bryanfagan wrote:
Pitch mode/batter mode.....This might be the wrong answer but when my team is up I bat and when they are not I pitch. Is that what you were asking?

I think the pitching part of the game is something I need to learn more about. I learned recently that if I replace a pitcher with a batter I do not have to warm up the relief pitcher when I bring them in. I have a feeling there are other parts of the pitching game I have yet to learn.

It's a great game and there is very little room for error. I'll get the hang of it the more I play.


If I might get into the discussion and respond to Bryan's orginal question about improving his strategic and tactical decision-making and, therefore, improving the records of his 1969 teams--the Red Sox and Cubs. I agree with Spaceman that DMB (and real life baseball) are humbling experiences. I am amazed and sometimes depressed about how often I seem to make the wrong decisions and how often those decisions can come back to bite me. For the most part, however, the results in DMB and real life MLB are pretty much a reflection of the aggregate statistics of the teams.

There are a few notable exceptions. One is the 1948 Cleveland Indians, which consistently does better in DMB simulations than in real life. In real life 1948, the Tribe ended the season tied with the Red Sox and two games ahead of the Yankees. Cleveland clinched the pennant by winning a one-game play off game against Boston. Cleveland's real life win-loss percentage was .626, Boston's .619, and New York's .610. On the other hand, Cleveland was a statistically dominant team in all categories and, as a result, it's pythagorean win-loss percentage was .686 (or 60 points higher than its real life percentage). Boston's real life performance was pretty much on target with it pythagorean number--.613 vs. .619. New York also underperformed in real life with a win-loss percentage 37 points below its pythagorean number. In other words, one could argue that the real life 1948 Indians, while winning the AL pennant and the World Series, actually underperformed. Looking at their game-by-game results on Retrosheet, it's clear that the Indians lost a lot of one-run games. Whether that's attributable to bad luck or manager Lou Boudreau's poor decisions I couldn't say. What I can say is that DMB results reflect Cleveland's stats and are very much in accord with the pythagorean outcome of the 1948 AL season. Virtually every time I have autoplayed the 1948 AL season, the Indians win the pennant by 20+ games. The Yankees normally finish second and the Red Sox a distant third.

Looking at the 1969 Red Sox, on the plus side they were a very powerful team. The Bosox led the AL in home runs and slugging. Carl Yastrzemski and Rico Petrocelli each hit 40 homers. Reggie Smith hit 25 and Tony Conigliaro 20. George Scott hit 16 and Mike Andrews 15. The Red Sox did finish third in team batting (.251), but that was well below the team batting averages of Minnesota (.268) and Baltimore (.265). The Sox also were third in OBP (.330), but again were well below the OBP's of Baltimore (.343) and Minnesota (.340). And, has so often been the case throughout Red Sox history, the Bosox were weak defensively in 1969. They were 9th in ERA (3.93), thirty points above the league ERA and 10th in fielding percentage (.975), below the league average of .978. As a result of all of this, the Red Sox scored 743 runs and gave up 736 runs in 1969. That produced a pythagorean win-loss percentage of .504. In real life, the Red Sox had a win-loss percentage of .537 and finished in third in the Eastern Division, 22 games behind the Orioles. One might argue that manager Dick Williams, even though he was fired near the end of the season, eked out every possible win from this team, but in the end, given the statistical dominance of the Orioles (and Twins, who won won the AL West by 9 games), the Red Sox finished about where the stats indicate they should have finished in 1969.

I hope that Bryan has a great time recreating the 1969 season, and I hope that he does as well or even better than Dick Williams did in real life. But, unless Bryan "cheats" drastically, my expectation is that no amount of strategic and tactical tinkering will let the 1969 Red Sox catch the 1969 Orioles...and that is a reflection of and a credit to DMB's excellent statistical engine.

Edited 6 times by Mike Hais 06/14/11 2:46 PM.