I think most would agree that it can sometimes be a bit of a headache to read the play by play accounts on the box score pages. It’s especially difficult to keep track of who is currently pitching as you read down the play by play account.  Also, you sort of need a little bit of knowledge on whether or not a player is left or right handed.

Now, play by play account viewing is a lot more enjoyable with this new script.  Take a look at the features below:

1.  Player names are now shaded in blue if they are left handed and pink if they are right handed.  Also, I changed the player names into hyperlinks to their player cards.

Note:  Some players have the same name so they need to be handled a bit differently.  I’ve included hyperlinks for all duplicate names.  In the 2010 set, for example, ‘C.Lee’ could be either Cliff Lee or Carlos Lee.  So, next to C.Lee you’ll find two links numberered 1 & 2.  There’s really no easy way for the script to find exactly which C.Lee is being used in the game so this method will do for now.

2.  Clutch situations are now in “dark orange“.

3.  When Pitch Count Fatigue level gets below F9 the color changes to red.

4.  Ball Park (BPHR/BPOUTS) results appear at the bottom of the play account.  This only applies in the 2010 set.

5.  Pitcher roll percent totals also appear at the bottom.  This only applies in the 2010 set.

The script will currently work with the 2010 and Back to the ’90s player sets.  I was hoping to add All-Time Greats VI but that player list is way too large for me to handle right now.  Hopefully I can add ATG6 sometime in the near future.

Download Stratomatic Enhanced Play by Play Account

On each team page, red stars (rated 1 to 5) are added next to each player to indicate whether it was their good year or worst year.  For pitchers these ratings are based on their “WHIPERA”.  The year with the lowest WHIPERA gets five stars.  The year with the highest WHIPERA gets one star.  For batters, the ratings are based on their OPS.

These five star visuals are really helpful especially when you can see everything on the same page.  The stars will also appear on the Free Agent page.

Also on each team page I added an after season team analysis with three sections:

1.  Dropped Player Points – Points awarded based on the ratings of players dropped. e.g. five points awarded to one star players and 1 point awarded to five star players. Average is then divided by 20. Most points possible is 100.

2.  Five Star Players — Number of five star players currently on roster.

3.  “Lucky” Points — Points awarded based on the ratings of players who participated on the team. e.g. Five points awarded to five star players and one point awarded to one star players. Average is then divided by 20. Most points possible is 100.

These results are a bit primitive so it’s not the definitive answer on determining how you actually did as a manager but I think it’s good starting point for the initial release of the script.

Download Stratomatic Back to the 90′s Team Analyzer

If you are a busy manager like I am and sometimes don’t have the time to analyze your next opponent then this script is for you!  This script will show additional details about your next opponent on the Front Office page.  The same information also appears on all Sim L/R splits pages.

Probable LHBs/RHBs in lineup
One of the most important aspects of analyzing an upcoming opponent is being able to match-up with their lineup.  Ideally as a manager, you can gather this information by reviewing the opponent’s box scores of previous games.  This can be a daunting task, especially if you can’t remember if a player is a left-handed, right-handed, or a switch hitter.  Another way is to find this information is to take a guess at the everyday players by viewing how many at bats they have on the opponents team page.  This script will help gather this information.  The Probable LHBs/RHBs in lineup category is determined by a combination of the number of at bats a player accumulated and their player salary.  Chances are a player with more at bats and/or higher salary is most likely to be in the starting lineup.  This info may not always be accurate but it’s a helpful aide.

Injuries
Displays the number of players currently injured.

OPS vs L/R
Determining your opponent’s strength against left handed pitchers versus right handed pitchers is also important.  If you find that your opponent is strong against lefties you might want to spot start a RHP.  This category calculates the opponent’s OPS by adding up the OBP and SLG on the opponent’s splits page.

AVG Hitter Balance/Prorated Balance
The script will sort the 9 batters that are expected to be in the starting lineup and determine the average hitter balance.  The Prorated balance column is based on the batter’s salary.  These categories may not be as valuable as the OPS but may help a manager with their starting and Relief pitcher settings.

Another added feature is it will display the opponents probable starting pitcher balance.  If you’re playing a Mystery Card game, such as Back to the ’90s, mouse over your opponent’s starting pitcher to view his Home Runs and Opponent Average against left and right-handed batters.

Download Stratomatic Analyze Next Opponent

This script will add a new SIM column to the Free Agent Pool list.  If you are searching for a pitcher and they have already played during the season, their SIM ERA will be displayed in the new column.  For batters, their SIM batting average will be displayed.  If the player has not participated in the season the results will be blank.

I’ve also added a feature to help keep track of players that were dropped during the season but didn’t participate in any games.  In the Mystery Card games, this information is especially important.  If a player wasn’t used (by HAL) it probably means they have a bad mystery year.  These dropped players do not show up on the “no longer on the roster” page.  Now with this script, these dropped players will have a DNP displayed in the SIM column.

There is one situation where the DNP tag might be incorrectly tracked and it’s when a manager picks up a player and then drops them on the same day.  The manager may have accidently picked up the wrong player or maybe they changed their minds and picked up another player.  This is a rare occurance but it does happen from time to time.  Maybe in a future script update this can be somehow addressed.

Download Stratomatic Show Dropped Players

I eventually came up with this script which will randomly show league leaders from the active leagues that I’m involved in. For now, I’ve only added two random categories – one for batters and the other for pitchers.  Each time the page is reloaded the  stat categories will randomly change.

One of the reasons for deciding on a league leaders display is because this is one area that I infrequently visit during a season.  Instead of having to go to that page it can come to me in small doses every day.  I also had the MVP and Cy Young Award voting details to appear from time to time.

The script will also highlight a team’s win/loss record in red or green to tell you that the results for a team has come in.  If your team has moved up in the standings the Place column and/or games behind column will turn green.  If your team won the series, the record will turn green.

Download League Leaders added to ‘Your Teams’ Page

For some extreme win/loss fun try the script in this theme league.  This was a league where every team tried to lose as many games as possible, except one which had all the superstars on it.  This league is apparently a model for debunking the “normalization” discussions that come up from time to time.

Download Stratomatic Monthly win Loss Records

The scripts will now store information of up to five teams.  If all five slots are taken up, a drop down will appear asking which team you want to overwrite:

Strat-O-Matic Save Lineups

Keep track of Mystery Cards

I conducted a poll at the Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online Forums and most managers (68%) usually have about 1-5 teams running at the same time.  There were a few managers who had more than 10 teams going on at the same time.  I probably could expand the scripts to support more teams but this could cause too much overhead.

New Script:  Pluggable SortTable Stratomatic
I have written a modified version of Pluggable SortTable for Stratomatic Online.  Now, when you go to Team Stats the columns are sortable.

Download Pluggable SortTable Stratomatic.

Searching for a pitcher that suits AT&T park can be a bit tedious with the Player Set Browser because you basically need to go through and open each pitcher card to find their ballpark home run ratings.  So, I decided to write a script to make this search a bit easier.  At first, I was thinking about a way that would analyze each card and categorize cards with the type of ballpark it would perform well in.  A high ballpark diamonds pitcher would be a better fit in a pitcher’s park and a pitcher with a low amount ballpark diamonds would be a better fit in a hitter’s park.  Then you have ballparks that favors righties (AT&T) and parks, such as Miller Park, that favors lefties this year.

Since the average Strat-O-Matic manager already has a good understanding of ballpark advantages I decided to write a script that simply adds two columns to the Player Set Browser for each player’s left and right ballpark home run diamonds.  Now, it’s a little easier and quicker to find those bargain pitchers for your ballpark.

Download:  http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/98356

Here are the draft results from my current league.  Six teams, including my team (Timlins), went after Brian Shouse.  Edinson Volquez was another popular choice with four requests.  Surprisingly,  only two managers, including myself, tried to land Manny Ramirez!

Results from one of my Back to the 80′s league:
Chris Bando – 5 requests
Tim Burke – 6 requests
Robin Yount – 5 requests

I suppose one of the reasons why SportingNews decided to leave this page out was to prevent managers from learning  the draft patterns used by the system.  The draft order is random so I don’t think anyone would gain much of an advantage with this information.  Nevertheless, it’s interesting to analyze.

UPDATE:  Unfortunately, SportingNews had to shut the page down due to some complaints.

I was looking for a way to copy data from the roster chart with a Greasemonky script and then copy the data to the clipboard.  This aspect is doable.  There are programs out there that can automate mouse clicks and keyboard entries but I haven’t found a program that will work well with the CD-Rom game.  I was thinking about a way to automatically search for a player’s name with the CD-Rom player search.  Unfortunately, it’s not a very user friendly player search.  It will tell you where the player is but won’t take you to him!

So, you need to take note of the search results and then find the three letter abbreviation (above, it’s TIM) of the team that player plays for.

The CD-Rom game has a feature that allows you to see a player’s web page.  I was thinking maybe there could be a way to use this to link the player to Stratomatic Online.  Unfortunately, this isn’t working.  I get “Unable to start web browser:

I have the CD-Rom game installed on my flash drive.  Maybe this is why it’s not working.  I’m not sure what’s the problem.

Hopefully one of these days Stratomatic will allow users to import leagues and rosters from Stratomatic Online into the CD-Rom game with ease.  Until then, we have to do it the old fashioned way – which is quite tedious.  In the meantime, this is how I setup leagues in the CD-Rom game so I can test strategy for upcoming Stratomatic Online games:

1.  Duplicate the ’2008 Major Leagues’ league.
2.  In the duplicated league, cut/paste all players into Free Agents folder.
3.  Create a new league(your SOM Online team).  Just fill in League Year, 2 Character Abbreviation, and name of league.
4.  Create your team.  Just fill out Year, City, Nickname, and abbreviation and then click Ok.
5.  Now, drag your players into your team one by one.
7.  To make sure you haven’t made a mistake go to Team>PromoteDemote Minor leaguers and compare the number of eligible batters and pitchers to your team.
8.  Next, go to Team>Generate Computer Manager to setup default starting rotation and lineups to help you get started.
9.  Repeat steps 4-8 for the other teams in the league.  I usually do this as a face each new team.  Setting up divisions isn’t really necessary unless you want to do this.