In LIVE play, when a potential base stealer is on, you have the option to HOLD the runner close to to the bag. In fact, when playing against Sparky during a LIVE game, he almost always uses HOLD when even an outside threat is on base. The downside of HOLD is that it draws the pitcher's focus away from the hitter, slightly, and gives the batter a better chance in the PA.

Could this be yet another reason why SB and speed teams tend to excel in leagues? LIVE play is the exact same engine, after all.

Posted by ozomatli on 9/24/2016 8:32:00 AM (view original):
In LIVE play, when a potential base stealer is on, you have the option to HOLD the runner close to to the bag. In fact, when playing against Sparky during a LIVE game, he almost always uses HOLD when even an outside threat is on base. The downside of HOLD is that it draws the pitcher's focus away from the hitter, slightly, and gives the batter a better chance in the PA.

Could this be yet another reason why SB and speed teams tend to excel in leagues? LIVE play is the exact same engine, after all.

From what I remember of playing LIVE, though I haven't played in a while, you *have* to HOLD on anyone that's even slightly a running threat or you *will* be stolen on. So yeah, having running threats helps. Just like it does in real life. Same principle.

i think ozo was more interested in the first sentence of the second paragraph

I've played a few live games over the years...ok a lot of live games and in my experience sparky only "holds" with 2 outs unless something has changed. His INF IN is a different story he'll turn that on with runner on 3rd less than 2 outs quite a bit. You should have posted this in the GHOST TOWN known as the live forum, you probably will get quite a bit of feedback on the subject there. As for speed teams, I believe they excel even more in live because RL SB % carryies so much weight in the sim engine but the SBA % keeps this to a mild factor in simmed games where as in live you can run as much as you'd like with a RL 15/16 SB guy, I believe I've been over the 350 team SB mark a couple times with live teams and that's probably only playing 50-70 of the games live. The one exception to the rule is Rickey Henderson...the sim hates him!!