While we are no longer going to use the "TIERED" format for determining At Bat Usage, I thought it would be interesting to compare this year's At Bat tiers to last year's.

While not having tiers, we will still have an Unlimited level. Because all players are getting a 110% boost

to their At Bats, this UL level will be 600 "Adjusted" At Bats. This is 545 actual At Bats.

Another big change is that the prior format did not start the tiers until players had 101 At Bats. Those with fewer were limited to their actual At Bats. Now all these players will get the 110% boost, though that won't

be more than 10 extra At Bats. The reason for including all players (pitchers too) is that the Strat Game will be set to give the 110% boost across the entire league. So the game will display the actual use for nearly all your players. The exception will be those pitchers with an ERA of 5.25+ who will be declared

BAD PITCHERS and given usage bonuses.

 AB's  2021  (Total)           2022

551+             43                                              545+     51

501-550        41  (84)                                                  39  (90)        

451-500        49  (133)                                                39  (129)

401-450        27  (160)                                                40  (169)

351-400        28  (188)                                                44  (213)   

301-350        43  (231)                                                44  (257)

251-300        49  (281)                                                42  (299)

201-250        59  (339)                                                46  (345)

151-200        53  (392)                                                56  (401)

101-150        57  (449)                                                56  (457)

Less than 100     I Did not include this for comparison as the 2021 totals includes many pitchers while 

                           the 2022 numbers do not. 

The elimination of pitchers batting increases the At Bats for other players. 

The lack of September call-ups en masse has reduced the overall number of players getting MLB At Bats but those At Bats lost out by call-ups are going to others so it evens out. In fact, for whatever reason, MLB teams used far more players than ever before. While active rosters are 26 and only expand to 28 in September, the average number of players used by each team was 55. ARZ for example used 26 batters and 33 pitchers.

Plus there were another 9 batters that appeared on the roster at some point but did not record an At Bat.

These players are not included in the Strat game. The most was SFG which used 69 players during the

season. My guess is that while not bringing up players in September, teams were bringing various players up

and down all season long resulting in the large number of players appearing on rosters throughout the year.

Specifically what we see in the chart above is that the number of players getting a lot of At Bats is pretty much the same as last year. So the "overall number" (seen in parenthesis) is about the same. Some tiers will

have less in 2022 like the 451-500 but other will have more, like the 401-450 and 351-400 tiers.

It's possible that the greater number of players with 350+ At Bats, 213 vs 188, could be attributed to the 

reasons listed here....pitchers not batting and fewer call-ups.

But overall, there really is little difference in the MLB use of batters compared to other seasons.

While many players are gaining At Bats with the new "X110%" boost to At Bats, some players are losing the At Bats they would have gotten using the decades old tiered system. Just how does this break down?

Every 50 ABs was a new level. Those with less than 101 were limited to their actual ABs, and those with

551 were unlimited. This worked pretty good but there was a downside to this system. A player with 101

ABs was allowed 150 ABs. A player with 149 ABs was also allowed 150 ABs. This was a bit unfair.

And along with this was the problem that the percentage of ABs gained was greatly different with each tier.

A batter with 125 ABs would gain 25 which would be a 20% increase. A batter with 425 ABs would gain 25 which would be a 6% increase. 

Under the new format, everyone will get the same 110% boost which will naturally be the same 10% increase for everyone. 

The Chart below will break down where the old and new formats gain or lose At Bats for you.

The BENEFIT shows at what point in the tier that you now gain with the new format.

OLD shows the number that gained with the old format.

NEW shows the number that gain with the new format. 

TIER         BENEFIT     OLD      NEW

101-150                137               36               14

151-200                183                32              18

201-250                228                27              23

251-300                274                23              27       Shifts in favor of the new format at this level

301-350                319                18              32

351-400                364                13              37 

401-450                410                  9              41

451-500                445                  5              45

501-550                501                  1              49 

    UL                     now at 545 

So besides the advantage of all players getting the 110% boost, those with more usage will get the greater benefit. According to the chart in the previous section, that's 299 players. 

As for my own Dairymen Team, I have 20 batters on the current roster after some obvious releases.

Of those 20, 16 will gain At Bats, 2 will stay the same, and just 2 will lose At Bats.

So that's quite a hefty gain.

Notes: