBaseball Heroes 4Supplemental Heroes & StarsHall of Fame 2026 Rosters [Jeff Kent, Carlos Beltran and Andruw Jones]2025 Career Historical Rosters

14) Bugs FixedInstall Rosters – The 1999 As-Played, 2020, 2022 and 2023 seasons were incorrectly listed as including “*PHC*” (pitcher hitting cards) in the Install Rosters function.Box Score Bug – If there were more than 26 total substitutions in a game then special characters were being used to designate the substitution notes on the box score.  However, this caused a problem with the formatting, resulting in some information overflowing to another line.  This has been changed so that after exhausting capital letters “A” through “Z” additional notes will begin with lowercase “a”.Delete Last Play – Quick Playing to the end of a game and then deleting the last play would sometimes cause the game to get stuck in a loop.Newspaper Style Recap – When reporting on actual transactions for the day, if there was an invalid transaction from a .TRN file could cause portions of this report to either not print or to display garbled data.Pinch Hitting – Under rare circumstances from the 9th inning on with a pitcher at-bat, the offense trailing, and with available pinch-hitters on the bench the computer manager was not checking for a pinch-hitter and thus the pitcher batted.Daily Data WAR Ratings – The player WAR ratings for Daily Data seasons was not being computed properly.

15) Roster Corrections and Improvements
The Roster Corrections and Improvements Team brings you these upgraded rosters:
Hall-of-Fame: Cristobal Torriente’s WAR was incorrect.
LACStr: 2025LC Latino & Caribbean: Adds 26 batters & 11 pitchers; removes (remade for Baseball Heroes 4) Edgardo Alfonso, Francisco Cordero, Guillermo & Roberto Hernandez; removes the US born Adrian Gonzalez; VZC Celestino Lopez (was Jose*)
CubanStr: Adds VCB Mike Cuellar; CIB Cheito Rodriguez (was Chieto)
1884-1892: Edited various non-default card results
1884 KCU Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1890 PIN Removed Bill Hutchinson B from PIN
1891 CHN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1892 CHN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1893 CHN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1894 CHN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1895 CHN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson)
1897 SLN Bill Hutchison (was Hutchinson
1905U: Updated TRN files, and various edits made for player positions and player injury ratings. BRN Harry McIntire’s batting card added from PH league to NL
1906WS: Adds TRN file
1906G PHG Edward Wilson 25 GS (was 24)
1908U: Corrected Sammy Strang’s (NYN) SLG%
1910U: Minor TRN edit
1910G SLG Joe Hewitt s/b *2-6;9/ (was *9/)
1911G ING Robert Higbee (was W.), Jack Sutton (was Mr.), Andrew Williams (was String Bean); PHG Keenan Addison (was K.), Benjamin Reese LHP (was Charles, R)
1911U: Corrected Frank Chance’s (CHN) injury rating
1913G Adds the Steal letter ratings
1914/1914U: Corrected card for Dave Robertson (NYN)
1916G NLG Mike Herrera (was Ramon); SGG Andrew Williams (was String Bean)
1916G 98 George Dandy LHB (was R)
1919G DYG Andrew Williams (was String Bean); NLG Six Bits Harris (was Mr.)
1920U: Corrected George Burns’ (NYN) injury rating
1924G ACG Professor Lockhart LHP (was R); BIG Ruben Jones (was Reuben), Eagle Juran LHP (was R); HBG Elmer Wicks (was E. Weeks); SLG Charlie Watts (was Eddie); WAG Andrew Williams (was String Bean)
1927G BIG Ruben Jones (was Reuben)
1927U: Corrected Sam Rice (WAA) to ‘W’ power vs LHP. Also, a minor edit to TRN file
1928G CHG Granville Haley (was Red), Ruben Jones (was Reuben), Mitchell Murray (was Mitch); CSG Mike Herrera (was Ramon); CTG Charlie Wooldridge (was Charley Wouldridge); DEG Charlie Watts (was Eddie); KCG Cyclone Cooper (was Army)
1932G 98 Wilbur Pritchett (was Wilbert)
1933G CHG Granville Haley (was Red); PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L)
1934G CRG Ruben Jones (was Reuben); PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L)
1935G NDG Ted Bond RHB (was L), Charlie Jemison (was Mr. Jamison), Sloppy Lindsay 1B e10 (was e0); PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L)
1936G PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L)
1937G BEG Johnny Reed (was John); BIG Spencer Davis (was Babe), Henry Hadley LHB (was Red, R), Sylvester Owens (was Dewitt); CHG Ted Bond RHB (was L), Eulyn Hale (was Red); CRG Sonny Harris SHB (was R); NYG Joe Royal (was Royall); PIG Scottie Dunklin (was Escotta Dunkin); PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L), Willie Nixon (was Mr.)
1937U: Corrected TRN line for Tom Baker
1938G ATG Babe Davis (was William), Spencer Davis (was Babe), Scottie Dunklin (was Escotto Duncan), Henry Hadley (was Red Haley); BIG Sylvester Owens (was Dewitt), Karl Smith (was Carl); CHG Billy Horne LHB (was R); HOG James Hamilton (was Johnny); ING Sam Jethroe SHB (was Mr., R); JAG Smoky Owens RHB/RHP (was Smokey, L), Joe Royal (was Royall); NWG Ray Robinson LHP (was R); PSG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L); WSG Bubby Sadler (was Saddler)
1940G MEG Babe Davis (was William); TIG Lefty Johnson (was Clark)
1940/1940U: Corrected Bill Butland’s (BOA) throwing arm
1941: Corrected Lonny Frey’s (CIN) batting stance
1941U: Corrected Lonny Frey’s (CIN) batting stance, added missing closer ratings, and minor TRN edits
1941G NWG Leaman Johnson RHB (was L); NYG Spencer Davis (was Babe); Adds the Steal letter ratings
1942/1942U: Corrected Bill Butland’s (BOA) throwing arm
1943G CBG Billy Horne LHB (was R), John Johnson LHB (was R); ICG Harry Jeffries (was Mr.); PSG Jim Hill LHP (was R)
1944G CBG Billy Horne LHB (was R), Sheron Williams (was Sharon); CHG Rocky Ellis RHP (was L); HOG John Johnson LHB (was R); NYG Joe Royal (was Royall)
1945G CBG Billy Horne LHB (was R); HOG Roy Welmaker (was Wellmaker); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S); KCG Nate Moreland RHP (was L); NYG John Johnson LHB (was R)
1946G BIG James Reynolds SHB (was R); CBG Webbo Clarke (was Vibert), Billy Horne LHB (was R), Eddie Klop LHP (was R); CHG James Tolbert (was Talbert); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S); NYG Percy Forrest (was Forest)
1946/1946U: Corrected Bill Butland’s (BOA) throwing arm
1947G BEG Bill Byrd SHB (was R); CBG Webbo Clarke (was Vibert), Sheron Williams (was Sharon); CHG Army Rhodes (was Harry), James Tolbert (was Talbert); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S); MEG Hosea Allen (was Hoses); PSG Ray Robinson LHP (was R)
1948G CBG Webbo Clarke (was Vibert), Eddie Johnson (was Mr.); CHG Army Rhodes (was Harry), James Tolbert (was Talbert), Sheron Williams (was Sharon); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S); NSG Acie Griggs (was Mr.); NWG Skinner Belfield (was Mr. Skinner), Max Manning RHB (was L); NYG John Johnson LHB (was R)
1948U: Minor edit to TRN file, added missing Pitcher’s Hitting league
1949G BIG Herman Watts (was Dick); CBG Webbo Clarke (was Vibert); CHG James Tolbert (was Talbert); HUG Edward Brooks (was Eddie), Max Manning RHB (was L); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S)
1950G CHG James Tolbert (was Talbert); ICG Reinaldo Drake LHB (was Verdes, S)
1951/1951U: Corrected Artie Wilson’s (NYN) batting stance
1951WS: Adds TRN file; corrected Artie Wilson’s (NYN) batting stance
1954U: Corrected ballpark ratings for CIN, batting stance for Chet Nichols (MIL), stats and card for Bill Greason (SLN), and spelling for Vito Valentinetti (CHA). Minor edits to TRN file and updated CM settings for low usage players
1955U: Removed extraneous Bob Hooper card from CLA
1960U: Edited Steve Demeter’s (CLA) 3B e-rating
1962U: Updated CM settings for PIN
1964U: Added RF and CF ratings to Willie Smith (LAA)
1966U: Edited Mel Queen’s (CIN) pitching card running rating
1969U: Corrected card for Jim Hicks (CAA)
1971U: Card edits and power rating change made for Mike Jorgensen (NYN)
1974U: Added LF rating to Juan Beniquez (LAA) and RF rating to George Theodore (NYN). Corrected T-ratings for various low usage catchers.
1975U: Edited e-ratings for multiple players
1980U: Edited LF rating for Warren Cromartie (MON)
1987U: Corrected Mike Kinnunen’s (BAA) throwing arm
1991U: Corrected steal ratings for Jeff Huson (TEA) and edit to David Segui’s (BAA) card
1992U/1992WS: Edited e-rating for Pedro Borbon (ATN)
1994U: Edited name for Tim Van Egmond (BOA)
1995U: Edited name for Tim Van Egmond (BOA)
1996U: Edited name for Tim Van Egmond (MLA) and Ben Van Ryn (CAA)
1997AP: Corrected LUP file for Gerami Gonzalez
1998U: Edited name for Ben Van Ryn (SDN, TOA). Corrected run ratings for various pitchers
1998WS: Corrected run ratings for Kevin Brown (SDN) and Sterling Hitchcock (SDN)
1999AP: Added ’99’ Pitcher Hitting league
1999U: Edited TRN file and corrected Jason Bere’s (MLN) hitting card rating
2001/2001AP: Corrected Paxton Crawford’s (BOA) stat line
2002AP/2002U: Minor TRN edits
2006AP/2006U: Corrected Ichiro’s (SEA) card to remove gbA readings and minor TRN edits
2007/2007AP/2007U: Removed extraneous space after Jose Cruz’s (SDN) name
2008U: Corrected double-header in schedule file
2015U: Corrected run ratings for various pitchers
2020AP/2020U: Added missing MLN/SLN to schedule
2002AP/2002U: Minor TRN edits
2024U: Added a Multi-Card Version, minor TRN edits