Posts tagged as:

Strat-O-Matic

A way to store multiple lineups

July 13, 2010

I have written a script that will allow for storage of up to 6 lineups (3 vs LHP, 3 vs RHP). The script works in original lineup interface (the one that does not support depth charts). To use:

1. Go to the Lineups page and edit a lineup.
2. A new drop down box and “Save to slot” button will appear below the interface.
3. In the drop down, choose a slot and then click ‘Save to Slot’.
4. You will be prompted to enter a lineup name. Add a name and then click “Ok” and the lineup currently being used will be saved to the slot that was chosen in Step 2.

PLEASE NOTE: If you have made any lineup changes while in the ‘Edit lineups’ page you will need to save the lineup (with the SAVE YOUR LINEUP button) before “saving to a slot”. If you haven’t saved your lineup changes, the lineup that was originally loaded when you visited the lineup editor page will be “saved to a slot” rather than the lineup that you tinkered with.

5. To load a lineup just click the load button and the page will refresh and you’ll see the new lineup showing in the editor. Click the SAVE YOUR LINEUP button for the lineup to take effect for that nights games.

EVERYDAY LINEUPS
On the Front Office page I added a table (below the Injury Report area) which will show a list of “bench” players in the current lineups. I added this table for situations where one might have forgotten to put their starters back in the lineup after they have been injured. Lineups that are stored in “Slot 1″ will be considered the everyday lineups. If a player is listed in the current lineup but is not found in the “slot 1″ lineup that player will appear in the “bench” players table:

bench players

TRADES AND ROSTER MOVES
There will be situations where players stored in lineup slots may no longer be on the roster. If this occurs, “Player not on roster” will appear under the name column. If you try to load such a lineup with a player that is missing from the roster the page will just reload the original lineup with no changes made:

player not on roster

I hope you enjoy! The script was written for leagues with the DH rule in effect.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/81426

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/digg_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/stumbleupon_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/delicious_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blinklist_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/blogmarks_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/technorati_32.png

http://baseballsimulator.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/sociofluid/images/google_32.png

{ 1 comment }

Batter preferences all on one page

May 20, 2010

About a year ago SportingNews Strat-o-Matic Online introduced a new “Pitcher prefs” page. This page allows you to set all of your pitcher’s individual settings in one convenient place. Unfortunately, there’s not a “Batter prefs” page at the moment but I learned from Sporting News Member Services that a batter’s preference page is coming.

Until we get a “Batter Prefs” page, I have written a GreaseMonkey script that will show all of your batter’s individual settings on the bottom of the team page. Unlike the “Pitcher prefs” page, though, the “Batter prefs” information that the script produces is read only. GreaseMonkey does not allow changes to be submitted (with a Submit button) so the check boxes generated by the script are just for display purposes (read only). At least you will now be able to see individual settings for all batters on your team on the same page rather than opening each card on the team.

One of the reasons why I wrote this script was to ensure I have the “Don’t steal” setting turned on for all batters that have rolls where they might get picked off. Take J.D. Drew, for example, he has an 8-10 roll where he might be picked off. My understanding of the rules is if I have the “Don’t steal” setting turned on, J.D. Drew has less of a chance of getting picked off.

Another reason to write a script is that it’s a bit tedious to load each individual card to check their individual ratings each day. There might be times where I’m facing an opponent in a hitters ballpark where I don’t want anyone on my team to attempt to steal. In this type of situation I might turn on “don’t steal” for all batters in the starting lineup. If I do this, I’ll likely need to revert back to my previous settings for the next game. Rather than having to remember which players have a pick off roll I wrote the script to warn me (with a red ‘x’ placed next to the check box) when the “Don’t Steal” rating is unchecked for such a player. See below:

Batter Preferences

I was thinking about adding warnings for some of the other settings but I really rarely use any of these other individual player settings. I could probably have the script add warnings if the “Don’t hit and run” settings is off for players of a certain salary. If I have Albert Pujols on my team, for instance, I probably don’t want him involved in any hit and runs.

Behavior of the script

The script was written in a way that will cause the team page to refresh whenever a player’s individual strategy settings are updated. So, if you update a player’s strategy settings and then refresh the team page (or click on a team page link) you will notice the page refresh a couple times. This is necessary to make sure the “Batter prefs” data reflects the new change that was made.

Please let me know if there’s something you’d like to add to the script.

{ 0 comments }

Strat-O-Matic Ultimate Team idea

February 9, 2010

Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Madden Ultimate Team and I’ve been enjoying it so much that I thought about what it would be like if Strat-O-Matic baseball online had the same format. Just imagine being able to collect a set of virtual baseball cards to build a fantasy team that you can use in Strat-O-Matic baseball online. There would be four packs of random player cards to choose from – platinum, gold, silver, and bronze. Platinum packs might consist of players in the 9M and above range, gold 6M-8M, silver 3M-5M, and bronze .50M-2M.

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.

{ 2 comments }

Strat-O-Matic 2008 winning formula

December 23, 2009

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.

{ 4 comments }

Strat-O-Matic baserunning tips

August 19, 2009

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.

{ 1 comment }

← Previous Entries

Strat-O-Matic

A way to store multiple lineups

Batter preferences all on one page

Strat-O-Matic Ultimate Team idea

Strat-O-Matic 2008 winning formula

Strat-O-Matic baserunning tips

Search

Stratomatic

Scripts

Video Games

Database