Wednesday, October 27, 2004
What Are the Nerds Trying to Tell Us?
In a mad fit of random web-surfing I managed to end up on the official Strat-O-Matic records page. This page lists the all-time records for online Strat-O-Matic leagues. There are some doozies here. Barry Bonds hit 97 dingers for both the St. Upid Hose Monkeys (naming fantasy league teams is probably as fun as naming porn movies) and Going Going Gone. Bonds also drove in 218 RBIs for St. Upid. Jim Thome has managed 231 Ks. Ichiro racked up an amazing 762 AB, but collected only 249 hits.
There's a pretty good spread in the records. Bond's feats outperform reality, while Ichiro falls a Baker's dozen shy of his own real-life mark. But there's one category that sticks out like a sore thumb. IBBs. The record is held by Bobby Abreu with 30. Not 120, 30 - Bonds has 8 seasons with 30 or more IBB, and yet in Stratoland online nobody has ever put up a season with more than 30.
Bill James once said something along the lines of "prospective managers should be forced to play 1000 games of Strat-O-Matic before they are given the job." This is to prevent Dusty Baker wannabes from playing littleball in the first when the wind is blowing out. There's something to be said for this. But 30 IBBs? Well, some of this comes from the fact that the game play is plate-appearance by plate-appearance, a pitcher won't fall behind 2-0 and then decide to give up the IBB. But a huge number of Bonds' IBBs this year were decided before he strode to the plate. Perhaps Strat managers are a little smarter than Brian Sabean, and have a bona fide slugger batting behind Barry. Even still, 30 seems like a small number. You have to go down to #16 all time to get to 30 IBBs.
An interesting case was the Maine Bears I. Bonds slugged .994 by playing in Coors Field, yet no IBB avalanche - of course, having Pujols in the lineup might have had something to do with that...
At the end of the day, I think that online Strat players have to be the nerdiest of the baseball nerds, and they've run the numbers. If their league records show that they almost never intentionally walk Bonds, that might be the best method.
posted by David 10:45 AM
