Spend your time thinking about something else. Lineup order makes very little difference in  the grand scheme of things. Put them in order of descending OBP and that's about as good as you'll get.

  Wow!  Thanks for the amount of Responses so far, especially since I hadn't got the Batting Orders up yet.  Here are the 1-9, my 3 Bench, and the guy I just got in Trade.  They will be in that order.

1. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1052736  Jesus Park
2. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2208155  Adbul Gant
3. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2763795  Roy Weiss
4. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2155297  Julio Maradona
5. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1094573  Don Matheson
6. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1999842  Emmanuel Cunningham
7. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=915260  Neil Mercedes
8. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=360252  Javier Chavez
9. http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=749834  Craig Torres

Bench
http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1094601  Larry Lieber
http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2578782 Wilfred Marquez
http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=2763930 Dustin Clapp

Just Traded For (pending Approval)
http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=1327753  Robert Barker

  I hope you can also see the Stats from these.  How would you set these 9, and once Barker gets here how would you set the Line Up?  They are currently where they are hitting due to This Seasons Stats, as guys that hit the lights out last season are hovering around Mendoza Territory this Season.

Posted by soxfan121 on 6/24/2010 11:23:00 AM (view original):
All players have 'up' years and 'down' years. If I have a playoff-capable team, after ST I set my lineup based on the ratings and my personal expectation/experience with that player and/or those ratings. After ~25 games, I shuffle the guys with better OBP toward the top and slide the guys with a 'poor start' down, but not too much unless I had doubts about the guy & his ratings in the beginning. At ~50 games, I discard my pre-season thinking and re-order the lineup based on current results and make a note of their stats "as of..." At ~75 games I review the notes and the recent results (up or down) and make minor adjustments. This is also when I decide "I need to make a trade as X is having a poor season". At ~100 games, I carefully monitor fatigue and begin to watch for the classic 'reversion to the mean' for players out-performing their ratings, making minor adjustments. At~130 games, it's time for call-ups and lots of fatigue management, so lots of lineup juggling. I typically want my best possible lineup for the final 10 division games if it's close to be at 100%. 

So while I base everything on ratings, it's also about recognizing when a guy is over or under his expected performance and either pulling the proverbial trigger or having lots of patience. 

There are no egos to contend with, so my long-time #4 hitter isn't going to have his slump prolonged if I drop him to 6th for two weeks. 

+1 for being the first person to throw out the (imo smart) strategy that a lot of people use (whether they use 25, 50, or whatever game increments)

Personally, I don't have set increments...more just "every so often" when I feel like it's been long enough and things haven't changed (or maybe things have changed in the wrong direction).  Typically my first check and adjust happens around 40 games though--because I need another 20 to analyze how the callups are doing after the first 20 (if there are any).

Posted by soxfan121 on 6/24/2010 11:23:00 AM (view original):
All players have 'up' years and 'down' years. If I have a playoff-capable team, after ST I set my lineup based on the ratings and my personal expectation/experience with that player and/or those ratings. After ~25 games, I shuffle the guys with better OBP toward the top and slide the guys with a 'poor start' down, but not too much unless I had doubts about the guy & his ratings in the beginning. At ~50 games, I discard my pre-season thinking and re-order the lineup based on current results and make a note of their stats "as of..." At ~75 games I review the notes and the recent results (up or down) and make minor adjustments. This is also when I decide "I need to make a trade as X is having a poor season". At ~100 games, I carefully monitor fatigue and begin to watch for the classic 'reversion to the mean' for players out-performing their ratings, making minor adjustments. At~130 games, it's time for call-ups and lots of fatigue management, so lots of lineup juggling. I typically want my best possible lineup for the final 10 division games if it's close to be at 100%. 

So while I base everything on ratings, it's also about recognizing when a guy is over or under his expected performance and either pulling the proverbial trigger or having lots of patience. 

There are no egos to contend with, so my long-time #4 hitter isn't going to have his slump prolonged if I drop him to 6th for two weeks. 

Agree. That's how I do it.

I'm about to embark on my first HBD season, but I wanted to offer a few comments and get some feedback.

1) How similar are your lineup strategies compared to SIM baseball? I've heard the actual engine is the same for simulating games, and I know some guys in the SIM like to ride guys all year based on RL stats as opposed to in-season stats.  Which leads me to...

2) Who's to say it's all random?  Maybe the pitching in your division/league is a bit weaker than expected in certain areas, which allows certain guys (1B/BB/HR hitters) to perform better than their ratings would suggest.  Perhaps ballparks figure into it too.  And vice versa with guys underperforming.  Just my opinion, but I wouldn't think it all necessarily has to be random, as there are outside factors that also affect a hitter's performance.

That being said, if I have a #9 hitter hitting .300/.375/.425 (or whatever Mike said), I'm often worried if I take him out of that slot, he'll stop producing.  That's probably me thinking along the lines of real baseball, as opposed to the SIM, as in RL, a guy's position in the batting order (and those hitting around him) can affect his performance, where the opinion seems to be they don't on here.

That's another option. There are times I have a ball player smoking the ball in the 7 hole but don't want to move him. Whether it does any good, doesn't really matter - I believe it does ;).

But at other times I do move them near the top. It's a great game, many options to win.

I would just like to add that this is one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to HBD.  In the SIM, all of the hitting and pitching is based on specific stats from a season in the past. Here, the stats are projected based on ratings, which when you think about it, is similar to RL.

All players have specific attributes - speed, power, contact, arm strength, pitches, glove, stamina - that determine the outcome of each individual AB and games as a whole. Anomalies are visible in RL too and you just have to overcome them.

Let's say Pujols goes into June hitting .200 with 5 HR. Is he any less Albert Pujols than he was last year? No. But for whatever reason - fatigue, not seeing the ball well, pitchers working him really well -  he's not producing. So let's say LaRussa moves him down to sixth in the order and puts another hot hitter up top. Is that hot hitter better than Albert? No, but he's performing better RIGHT NOW.  And is Pujols any less Pujols batting 6th than 3rd? No, but maybe the shake up gets results.  

If after a few weeks to a month, the guy at the top has severely dropped back down to Earth and Pujols is now up around .275 with 10 HR, then Tony switches them back.

Players under and over perform all the time in MLB and though people may question it based on the player's past stats or physical make-up, they certainly ride it.  They don't say, "nah, let's keep him where he is...he'll cool off."  So why should this be any different? I know it's a computer simulation, but again, RL baseball is based on individual player's attributes or "ratings" and the results don't always line up, so you try different things.

Posted by iain on 6/24/2010 1:48:00 PM (view original):
schuyler101... I think we've had this conversation before!

Given enough time and data, sometimes hot/cold streaks are just an owner misreading the ratings. Perhaps I assume I'm wrong too quickly?

i'm pretty sure we have

and absolutely, it could be a misreading of ratings...

but if you have 2 players and one is "hot" and the other is "cold" and the cold guy is superior in every single rating then it really can't be a misreading of ratings...i see this in pitchers often where i'll notice my setup B guy is outperforming my setup A guy over the course of the season and then will look at the ratings for a reality check and see that setup A is superior in every single rating...at that point no way am i bumping the Setup B guy ahead of A


i have a feeling that i don't have much company with this strategy, which is fine by me!

Posted by WiredTiger on 6/24/2010 2:29:00 PM (view original):
Spend your time thinking about something else. Lineup order makes very little difference in  the grand scheme of things. Put them in order of descending OBP and that's about as good as you'll get.

agreed, it's just not all that important...

Posted by mitchrapp on 6/25/2010 12:41:00 AM (view original):
That's another option. There are times I have a ball player smoking the ball in the 7 hole but don't want to move him. Whether it does any good, doesn't really matter - I believe it does ;).

But at other times I do move them near the top. It's a great game, many options to win.

i vaguely remember a devo chat a long time ago where they said HBD players didn't like being moved around in the lineup and it affected performance slightly...maybe my mind is playing tricks on me though...

Posted by Jtpsops on 6/25/2010 1:37:00 AM (view original):
I would just like to add that this is one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to HBD.  In the SIM, all of the hitting and pitching is based on specific stats from a season in the past. Here, the stats are projected based on ratings, which when you think about it, is similar to RL.

All players have specific attributes - speed, power, contact, arm strength, pitches, glove, stamina - that determine the outcome of each individual AB and games as a whole. Anomalies are visible in RL too and you just have to overcome them.

Let's say Pujols goes into June hitting .200 with 5 HR. Is he any less Albert Pujols than he was last year? No. But for whatever reason - fatigue, not seeing the ball well, pitchers working him really well -  he's not producing. So let's say LaRussa moves him down to sixth in the order and puts another hot hitter up top. Is that hot hitter better than Albert? No, but he's performing better RIGHT NOW.  And is Pujols any less Pujols batting 6th than 3rd? No, but maybe the shake up gets results.  

If after a few weeks to a month, the guy at the top has severely dropped back down to Earth and Pujols is now up around .275 with 10 HR, then Tony switches them back.

Players under and over perform all the time in MLB and though people may question it based on the player's past stats or physical make-up, they certainly ride it.  They don't say, "nah, let's keep him where he is...he'll cool off."  So why should this be any different? I know it's a computer simulation, but again, RL baseball is based on individual player's attributes or "ratings" and the results don't always line up, so you try different things.

they should say "nah, let's keep him where he is...he'll cool off."

Larussa never bats Pujols 6th, regardless of any random cold streak...

managers do tinker with lineups though, baseball is a superstitious game, one can't expect RL managers to not want to play with lineups and "hot" and "cold" hitters, but that doesn't mean there is any wisdom in it

and certainly not in a HBD, a game that is based on cold hard numbers..determining whether or not hot streaks are a misreading of the ratings is one thing...moving your shortstop with 50/50/50/50/50 hitting ratings to the middle of the lineup because he's hitting .300/.350/.500 through 40 games is nonsense.

It's a combination of things. You can't just go strictly by ratings. In the scenario you mentioned, no doubt I would move my setup B to setup A and versa. Should I leave my closer, who has 8 blown saves in 11 games, as my closer even when he has closer type ratings? Hell no.

Good discussion though.

This is a good example:

www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx

He has some great seasons,- bunch in a row. Hit a bit lower one season then the following season after 91 at bats, was hitting like crap, not even close to the Mendoza line so I sat him. Didn't start any more that season. The guy that replaced him did alright. The following 2 years he was back to starting and had good years.

My team was better because I sat him.