What do you think about this for a 50-50 game?

[wes_kahn]

My neat neighbor friend who is a former baseball scout and current metrics geek thinks he has solved the issue of 50-50 card baseball games. The problem with past 50-50 games is that a Bud Harrelson type of no-power hitter can face a gopher ball pitcher like Bert Blyleven and hit many more homers than he should ever hit, even if being pitched batting practice balls.

In players like Harrelson, on his card in the spot for a possible homer, he has a negative number, meaning that his offensive card for a long ball is 0, plus if the dice roll indicates to consult the Pitcher's card, the negative amount is applied here.

In other words, if Harrelson has a -15 on his Long Ball Card, when the dice roll indicates to consult the pitcher's card, the first 15 numbers on his card that fall in the Long Ball surrendered area become standard fly ball can-of-corn outs or possibly a single that finds a hole between fielders.

This same approach is applied to batters that walk so little that they have a negative number under walks. If a batter has a -10 on his BB, then the first 10 BB on the pitcher's card become standard ground balls or pop outs depending on the pitcher.

For a player like Nellie Fox, he would have a -X on his strikeouts, which meant that the first X Strikeouts on the Pitcher's card would become either a ground out or a soft base hit with no runner advancement.

The same goes for Pitchers. They can have negative numbers that apply to the batter's card. A 1990 Dennis Eckersley card might have a -20 under his Long Ball surrendered, meaning the first 20 numbers on any batter's Long Ball spot would revert to standard fly balls or balls that drop in for a hit.

Additionally, each pitcher has a LG adjustment that applies to all LG on a batter's card. It can be a plus or minus number that represents the number of feet to add or subtract from the long hit ball.

Does this sound understandable to you guys? I am not a great writer, so it could be my attempt at explaining it. When he showed it to me, it made sense.

[SavoyBG]

They've had this in the Strat-O-Matic advanced game since 1971. Players with a "w" power rating could not hit a HR off of the pitcher's card.

[wes_kahn]

Wow, I guess great minds think somewhat alike. Does the advanced strat also make some corrections for other things beside the w homer? How would it handle Nellie Fox not striking out, even if facing Sam McDowell or Herb Score? How would it handle Shawon Dunston hardly ever drawing a walk? What about Dennis Eckersley not allowing walks? Does Strat have ways to cancel those events on the opposite cards?

I haven't played Strat in a very long time, probably with a set from the 1960's, so I did not know about that rule. HP does not own Strat or any other baseball board games, so that is why he has been designing his own for many years.

[SavoyBG]

Wow, I guess great minds think somewhat alike. Does the advanced strat also make some corrections for other things beside the w homer? How would it handle Nellie Fox not striking out, even if facing Sam McDowell or Herb Score? How would it handle Shawon Dunston hardly ever drawing a walk? What about Dennis Eckersley not allowing walks? Does Strat have ways to cancel those events on the opposite cards?

I don't know where they are at with those things at this point in time. I've been playing the Pursue The Pennant / Diamond Mind computer game for over 30 years now. The board games were fun, but you have to manually keep the stats among dozens of other problems that the computer game does not have.

I'm not really into replaying precise seasons with relatively small sample sizes for each player. I like playing with the all time player discs where each player is based on their peak 5 consecutive seasons. That way you're not concerned with duplicating one season where a player might have missed a lot of time, or had a fluke great or bad seasons. Instead you are dealing with much larger sample sizes that present each player at a certain level of play. Anybody can hit a HR, just like in real life. Like the Milwaukee reliever who homered against Kershaw in the playoffs. If we did the board game the way that you want to, that could not happen.

[wes_kahn]

I understand. It is personal preference. There can be fun leagues with 5-year or 3-year averages, and there can also be fun leagues where you take one franchise and look at their best 25 players over a set amount of time like 1950-1969.

The reason why I like what my friend is doing is that we both like to play seasons with an exact roster from the past with certain parameters in place. He is going to play a 1954-1972 era of the original 16 franchises this year and hopes to start around February 15. I am going to test his prototype of teams from 1920 to 1959.

My biggest beef with other game sets is that they do not allow you to play a 16-team league of the original franchises in the same era. You might get the 1927 Yankees and 1929 A's, but then you might get stuck with a 1906 Cubs team in that set. No dead ball team should be in the same set as a live ball team.

The same goes with teams where there are no Indians' teams in a 1960's and 70's set. That's why his game goes from 1954 to 1972, so that the really good Indians and Giants teams can be included in a set with the best A's and Reds teams of the pre-DH era. The later years then go 1973 to 1999 and 2000 to present.

I also like taking a single season set and drafting players onto different teams with classic ballparks. What might somebody like Mike Schmidt have done playing in the Polo Grounds? What might Barry Bonds done in Baker Bowl?

Actually, my friend has done something fun with this theme as well. He took the 1969 season and then made 16 franchises out of the 24 teams, so that there would be about 32 to 34 players for each team and players could be optioned to the minors and recalled as needed.

The unique thing he did with this was to make the Pacific Coast League into a Major League like it was offered in the late 1950's, and then created the Continental League that was created basically to force the Majors to expand. He used the classic PCL parks (Sick's, Beaver, Oaks, Seals, Solons, Hollywood, Wrigley, Lane) and the ballpark that existed then in the 8 cities that were supposed to get Continental League games, such as Ponce DeLeon Park in Atlanta with its tree in Center Field. If I remember correctly, Harmon Killebrew hit over 60 homers thanks to playing in a bandbox at Wrigley Field in LA.

The sad thing is that all these recreations and fantasy creations appear to be more entertaining than today's real thing. Too many at bats resulting in little to no action and the lessening of the occurrence of things like stretching doubles into triples and having plays at the plate with games that last 3 1/2 hours tend to make baseball less entertaining now than it was when some games could be played in less than 2 hours, and in those 2 hours, there were 6 or 7 key plays of action.

[SavoyBG]

No dead ball team should be in the same set as a live ball team.

With the DMB all star discs that is not a problem. Each player is coded for a neutral era, so that a deadball player like Sam Crawford playing in a live ball era in a HR park can hit 35 HRs. With DMB you have to tell the game which era that the league is playing in and that determines the overall league batting average, OBP, SLG% and ERA. If you take live ball players and play them in the dead ball era they will hit way less HRs.

The problem with Strat-O-Matic is that there is no era setting. So if you try and mix and match players and teams from different eras it won't work well. 1927 Babe Ruth will hit around 60 HRs even if the league is supposed to be taking place in 1905.

[wes_kahn]

With the DMB all star discs that is not a problem. Each player is coded for a neutral era, so that a deadball player like Sam Crawford playing in a live ball era in a HR park can hit 35 HRs. With DMB you have to tell the game which era that the league is playing in and that determines the overall league batting average, OBP, SLG% and ERA. If you take live ball players and play them in the dead ball era they will hit way less HRs.

The problem with Strat-O-Matic is that there is no era setting. So if you try and mix and match players and teams from different eras it won't work well. 1927 Babe Ruth will hit around 60 HRs even if the league is supposed to be taking place in 1905.

That's a nice option with Diamond Mind, but I don't want Sam Crawford hitting 35 homers if I am playing a dead ball game. The rosters will built differently and thus power was not part of the game. I don't know how Crawford hit the ball, but I would guess that he was mostly a line drive and sharp ground ball hitter like most of the dead ball players. Hitting towering fly balls 400 feet in parks that were more than 400 feet to the alleys was little better than striking out today. Speed and placement mattered most on offense, so I wouldn't want Jimmy Foxx or worse yet some sloth like Milt May or Ron Fairly re-calculated into a Roger Breshnehan or Frank Barry.

There are good dead ball league teams for each of the 16 franchises in existence then. I have played a season in the past with teams from 1901 to 1920 and then another that incorporated some 19th century teams like Boston, Brooklyn, and St. Louis. That's why I like my friend's ideas of breaking the eras down so that every franchise of that era has a competitive team.

[SavoyBG]

That's a nice option with Diamond Mind, but I don't want Sam Crawford hitting 35 homers if I am playing a dead ball game.

Read what I said again:

"a deadball player like Sam Crawford playing in a live ball era in a HR park can hit 35 HRs."

Crawford can only hit 35 HRs if he is playing in a live ball era like in modern times. If you are playing him in a deadball era like he actually played in he will hit like 20+ triples but only like 8 HRs.

Check out my DMB deadball league:

https://www.baseball-fever.com/forum...eadball-league

Only 2 players hit 10 or more HRs in the season. Crawford had 8 HRs and led the league with 113 RBIs.

[wes_kahn]

Read what I said again:

"a deadball player like Sam Crawford playing in a live ball era in a HR park can hit 35 HRs."

Crawford can only hit 35 HRs if he is playing in a live ball era like in modern times. If you are playing him in a deadball era like he actually played in he will hit like 20+ triples but only like 8 HRs.

Check out my DMB deadball league:

https://www.baseball-fever.com/forum...eadball-league

Only 2 players hit 10 or more HRs in the season. Crawford had 8 HRs and led the league with 113 RBIs.

Yes, I understood you exactly. However, if you take Sam Crawford and bring him into modern times, he doesn't ever make the big leagues, or at best, he's a pinch hitter like Manny Mota or Vic Davalillo, because no matter how much more pop is in the ball coming off the bat and how much shorter the ballparks are, a line drive and ground ball hitter is not going to hit 35 homers. Maybe, if it becomes Wiffle Ball, then yes, he could hit 35 homers.

In order to find the 35 homer man brought from the 1900-1919 era, you have to pick up some guy that didn't make it back then because he hit a lot of flyball outs 350-400 feet away from home plate. Yes, this guy would project to hit 35 homers because those fly balls would have gone an extra 25 to 50 feet and cleared the fences.

I speak from my own personal experiences. I could not hit the ball over the fences in high school. My high school's baseball dimensions were larger than most parks today--314-422-323. I am left-handed, and the alley was about 380 with an 8 foot chain length fence.

My senior year, I hit 7 triples in 14 home games plus another in a home district playoff game. I hit a good number of doubles and batted over .429 (3 for every 7). I hit line drives over the infielder's heads and sprayed them all over the field. They found the gaps frequently and since I was fast (9.4 tops in 100 yard dash), I was 1st team all-district. Even when I wanted to try in batting practice, I could not hit the ball over the fence more than one pitch out of 30. I did hit 2 homers my senior year against a team that played its home games in a city park with no fences, so the ball rolled and rolled up to the tennis courts.

My younger brother was a catcher built like Greg Luzinski. He didn't always connect, and you could time him to first with an hourglass. But, when he also hit a few balls over the fence across the street from the field and into the rose bushes by the owner's house. He once hit the ball over the center field fence, and it had to go 450 feet minimum. However, he also hit a 400+ foot out at the public park field with no fence.

What I am trying to say is that the star players from the dead ball era had different talents and skills necessary to win in those times. Speed, being able to place the ball in certain areas, and not striking out were the most important attributes of players and being able to throw strikes and try to avoid line drives were the most important attributes for pitchers, even though Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood were super fast and could strike out 5 batters a game.

Most of today's ballplayers would have had little chance to ever play in the Major Leagues in the Dead Ball era. The perfect modern times player that might have been the next Lajoie would be Donnell Nixon, who got a cup of coffee in the majors. I saw him play one year where he got something like 140 stolen bases and 35 infield singles plus another 15 bunt singles. He had no power, less than his brother Otis.

I guess if you don't mind creating a total fantasy, it is okay to have Sam Crawford morphed into something he never was. For that matter, you could change his name and replace it with your own name so you can hit 35 homers in the Majors.

Obviously, all these tabletop games are fantasy to some extent, but at least the players should put out stats similar to what they were like in real life. The only way Crawford hits 35 homers is if you shorten the fence to 3 feet high and bring it in so that his line drives can clear that 3 feet. You cannot put a horse and buggy in the Daytona 500, but if you want to say that horse and buggy from 1885 has been brought to the 21st century and can now go 160 mph, are you really representing the horse and buggy?

[SWCBaseball]

Yes, I understood you exactly. However, if you take Sam Crawford and bring him into modern times, he doesn't ever make the big leagues, or at best, he's a pinch hitter like Manny Mota or Vic Davalillo, because no matter how much more pop is in the ball coming off the bat and how much shorter the ballparks are, a line drive and ground ball hitter is not going to hit 35 homers. Maybe, if it becomes Wiffle Ball, then yes, he could hit 35 homers.

In order to find the 35 homer man brought from the 1900-1919 era, you have to pick up some guy that didn't make it back then because he hit a lot of flyball outs 350-400 feet away from home plate. Yes, this guy would project to hit 35 homers because those fly balls would have gone an extra 25 to 50 feet and cleared the fences.

I speak from my own personal experiences. I could not hit the ball over the fences in high school. My high school's baseball dimensions were larger than most parks today--314-422-323. I am left-handed, and the alley was about 380 with an 8 foot chain length fence.

My senior year, I hit 7 triples in 14 home games plus another in a home district playoff game. I hit a good number of doubles and batted over .429 (3 for every 7). I hit line drives over the infielder's heads and sprayed them all over the field. They found the gaps frequently and since I was fast (9.4 tops in 100 yard dash), I was 1st team all-district. Even when I wanted to try in batting practice, I could not hit the ball over the fence more than one pitch out of 30. I did hit 2 homers my senior year against a team that played its home games in a city park with no fences, so the ball rolled and rolled up to the tennis courts.

My younger brother was a catcher built like Greg Luzinski. He didn't always connect, and you could time him to first with an hourglass. But, when he also hit a few balls over the fence across the street from the field and into the rose bushes by the owner's house. He once hit the ball over the center field fence, and it had to go 450 feet minimum. However, he also hit a 400+ foot out at the public park field with no fence.

What I am trying to say is that the star players from the dead ball era had different talents and skills necessary to win in those times. Speed, being able to place the ball in certain areas, and not striking out were the most important attributes of players and being able to throw strikes and try to avoid line drives were the most important attributes for pitchers, even though Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood were super fast and could strike out 5 batters a game.

Most of today's ballplayers would have had little chance to ever play in the Major Leagues in the Dead Ball era. The perfect modern times player that might have been the next Lajoie would be Donnell Nixon, who got a cup of coffee in the majors. I saw him play one year where he got something like 140 stolen bases and 35 infield singles plus another 15 bunt singles. He had no power, less than his brother Otis.

I guess if you don't mind creating a total fantasy, it is okay to have Sam Crawford morphed into something he never was. For that matter, you could change his name and replace it with your own name so you can hit 35 homers in the Majors.

Obviously, all these tabletop games are fantasy to some extent, but at least the players should put out stats similar to what they were like in real life. The only way Crawford hits 35 homers is if you shorten the fence to 3 feet high and bring it in so that his line drives can clear that 3 feet. You cannot put a horse and buggy in the Daytona 500, but if you want to say that horse and buggy from 1885 has been brought to the 21st century and can now go 160 mph, are you really representing the horse and buggy?

I understand what you are saying but I disagree.... Rogers Hornsby crossed over from the dead ball era into the 1920's as a line drive hitter and he adjusted pretty well. In my opinion, the better players are better because they adjusted well. The game is about adjustments. I believe Crawford would be a regular on any team today and hit 35 to 40 home runs a year in today's ball parks.

[SavoyBG]

Yes, I understood you exactly. However, if you take Sam Crawford and bring him into modern times, he doesn't ever make the big leagues, or at best, he's a pinch hitter like Manny Mota or Vic Davalillo, because no matter how much more pop is in the ball coming off the bat and how much shorter the ballparks are, a line drive and ground ball hitter is not going to hit 35 homers. Maybe, if it becomes Wiffle Ball, then yes, he could hit 35 homers.

I think you're 100% wrong. Sam Crawford had the most career triples not because he was real fast, but because he hit balls over the heads of outfielders. Triples were the home runs of the deadball era. The deadball stars of the teens who were still young enough were stars in the 20s too, like Speaker, Hornsby and Cobb.

[SavoyBG]

Obviously, all these tabletop games are fantasy to some extent, but at least the players should put out stats similar to what they were like in real life.

Only if you are playing them under the same conditions. If you took great deadball pitchers and had them pitch in the 1990s they'd be giving up lots of home runs. And the best power hitters of the deadball era, buys like Sam Crawford and Honus Wagner, would hit plenty of home runs in the 1990s.

[willshad]

Yes, I understood you exactly. However, if you take Sam Crawford and bring him into modern times, he doesn't ever make the big leagues, or at best, he's a pinch hitter like Manny Mota or Vic Davalillo, because no matter how much more pop is in the ball coming off the bat and how much shorter the ballparks are, a line drive and ground ball hitter is not going to hit 35 homers. Maybe, if it becomes Wiffle Ball, then yes, he could hit 35 homers.

In order to find the 35 homer man brought from the 1900-1919 era, you have to pick up some guy that didn't make it back then because he hit a lot of flyball outs 350-400 feet away from home plate. Yes, this guy would project to hit 35 homers because those fly balls would have gone an extra 25 to 50 feet and cleared the fences.

I speak from my own personal experiences. I could not hit the ball over the fences in high school. My high school's baseball dimensions were larger than most parks today--314-422-323. I am left-handed, and the alley was about 380 with an 8 foot chain length fence.

My senior year, I hit 7 triples in 14 home games plus another in a home district playoff game. I hit a good number of doubles and batted over .429 (3 for every 7). I hit line drives over the infielder's heads and sprayed them all over the field. They found the gaps frequently and since I was fast (9.4 tops in 100 yard dash), I was 1st team all-district. Even when I wanted to try in batting practice, I could not hit the ball over the fence more than one pitch out of 30. I did hit 2 homers my senior year against a team that played its home games in a city park with no fences, so the ball rolled and rolled up to the tennis courts.

My younger brother was a catcher built like Greg Luzinski. He didn't always connect, and you could time him to first with an hourglass. But, when he also hit a few balls over the fence across the street from the field and into the rose bushes by the owner's house. He once hit the ball over the center field fence, and it had to go 450 feet minimum. However, he also hit a 400+ foot out at the public park field with no fence.

What I am trying to say is that the star players from the dead ball era had different talents and skills necessary to win in those times. Speed, being able to place the ball in certain areas, and not striking out were the most important attributes of players and being able to throw strikes and try to avoid line drives were the most important attributes for pitchers, even though Walter Johnson and Smoky Joe Wood were super fast and could strike out 5 batters a game.

Most of today's ballplayers would have had little chance to ever play in the Major Leagues in the Dead Ball era. The perfect modern times player that might have been the next Lajoie would be Donnell Nixon, who got a cup of coffee in the majors. I saw him play one year where he got something like 140 stolen bases and 35 infield singles plus another 15 bunt singles. He had no power, less than his brother Otis.

I guess if you don't mind creating a total fantasy, it is okay to have Sam Crawford morphed into something he never was. For that matter, you could change his name and replace it with your own name so you can hit 35 homers in the Majors.

Obviously, all these tabletop games are fantasy to some extent, but at least the players should put out stats similar to what they were like in real life. The only way Crawford hits 35 homers is if you shorten the fence to 3 feet high and bring it in so that his line drives can clear that 3 feet. You cannot put a horse and buggy in the Daytona 500, but if you want to say that horse and buggy from 1885 has been brought to the 21st century and can now go 160 mph, are you really representing the horse and buggy?

So the guys who played before 1920 were all weaklings is what you are saying?

I am not one that says we can just assume that Wagner, Cobb. Collins, or even Crawford would hit 40 home runs every year in the 1930s or today. But to say that Crawford would not be a star today is ridiculous.

[wes_kahn]

I am not saying that the stars of the dead ball era were weaklings. I am sure that if you called Ty Cobb a weakling, you would have thought you said that to Joe Louis. Actually, after he retired, Cobb spent a day with the Vanderbilt University football team going through a practice for reasons I don't know. This was in the late 1930's, and Cobb was 50ish? He punted the ball a good 10 yards farther than Vanderbilt's punter (This was during an era when Vandy football was a top 20 program and had missed a Rose Bowl invitation by losing to Alabama by 2 points.)

I am not quite old enough to know what Sam Crawford's real hitting style was, as I just used the typical dead ball style. There was no need to try to hit the ball high in the air with enough power to clear the fences. The ball didn't jump off bats in those days, and there were some really deep parks, so trying to hit the ball over the fence then would be like trying to steal 300 bases a year and use the sacrifice bunt 130 times a season. If times were reversed, the players in the dead ball era would look at the lack of SBs and SHs and think the players were not as talented.

The strategy of baseball in 1910 was to place the ball in play and run. Runs were scored by stolen bases, hit and runs, sacrifice hits, and taking extra bases on singles. Pitching was important in different ways, as the pitcher needed to have control so that he would not gift a runner on base.

I understand the desire to make a dead ball era player into a Mike Trout, or to make Mike Trout into Nap Lajoie offensively, so we will just have to have differing opinions like how you might like spare ribs, and I like brisket. I only want to play dead ball versus other dead ball, and use those strategies used by John McGraw and Frank Chance. I want to play 20s and 30s against other 20s and 30s. I like my neighbor's breaking down this current set into 1954 through 1972. The 16 teams are fairly equal. I am going to start a 1964 White Sox season against the rest of the AL from that set, and he continues his 1972 Pirates season against the rest of the NL. After the one game I played for him, he has since played 5 more. Pittsburgh is 5-1 with 3, 1-run wins and a 1-run loss. The loss came against Chris Short and the 1964 Phillies in a 3-2 loss.

[davidgreams]

that kids flash game is weird but I've seen one before there is one on y8.com for computer/pc that is for Dora