You would start out with a set of 25 randomized bronze players along with a (bronze valued) ballpark.  As an example, here’s a list of players you might start out with:

Ballpark
McAfee Coliseum

Lineup
Travis Buck C 2.48M
Ross Gload 1B .78M
Jeff Baker 2B 2.13M
Jose Bautista 3B 1.34M
Bobby Crosby SS 1.23M
Clete Thomas LF 2.03M
Willie Bloomquist CF 1.01M
Eric Hinkse RF 2.68M
Brian Barton DH .67M

Bench
Paul Lo Duca C .50M
Julio Lugo SS .50M
Jose Vidro 1B .50M
Travis Hafner DH .50M
Omar Vizquel SS .50M

Pitchers
John Lannan SP 2.29M
Nick Blackburn SP 1.88M
Aaron Harang SP .81M
Brett Tomko SP .55M
Zach Duke SP .50M

Francisco Rodriguez CP 2.66M
Juan Cruz RP .85M
Jamey Wright RP .59M
David Aardsma RP .50M
Jason Grilli RP 1.71M
Jack Cassel RP .50M

From a quick glance, this team (worth about 30M) appears to be pretty well balanced but there’s a chance you might end up with a team that is short on left-handed batters or you might end up with an all lefty starting rotation for instance.  It’s all random to begin with so it would be a nice challenge to be able to rebuild and optimize your team.

Earning Coins
You would start out with zero coins but you can earn coins through your performance on the field.  Let’s say you win a game you might earn 200 coins.  Hit a home run or pitch a shutout and your team would earn bonus coins.  You could start out by playing with your bronze team for the first 20 or so games and this would allow you to earn enough coins to buy new cards from the auction block or buy new packs.

Contract Cards
Each card would have a contract of a certain number of games.  Let’s say each card starts with a 20 game contract.  Before the contract expires you must decide if you want to extend the contract (with a contract card) or allow the contract expire and buy another player from the auction house.  Contract cards would be valuable, especially when it comes to keeping gold-level talent on your team.  There would also be injury cards you could use to speed up the healing process of your injured players.

Team Chemistry
I’m not sure if this would work in Strat-O-Matic’s current online engine but in Madden Ultimate Team there’s a chemistry feature that plays a large factor on your team’s performance.  If you are able to collect cards with players from the same pro and college team you get an on-field performance boost.  In  Strat-O-Matic perhaps each batter on the team could get a minor increase in home run chances, for example.

Admittedly, most Strat-O-Matic players won’t particularly like the idea of playing in a league with duplicate players involved but I think the fun factor of a Strat-O-Matic Ultimate team would outweigh any of these concerns.

For more information about Madden Ultimate Team visit Madden Online Tips.

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.

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.

One of the cool things about playing the Strat-O-Matic Online baseball simulation game is you get to decide, as a manager, when you want to start a real-life journeyman over a real-life All-Star.  What you know about these players in real life doesn’t matter.  You don’t need to consider how old they are and you know they won’t get better or worse over time because their true talent levels are already laid out on the player cards.  It’s all about probability.

I was able to find some match ups where my .50 cent pitcher out performed the opponents multi-million dollar starting pitcher.  I’m sure I would have found a lot more of these matchups but TSN had to remove some box scores from 2001-2005 because of space issues.

1969 Season: Ken Brett (.50M) vs Dave Boswell (6.92M)

Ken Brett blanks Cats, 2-0

Ken Brett pitched a complete game shutout despite allowing 6 walks.  Brett ended up 1-4 for the season but had a lot of no decisions.  He pitched well for me.  He ended up with a 3.02 ERA in 12 starts.

2003 Season:  Paul Abbott (.50M) vs Tim Hudson (8.87M)

Holey Sox beat Bosox 10-3

I found a few box scores from the 2003 season.  In this game, Hudson got rocked in the 2nd inning as my team scored 5 runs with 5 if the 6 hits being singles.  Abbott was 12-4 after this game but ended up with a 13-9 record.

2003 Season:  Paul Abbott (.50M) vs Barry Zito (7.13M)

Holey Sox blow out Brunswick Bosox, 12-0

Abbott went 7 strong scoreless innings striking out 6 batters and walking 1.

Lefty killer, Edgar Renteria, blasted a home run in the bottom of the third inning.  Three batters were walked after that which led to three other runs in the inning.

2007 Season: Kevin Slowey (.50M) vs Fausto Carmona (7.00M)

Kevin Slowey shuts out Panthers, 10-0

Kevin Slowey pitched a complete game shutout with 9 strikeouts in AT&T Park while Fausto Carmona went 8 2/3 innings allowing 5 earned runs.

6 other Slowey vs ‘Goliath’ matchups:

Another match up against Fausto Carmona (7.ooM)

Javier Vazquez (5.44M) charged with the loss

Cole Hamels (4.96M) loses pitching duel

Matt Cain (4.75M) is the losing pitcher

Javier Vazquez (5.44M) absorbs another loss

A.J. Burnett suffers the loss

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.

If you look at my profile (SOM) you’ll notice that I have rarely played in any All-Time Greats leagues.  I prefer playing in 200x leagues where I can simulate the outcome with the CD-Rom game.  I still enjoy browsing the ATG card sets every once in a while, however.  ATG IV was released a while ago and I haven’t really studied the cards until now.

While browsing the set I was wondering how I could build a competitive team without having any ATG4 experience.  Then, I remembered that official records for ATG leagues are kept by Mighty Moose, Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online’s official record keeper.  For newbies, this data can be quite valuable for selecting a new team.

Batting

Take a look at At Bats and Hits leaders.  You’ll see George Sisler a few times.  Now, take a look at his card.  .407 batting average, a 1 at 1B, AA base stealing, with 1-17 speed.

Under the Doubles section you’ll notice Bob Meusel listed in the top 2.  He hits 15% of his doubles against lefties and 9% against righties.  He could be a good pick for a pitcher’s park.  He has a ‘-5′ throwing arm is a 1 in the outfield.

Ralph Kiner is dominating the leader board in Home Runs.  Look how many home run chances he has on his card.  It would be nice to have him on any team.  I wonder how hard it is to grab him.

Bobby Bonds and Jose Canseco are the only ones listed as Strikeout leaders.  I would probably avoid these two.

Pitching

You see Pete Alexander listed all over the leader boards.  I’d like to see if there’s been a team with Alexander that had a losing record.  This guy only allows singles on his card.

Dick Radatz shows up twice under the Relief ERA leaders.  When deciding on relief pitchers for your team, make a note of his best results.  The higher the better.  Anything over 40 is good.  Radatz is 44 against lefties and 51 against righties. Also check out the leaders under opponents batting average.  Radatz is listed twice there as well.

You’ll find Bruce Sutter and Dennis Eckersley listed the most times under Relief WHIP.  I would probably prefer Eckersley ($4.71M) over Sutter($5.19M) because I like Eck’s 66 best results against righties.  Also, Sutter has a high wild pitch count (wp-20).

I’m not sure if the Games Finished leader board will help us decide on a pitcher but if Wilcy Moore is the ‘all-time leader’ he has to be popular.  He’s only $.3.5M.  Wait a minute.  Take a look at his relief endurance – r5.  Now I see why he has the all-time record in games finished.  I would have to say that I must go after this pitcher.

Noodles Hahn ($7.02M) gives up a lot of hits but with a name like that it would be neat to have him on my team.

Juan Marichal shows up a quite a few times under Home Runs allowed.  If you are in a pitcher park I suppose he might be a good addition.

J.R. Richard is dominating the leaderboard in Strikeouts.  Also check out the leaders for Strikes Per 9 Innings.  He has 49 strikeout chances against righties.  He is definitely worth considering as one of your starting pitchers.

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.

With Dapper’s free Dapp Factory , you can create a feed out of any site! I went ahead and tried this with the statistics page of my current SportingNews Stratomatic online team. The results appear to update instantly after scores at SportingNews come in. To build the feed I sorted the stats to get the top home run hitters and then went on over to Dapper.net to create my RSS feed. To have the look & feel more appealing, I changed the feed into a Google Gadget. There are a few glitches so it can take a bit of tinkering to get the output that you want. If your site requires a login you will need to use it for your ‘Dapp’ but if you want to go back and edit your ‘Dapp’ the login doesn’t seem to work so you need to create an entirely new ‘Dapp’ if you want to make a change. I also found that Dapper won’t ,at times, give you the correct column order. You may have an RSS feed which lists the value first and then the player’s name afterwards, for instance. Despite these minor drawbacks, Dapper is very cool and simple!

1.  Defense up the middle is key.  Even if it costs runs at the plate, the defense will more than make up for it.  I almost always try to have a ‘1′ or ‘2′ at SS and 2B.  If there are any 1’s available that are under 3-4M I’d seriously consider grabbing them.

2.  Platoons, if used moderately, can be a better way to maximize your lineup and efficently utilize your budget.  Make sure you aren’t using too many platoons because when a reliever comes in your batting order may suffer.

3. Build your roster to your ballpark. While having a star player is beneficial, finding a hitter or pitcher with the right BPSI/BPHR for half the money could pay huge dividends.

4.  When building a team, do not ignore clutch ratings, GBDP chances, and strikeout chances.  Having a great hitter in the 5 hole is great, but if he has a terrible clutch rating, that can cost dearly in crunch time.  Having a lineup full of hitters who frequently ground into double plays is a rally killer.  Don’t have too many high strikeout hitters.  You need a few batters who can put the ball into play and move runners over.

5.  Have a versatile lineup.  Give yourself some flexibility in the lineup and on the bench to adapt to any injury.  But, be wary not to spend too much money on the bench.

6.  Follow the 50/30 batting and pitching balance rule as close as possible.  For 80M leagues this would mean having a pitching staff worth about 30M.