The logic of the hit & run employs two things:
1. Disregard all readings on the offensive card and replace it by a template card. The better the rating, the better the outcome.
2. Walks and strikeouts are transformed into “ground out, runner advanced to second”.
What does this lead to? You’ll want to use hit & run with weak offensive players who have a good hit & run rating in situations where the batter will hit with runners have their stealing *. This strategy should be maximized even more against stellar pitchers such as someone like Peavy (2007). The most frequent result of the hit & run is, by a large margin, “ground out, runner goes to second”. In this case, you need clutch hitters to back-up players who have good hit & run ability.
What type of weak hitters should you go after for your team? The ideal type is a player with perfect defense (1e10) that also has a *star rating and his hit & run rating is B.
What about the steal rating? Having a good steal rating forces the opponent to hold the runners. When runners are held, hitters have their hit & run rating upgraded by one letter (a rating of B becomes a rating of A). Runners without the *star rating but with good stealing numbers (e.g. 7/- (15-6) should be just as good to force opponets to hold runners as well.
The B rating should be the minimal rating to start with the hit & run strategy. For all players not having a B rating, you should go to the individual settings and select “never use hit-and-run with this player”. Maybe one exception would be very weak hitters with a C rating. Also, I would recommend turning off the hit & run for players with good offensive cards even though they have a B rating.
Hit & Run Strategy and Opponent
You should switch to conservative hit & run for games when you play against teams with weak pitching. The reason for this is that the hit & run strategy turns singles read on pitcher’s card into outs. So, it is a strategy that pays when the opponent pitcher has a few singles on his card. But, it’s costly when the opponent pitcher has many singles on his card.
Line-Up
You should set-up a line-up so that your fast runners are in front of the B-rated hitters, and that slow runners are in front of not qualified hitters.
Hit & Run works better in what type of park?
Take advantage of as many singles out of the ballpark as you can. The ideal ballpark may be AT&T Park.
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