Why not 1926-30, if you know? This is helpful and I am learning to appreciate your posts. I keep trying different combinations and what I see is that in fact my teams hit, even Joss, though not always. My real problem is that the modern pitchers are getting shelled, even what seem to me to be the best, though I now see that I have misunderstood some of the way the stats that are key are interpreted. 

1989 was not favorite baseball era (Yankees fan and if you remember who the best team in the game was, it had Conseco and McGwire, again, not my favorites. I am not a Barry Bonds worshipper, but no question he at least did not strike out a lot, hit for average and not just power and had speed and was a great fielder. I prefer Daryl Strawberry over those other two guys, and I liked that Oakland team a lot otherwise. I wish W. Weiss' hitting were better 'cause I always liked his play, and I think Dave Stewart the most under-rated starter of the past 30 years. He was the first pitcher I picked on my first team here and he is performing very well. 

I appreciate the tips. I see that I need to mix up the staffs and players with older and modern. I don't so much mind putting Cobb, Delahanty, etc. into lineups with good moderns, nor do I really have a bias against deadball era pitchers - I would like W.Johnson on my staff for instance. It is that they pitched so many innings that they cost a lot in absolute, if not in relative terms so you HAVE to do a 3-man rotation plus maybe one good reliever if that and then a bunch of guys with low ERAs and 50 IPs each, because you spent so much on one of the DB era pitchers with a ton of innings. But no one alive today has ever seen a team with a 3-man rotation, so it is not a simulation of baseball, just a gaming of the game. I understand it, and will finally break down and do it if I have to (when I first posted my various teams were a shade above .500 cumulatively, but they are now approaching '62 Mets W-L records, with one exception, so I am starting to have to compromise but not happily). So I will see how to mix it up and try not to be rigid and ideological. 

There is also no doubt that every once in a while (speaking of the real baseball world now) the game needs someone to start hitting for average and stealing bases again, as on at least three occasions the homerun ball and the offense of get someone on and hit a HR without any movement on the field started to get deadening - in the 1920s and 30s, and I think it was primarily Jackie Robinson to refresh the game with an older style; in the 1950s and Pete Rose was a big shift in an older direction; and again in the steroid era, though I am not sure if anybody or team has really shifted it back. The trend here is to deadball, basestealing, high OBP baseball and this does have its creative edge when the longball is too dominant. But if the game becomes too much like the deadball era it is equally stifling I think - essentially players are only differentiated in the lineup by their averages and bases stolen, and that becomes monotonous. Why bat player A fourth instead of player  B if neither hits with power and they both do the same thing?

A healthy mix should be the sign of a good team and a good simulation should reflect that teams can win either because of utterly dominant pitching and defense, even with weaker hitting; with high OBP and average and major speed on the base paths; with overwhelming homerun power; or with a good mix of these. But if one strategy becomes the only won that works and everyone uses it, then the real interest in this game, and in real baseball, is diminished, namely, who will win, the boxer Ali or the slugger Foreman? The homerun hitting A's with Canseco, or the Reds with O'Neill, the speedy Eric Davis and contact hitters? The Braves with Maddux, Smolz and Glavin, or the Indians with Thome and Ramirez? 

If we already know the answer then the "rock,paper,scissors" aspect of the game is lost, everyone is scissors. 

The pre 1925 hitters can hit homeruns because of normalization.   Twenty-five HR's in 1919 was a big deal...it wasn't in 1927.

Thanks Contrarian23,

I am sending you a site email with details of my newest team that is my attempt to take all the good advice people have offered and put them into practice. I would post it here, but it is a team in a just forming OL and I don't want to give away the only strategic edge (same one as everyone else of course) I have.

When I first posted here, and ranted a bit about Negro Leagues stats being left out etc. I had three teams running and they were cumulatively just over .500 by a couple of games and my Spring Training team that got my feet wet went 6-4 and would have won the division but I didn't know how to use the Manager's Center well at that point and had left the default for closer only coming in a save situation. The computer let Rivera sit on the bench while the team blew a 7 run-lead. 

But, ever since that first Forum post my teams have been getting crushed. Today, and after I took some of the advice and got rid of Mike Marshall '74 (for some reason I have noticed that 1974 in particular pitching stats are not priced as valuable but don't know the reason - Watergate maybe?), shipping him off for one team in exchange for Gossage '78and Rivera '2007 - and Rivera promptly blew a save and the team lost anyway.

Yesterday four closers - Lee Smith, Rivera, Marshall and Mudcat Grant (actually he usually does well if you get the right year - I have to write these down - WHIP of 1.09) all blew saves in the 9th in four simultaneous games for four of my teams in different leagues. After that I am ready to face reality. In fact the team I just put together is called Facing Reality. Today, after I got Rivera and Gossage for one team, and got George Sisler on waivers batting .322 all 7 teams lost. My overall record is now 37-81. At least I won't break the 1962 Mets record. I think. No chance this all the people at the parent company of this one messing with my team in late innings cause they don't like my left-wing comments and team names? Nah. 

Anyway let me know what you think of the team when I send it to you. I see that a winning team will have to mix some pre-WW I and post-WW I batters and have high average - though again I have to normalize it - I don't trust averages from 1930, but I also for the same reason didn't trust those from the deadball era, nor pitching stats - so I guess I have to pull out the Baseball Encyclopedia and figure out who was better than average that year. But I am willing to learn and to compromise within reason. I still won't use a 3-man staff, it is just ugly and no one alive in the world today has ever seen a team use a 3-man rotation for a season. So it is not a baseball simulation, it is just a math glitch. Ugly. Too many 3s. But I will mix deadball and modern pitchers and try to find equivalents. 

The fact is, most of my teams are hitting. It is not really that, except for you know who, that the pitchers can't be hit, and even he who shall not be named can be as many here have pointed out, with the right batters and approach. But it is costly - you want George Brett (don't know if he can, just an example) at .390 then you are going to have four guys who can't hit a cantaloupe behind him. So how do you win that way? 

I now know to go by WHIP first of all, though I don't know yet how to determine an normalized adjusted batting average, or to figure out how many normalized homers somebody hit - except the obvious - Yaz' .301 in 1968 led the league, in 1998 it was not that impressive, in 1930 you batted 8th and in 1904 couldn't make the team with that average. 

Homers I gather I need to think it through - 1977 I think Nettles led the league with 32 (!) - the '70s were low scoring for some reason, even after the 1969 spurt of offense after they raised the mound back after the 68 pitcher's heaven. 

Anyway, sorry for the long-winded reply and many thanks to you and the others trying to get me on the right track. Still having fun. But tired of seeing L after L when I check the day's results. 

Italyprof, you can search the normalized stats in the draft center. Down at the bottom of the page when you're doing a player search there's a drop down to change the search interface. Make sure it is on "Advanced." This will give you all of the searchable stats.  The most important ones to search by are the + and # stats. The + stats are the normalized stats. In short, it shows on a 100 scale how much better or worse than the league the player was in that particular stat. The # stats are what you could expect from that player in a neutral stadium against historically average opposition in that particular stat.

Another very important search option is the Performance History. You can access this by clicking on a players name and then selecting [Performance History] from the top section. This will show you how many times this player has been used in OL/CL, as well as detail their best, worst, and average seasons in OL/CL usage.

Also note, some of the # stats are rounded (WHIP, AVG, etc...) and others are truncated (HR/100AB)...

Got a lot more to learn than I thought.  Maybe relearn.  Maybe better go to Remedial WIS Baseball.  Went 0-9 today and lost 2 games by 17-2 and 19-2.  Sheeeeesh.

Marzacco, contrarian and just4me thanks very much. Yes, I have been learning from you guys and building better ball teams, which along with work, fatherhood and general chaos of life is why I haven't responded sooner. 

I see that things work now if you use the methods you guys are all telling me to employ. I have a 4-3 ball club in a new league based around Joe Morgan - not even the mid-70s expensive JM with the Reds but Astros, plus Barry Larkin, high average, doubles hitters. They have won 3 games in the last at bat. 

I am either going with one deadball pitcher per rotation . plus moderns - yes I found Joss '07 (not his best year, but much better than who I had) on waivers and shored up one crashing team. Walter Johnson or M.Brown on others. 

But option two is to find a modern equivalent of the effect of the 3-man Joss etc. rotation. Not the same but if you eschew 3 starters...so while Koufax is costly (I have him in a theme league team about to start, where the budget is $110 w/DH), there is Gibson 68 or 69, Koosman 68, a couple of Catfish Hunter years and depending on the year, believe it or not, and I agree nostalgia has to go out the window even for a Yankees fan from the 60s, yes, Mel Stottlemyre. His 1968 is a sort of anti-Joss so far - he is 5-1 with an ERA under 1.80 for me in one league with a team that is something like 17-30. 305 IP. The trick is that since 4 starters are more expensive than 3, and you want good ones, to choose carefully, using the advanced and # stats you have all gotten me to use, plus are careful about how to organize the bullpen, you can do better with moderns I think. 

Against running offenses I high K pitchers are useful, but an A+ catcher I am finding is already a stronger defense against it. So it's Rodriguez, Carter 75, Parrish who like Rodriguez hits a ton, Kendall is tricky - his good batting years don't easily tie in with his A+ arm years, but you can use an A and get an A+ back up if you really need him. 

One new team has won 5 straight and is now near .500 after a rocky start, another is 4-3, a third, a power team, straight SLG # ratings (John Stone for one) with Babe Ruth and Willie Mays, plus pitchers (like Stot) with very low HR/IP ratios is playing in Coors field. My sister lives in Denver and the team is sort of named for her. They won their first game 8-3 and Ruth homered. So far so good. 

None of this is world-shattering or even contender material, but it is progress and competitiveness. Some of my early badly constructed teams, at the cost of the 10% Waiver Wire penalty are playing better too - I try to take the 10% off the bench and bullpen, first putting a lousy second-string on waivers, accumulating enough to "trade" a bad starter for a good one. So far great results. Teams performing at or over .500 since major changes. 

So that means that there is even an alternative to the "get very expensive players so you can trade them in on waivers later" strategy, namely get an expensive bench (relatively) and if the starters aren't working use the bench as capital to upgrade the starters. If the bench is deep enough - there are several inexpensive (under $1 mil) Luis Sojos and Vizcainos, - if you have both as your two main back up Infielders, if you need to let one go you have the other and an AAA to cover rest days. 

I have had two main flaws: as you point out Marzacco, one is going with favorite players (by the way my single favorite player, Mattingly, though I don't use him for teams with different themes) is hitting well over .300 everywhere I put him, at least 3 teams right now. But I like Boog Powell, Kusziewski (spelling?), even John Mayberry among others have low SO rates which is always important to me, with power. But yes, I have moved away from that model substantially. Latest team is built around Boog and Carl Yazstremski. Amazing no?

The other flaw has been too much value on the bench and especially in the bullpen. Now, the bench shouldn't be overdone it seems to me, but I have had a lot wins already from Sojo - he is actually carrying one bad team I created early on, and Homer Bush has been the other base runner in two of the Joe Morgan 9th inning comeback rally wins. He and Sojo can both be gotten for under a million. 

Bullpen has been the main problem or rather overall IPs. I over-reacted, calculated badly and have learned. I still always click one last time one some high IP reliever like Gossage or whatever out of anxiety that after four starters, one long reliever and a closer with say 90 IP I really have enough, but then let it go and trust the universe (and all your advice from experience). But some of the middle relievers are gems: In two different leagues, Dallas Green (terrible manager of terrible 1990s Yankees teams) has been unbelievable: 20 IP and ERA at 1.80, and 13 IP and ERA at 1.63 I think, something like that. at 120 IP and low priced a bargain unless he falls apart late season, we shall see.

In answer to what I teach, I don't know what the protocol is here for personal info since some of you have been here for years, and maybe long ago exchange real names or whatever. I teach Sociology, Government and International Relations at an American university in Italy, and have lived here for years, and have taught at a number of American colleges in Italy. My wife is Italian and my daughter born and raised here, but with both passports and both languages. 

I miss the US sometimes but not in a serious way and make it to see my family in NJ and sometimes even sister in Denver most years depending on finances. But the one thing I missed most was baseball. I pay the more or less hundred bucks to MLB.com to watch games all year, but since the time zone difference is significant, mostly that means the occasional day games, though once in a while during the season even if I know the result I will watch last night's Yankees game, even if I have to fast forward a little for time, over morning coffee. 


Thanks everybody. My pleasure in all this has not just been baseball, learning a new and challenging discipline with all of the statistical knowledge required going beyond the everyday level of knowledge of the game. But also getting to interact with highly intelligent, fun and courteous people, who are willing to help both out of love of the game and this SIM game but also to make the competitive more interesting. It has been a great experience so far and I really hope my one bad moment, when I got grouchy with a few fellow owners over vetoing a trade for a deadball pitcher for a team that was sinking (and now has sunk) has not burned any bridges with anybody here. I apologized for it publicly on the owners' forum in the league and do so again now. My bad teams are my fault, their improvement often largely thanks to several of you here. 

The ole' professor. 

Oh, ps, two things: 

first, I have found that getting to the bullpen, a strategy the late 90s Yankees' dynasty used against the best pitchers (but failed to employ against Schilling and Johnson in 2001) does work often against the great deadball pitchers. Two ways to do it:

1) keep the game close with a good starter, so your hopefully better hitters can get to the almost by definition thin bullpens that come with the 3-man rotation. This is where SOME middle IPs are needed, because if you are behind the SIM often pinch-hits (I had Mordecai Brown, just picked up on waivers pitching yesterday, down one run, it pinch hit for him, and then a bad reliever lost it. argh). So the superiority of your bullpen if you don't overdo it can help I have found, but I WAY overdid it before, so the starters were getting blown out and the whole bullpen was on mop-up essentially. But I have beaten Joss, oh, maybe 2 times out of 5 lately that way, as well as Walter Johnson (my WJ beat someone else's WJ yesterday in Coors Field), and Mathewson. Not every time but if you 2-3 against the best pitchers, I figure you can go .500 against the really good ones, and over .500 against the not so greats. 

2) and you all probably know this, so excuse me if I am telling you things you figured out years ago, high BB ratios for your batters to run up the pitch count. That type of batter is not hard to correlate with a good contact and hit rate. My teams are winning some games in the late innings lately. 

Finally, I did not say Marshall was the best reliever ever and now see that ERA is a very weak guide (though aesthetically if two pitchers are otherwise identical in WHIP# and OAV+ etc. with IPs being comparable I will always go with the one with an ERA under 4.00 instead one at 6.73, SIM or no SIM, Bill James or no Bill James, Italy is built on aesthetics: fashion, the Renaissance, old churches, pretty women, it wears off on you, even if your idea of aesthetics is New Jersey truck drivers originally. Anyway I digress. I said that he had the greatest year ever. Now statistically that is probably refutable or already refuted,but he pitched 240 innings, and I would like to see almost any other reliever since 1890 do that in the first place. Second he almost single-handedly pitched the Dodgers into the World Series, though once that great A s team got on the board early it didn't do the Dodgers much good in the Series. 


ciao. 

The secon