Go to Strat-O-Matic Baseball: 2008 season Rankings and sort by winning percentage. Keep Scrolling down the list until you find a manager with at least 10 teams. At the time of this writing, one manager has a .573 winning percentage! Of the 10 teams, I found 5 seasons where he won at least 94 games 4 out of 5 times. One team won 108 games!
I thought it would be interesting to analyze these teams to see what kind of formula this manager has put together. These teams played in primarily pitcher parks and Fenway Park was a favorite.
Batting
The one thing that stood out was the team on base percentage. Two teams had a .380 OBP. Of the five teams, the lowest team OBP was .358. The average slugging percentage was .446.
So far, Milton Bradley at DH and Mike Fontenot at 2B have been favorites. Both of these players have been on every single team. Pablo Sandoval is used at 1B and Brian McCann is the catcher. All outfielders have excellent OBP percentage and/or high double chances. Matt Holliday or Ryan Spilborghs play in left field, Nyler Morgan in Center field, and Brian Giles in right field. This appears to make a pretty solid lineup so far. The only position left is shortstop and no player has really been a fixture here. Orlando Cabrera has been used a couple times.
Bench
Luis Rodriguez was found on every team. He can play SS, 2B, 1B, and 3B. He has 28 single chances against right-handed pitchers and also has a good OBP against right handers. Against left handed pitchers Blake Dewitt and Jeff Keppinger were taken most of the time. Milton Bradley has an injury on a 3 so any of these bench guys can fill in for Bradley at DH.
Pitching
For this manager, only one team had a * (Needs only 3 days of rest between starts.) starting rotation. All of the other teams used non * starting pitchers. For an $80M salary cap, an average of $26.38M was used for these pitching staffs.
For the starting rotation the following pitchers were used on a total of 5 teams:
David Bush
Scott Kazmir
Randy Johnson
John Lannan
With the exception of Harden being drafted a couple times, the highest paid SP was always usually around the 3.5M-3.7M range.
For the bullpen, Dan Giese was the setup man four times and Hong-Chih Kuo was on the team three times. Both of these pitchers have a relief endurance of R3. If you browse the Strat-O-Matic 2008 card-set these two pitchers are probably the only quality non-starting relievers that have an R3 rating. Having an R3 reliever in your pitching staff appears to be essential for success.
For the closer Bobby Jenks was primarily taken. He’s affordable at $3.55M and has a C6 rating.
For pitching, the strategy appears to be to use a starting rotation of non * pitchers with endurance ratings of S6 or lower and then have a setup man with an R3 rating pitch around 200-250 innings in relief. A closer with a C5 or C6 closer rating is also a prerequisite for success.
Photo by: Scott Ableman
Here are a few baserunning tips to think about when deciding on a lineup.
1. Think more aggressive against a quality starting pitchers. Taking more baserunning chances against guys like Tim Lincecum makes perfect sense. There usually aren’t very many baserunning opportunities against these pitchers so you need to make the most out of these chances.
2. Be less aggressive on the base paths against pitchers like Nick Blackburn. These pitcher cards allow a high number of singles and other on-base chances which means you’ll have an ample amount of scoring chances.
3. Be aware of the home field advantage max rule. When you are playing on the road you may lose some rolls due to the home field advantage rule so you may want to run a little more aggressively.
Earlier, I wrote about using the Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online: All-Time Records to help with player selection. Studying the team records section (Team 80) can help in determining what makes a successful team.
First, take a look at the Most Wins section. Looks like you might need to go extreme when deciding on a park to play. Two teams chose hitter parks and three teams went for pitcher parks.
You probably can’t really determine what makes a winning team by going through these other categories. The leaders under Team Errors – Fewest, however, showed quite a bit of success. These teams averaged 88 wins.
Defense
Looking back in the Most Wins section, it looks like you must have at least 3 or 4 starting 1’s in your lineups. These record holding teams averaged 4.5 starting ‘1′ position players. A team called The Wrong Stuff 441 had 8 1’s in their starting lineup!
All teams have a ‘1′ at second base. This is no surprise as there appears to be plenty ‘1’s in the player set. At short stop, however, there’s only 10 players with a ‘1′ range so you will see more 2’s being used at shortstop. The bottom line is that you need good defense up the middle. No 3’s or 4’s.
Hitting
In outfield, you will see that Frank Robinson was used a couple times. It’s quite a solid card. He hits for power, has good OBP, has speed.
Tony Gwynn, Tris Speaker, and Bobby Bonds also appear on at least 2 teams.
Pitching
These top $80 million dollar salary teams averaged about 24M for their pitching staffs.
Of the 6 teams, there were only 5 pitchers over $5M. 3 out of the 6 teams didn’t have a pitcher over 5M. Using a staff with pitchers who can pitch on 3 days rest is the way to go. John Clarkson was picked up twice as well as Fred Norman.
It looks like the key to winning is to not spend much on relief pitching. Of the 6 teams, there’s not one relief pitcher over 4M. I see Ron Perranoski appearing a couple times. Firpo Marberry had success a couple times.
Griffith Stadium
I was browsing the ballparks for the ATG4 player set and Griffith Stadium ‘41 caught my eye. The is the only ballpark with zero ballpark home runs from both sides. I decided to browse the pitchers from this set and came up with 9 pitchers that may fit well in a ballpark such as Griffth Stadium:
1. John Cerutti $1.23M (BP – 5 vs L, 6 vs R)
I couldn’t find any pitcher under 1M worth considering. John Cerutti at $1.54 was the first bargain found.
2. Floyd Bannister $1.54M (BP – 6 vs L, 5 vs R)
Cerutti’s card may be a little better than Bannister but Bannister only needs 3 days rest between starts.
3. Fred Norman $1.76M (BP – 7 vs L, 4 vs R)
This reverse lefty may be worth considering but he does allow quite a bit of triples against left-handed batters.
4. Jim Merritt $2.27M (BP – 0 vs L, 8 vs R)
I’m wondering how often this pitcher is chosen. Looks like a good card. He has 91% out chances against left-handed batters. 8 ballpark diamonds from the right side ideal for a pitcher’s park.
5. Pedro Ramos $2.33M (BP – 7 vs L, 3 vs R)
He was 11-20 in 1961 with Minnesota. I wonder how he would fare in Griffith Stadium.
6. Bruce Hurst $2.41M (BP – 8 vs L, 1 vs R)
Here’s another reverse lefty. His low double and triple chances are excellent.
7. Ed Whitson $2.89M (BP – 3 vs L, 8 vs R)
He can work on only 3 days rest. Doesn’t give up and singles against- right handed batters but all other chances are extra base hits.
8. Mike Scott $3.2M (BP – 0 vs L, 8 vs R)
This reverse righty must be hard to get. 81% out chances against left-handed batters. Most of his safe chances are walks which is something to look for in a starting pitcher.
9. Tom Browning $3.39M (BP – 4 vs L, 3 vs R)
Looks like a decent card. He has low bk and wp numbers and a -2 hold.
