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Why are HR's hard to hit in the sim....

If you're like many other beginning players, you choose the players you know for your first team, and we're living in a VERY HR dominant era of baseball.

The problem is... Modern day HR hitters tend to hit WAY fewer HR's in the sim than they did in real life.

Why is that...

• Normalization. A guy that who averages 5 HR/100 AB when the league average is less than 1 HR/100 AB is way more likely to hit a HR than a guy who hits at the same rate from an era when the average is 3 HR/100 AB.
• Parks - Many open league parks are unfriendly to HR hitters
• Pitching - Many deadball pitchers allowed 0 HR in a season. Most pitchers used by most owners are way above the league average in preventing HR.

Those 3 factors will combine to turn (for example) 1997 McGwire into perhaps a 30 - 35 HR guy in the sim.

If it's OK with Len I am going to post some advice that i recently sent to a n00b who asked for some help.

Here's the question:

I noticed you were unbelievably dominant in the WIS Championship. I've always struggled with Sim Baseball leagues. What advice can you give me as far as building a team and adjusting any settings (hit-n-run, baserunning, SBs, etc). Is there any particular way you like to set your lineups/staffs?

if you asked 100 different people what the key to success is, you'd probably get at least 50 different answers. but i don't think anyone would say that the individual managerial settings are the key... that's like the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

for me the key has always been flexibility. i don't play in open leagues, only occasionally a champs league, so everything i have learned has come from themes and progressives. so i have learned to work with power, with no power, with 2-man rotations, with 6-man rotations, with good D and bad D, with too many ABs and not enough ABs. i think it helped in the WISC because my teams did well across the board... though i will admit, i got a lot of luck to do as well as i did.

flexibility helps me to do the 2 things which are most important, which are:

1. get the most for your money
2. work with the strengths you have been given

#2 comes first. you have to identify what assets you have available and try to figure out what kind of team you could build. there is always something that defines it. if you have a bunch of HR-prone pitchers then you're going for a -HR park no matter what. if you have lousy range you want a park that cuts down your XBH. if you have a bunch of singles hitters then you need good D and a pitching staff that doesn't give up too many hits. you don't have to pick the exact park first, but the idea of a kind of park helps (you may choose Wrigley or Kingdome or Tiger or AFC or Exhibition, but you know you want +HRs).

once you've identified that, you can get started. if you are building a more open-style team with few restrictions, then you need to pick a theme to build your team around. do you want to go for a HR team, an AVG team, an SB team, etc?

then you have to get the most for your money. don't spend money on excess PAs. if you have AAA, use them, and make sure you draft enough guys at 200k to send them down for AAA. if you don't then consider platooning. you have to spend 200k per roster spot no matter what. if you have no AAA and you have 8 hitters and 9 pitchers, the other 8 spots are just 1.6mil wasted. don't be afraid to use a 5-man rotation, or draft 9 useful relievers. even if you're in an OL, don't be afraid to try out different strategies than you normally use. challenge yourself.

there's a lot more out there... i learned all this from the forums, so i recommend reading through them. len just posted a list of the top 100 guys used in OLs... don't necessarily build a team with them, but try to figure out WHY they're popular.

regarding settings... guys with good SB success rates should be set to 4 or 5. guys who stink should be at 1 or maybe 2. a guy who went 12 for 15 should still be at 4 or 5, no matter what sparky thinks. a guy who went 40-for-94 should not be higher than 2 (1 would be better).

auto-rest is key... i just figured this out recently. shouldn't be the same for everyone. platooning 2 hitters? both of them should be at 97 or so. why let one guy get down to 90 before the other one starts playing? NOT platooning? then you probably want to take a guy down lower before he starts sitting. you want to get the benefit of those PAs.

good luck!

In the same vein as why modern HR hitters don't live up to totals, another important fact is that great control pitchers (like 1990 Dennis Eckersley) walk more batters in the SIM than they did in real life.

Re-read biglenr's post carefully...the critical points are (a) almost all players underperform at $80M (b) the hitter's bb/100 rate plays an important part in determining the outcome of a plate appearance and (c) the hitter plays a slightly more important role in the outcome than the pitcher.

Put those three facts together and (like it or not), the Eck is going to walk batters more frequently - sometimes much more frequently - than he did in real life.

I personally believe that this is realistic, and that walks are at least as much a function of batter skill as they are of pitcher skill. (Look up the stats for Eddie Lake, Eddie Yost, Eddie Stanky, and Eddie Joost...and Max Bishop....and Tony Phillips...)

But whether you agree or not, please at least recognize that this is how the SIM algorithm determines walks. Please don't waste forum posts complaining about it.

Seems like every couple of months someone argues that <insert great control pitcher> should not be averaging 3 walks a game. Or that the only reason <insert great hitter who walked a lot in real life> walked so often was that pitchers pitched around him. Whether that's true or not (and I think the balance of the evidence suggests it's not true), that's not the way the SIM works.

it might have been your original post that i used as my bible when getting started-i always tell noobs to read the forums. there is soo much great info here, this just goes above and beyond!!

wonderful contribution biglenr!!!

great stuff len. I bumped the AAA revealed thread for easier reference.

Thankyou for posting Big.

"(Look up the stats for Eddie Lake, Eddie Yost, Eddie Stanky, and Eddie Joost...and Max Bishop....and Tony Phillips...)"

I always wondered, if Eddie Guardado had been a hitter, would he have had a .400 OBP or not.

thanks for posting all, wonderful and helpful info here for all to read and learn, thanks a bunch

I printed it out!

Bump this... It's a little better than the original 2005 version that Ooohdoggie bumped earlier today.

Why isn't this a stickie?

bump

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bump for a more modern one...

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