What’s your manager strategy for Stratomatic’s online baseball game? I feel that over the course of a season my team will be more productive if I set most of my managerial settings to normal:
Base running – normal
Base stealing – normal
Relief usage – normal
Bunting – normal
Hit and Run – normal
Intentional Walk
I will set Intentional walk to Conservative. Depending on the series, I might set “IBB less with this pitcher” individual settings for all of my pitchers. This is especially necessary if my opponent is batting a high clutch hitter in front of a superstar. If you don’t have “IBB less with this pitcher” individual settings set, HAL will usually always have your pitcher intentionally walk the high clutch hitter to face the superstar.
Hit and Run
Depending on the situation, I may sometimes turn the “Don’t hit and run” individual settings on for all of my starting lineup. More often than not the hit and run play results in a waste of an at bat.
Setup man/Closer
Back in 2002 when Strat-O-Matic had its ‘super relievers’ I would always draft a ‘super reliever’ and drop him into the setup role and leave the Closer settings empty. Chris Hammond, who pitched 242 innings, for one of my teams was a favorite back in the 2002 season.
Now that the ‘super reliever era’ is gone, I usually always try to land a decent closer within the 3M-6M range. I will usually keep the Setup Man settings empty unless there’s a good matchup with my opponent.
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Nice hints and tips. I don’t play the online game, but these topics come up in my head to head games as well. I have Grant Balfour, Joey Devine, and Joe Nathan as my three high leverage situation pitchers, whether set-up or closer, depending on the situation. It would be hard for me to trust HAL with how I like to use my relievers.
Also, I do like to hit and run when the hit chance is 25% and the miss pitch chance is something like 14% on a low on base guy who hits into a fair number of double plays with a good base stealer on first (e.g., Ryan Freel *15, got the lead with 2-12)…so, in this case I batted Freel ahead of Carlos Ruiz, who was a b hit and run guy with over 30 gba, and hit and ran frequently. I didn’t keep track of whether it worked or not, though…