THE OFF SEASON - PREPARING FOR 2022

A summary of the USPBL's 2021 season appears elsewhere.

Here we look ahead to the 2022 Season, the USPBL's 43rd.

The plans for the USPBL's 2022 Season entails reverting back to the  pre-2021 rules.

The Major Leagues played a full schedule so we'll be back to what had been our norm for many years.

Rosters will go back to 40 players.

Those designated TEMP Players will be returned to the APL.

Rotation Draft will return to 7 rounds, all done using the current Facebook Messenger format.

Usage will go back to what it had been. Unlimited At Bats will return to 551+.

Strat had several odd choices for game products this season. Once again we will have to wait and see what's going on before we make decisions regarding this. 

We did make a change to the Robinson-Musial Leagues for the first time in 20 years.

Because we've had an open team in the R League nearly every season for the past 8 or so,

the commish decided, after conferring with several others, to move a team from the M League into the 

R League to change this up a bit. Bob of the Bucks County Bandits,  said he would agree with what we felt would be for the league's sake and volunteered to move to the R League. This also moves the open team(s)

which Scott Adams has been controlling, to the other league away from his own. Not that there had been

any conflict of interest as Scott led both his team AND the open team to the playoffs this season. His success with the open team led to the obvious choice for him to continue this task.

We welcomed a new manager for the first time in 6 years when Patrick Lacaille joined us taking over the

former Open Team #12, now the Fort Worth Knights. 

The playoffs are moving along and 2 of the first four series have been decided.

WIS defeated WDW in 6 games. The Wizards' Kenta Maeda and the Dairymen's Kyle Seager were honored.

OTB will host FMM. Mike C is running the Open Ghosts vs the Riptide and is down 1 game to 3.

MIX defeated CHC in 5 games as CHC's offense stalled. Corbin Burnes picked up 2 wins giving up 2 runs in 13 innings. Their offense was balanced. 

LSR is up 3 games to 1 over the Open Ghosts team.

The Dates for the drafts appear in the CALENDAR and the format and dates and format for the Money Draft appears on the MONEY page. 

Before everything went online around the late '90's, we used to read hard copies of printed materials.

Really, we did that. Strat had a newsletter publication back then called Strat Fan.  Actually there is a disclaimer within saying "Strat Fan is NOT part of the Strat-O-Matic Game Co." It's independently published by Glen Guzzo. (who still writes on the Strat webpage.) I had a stack of these but they suffered severe water

damage years ago and only 4 copies survived. Three are from 1997 and one from January 1998 which was the very last issue. I recently referred to an article from the September 1997 issue so here's what was all

in that issue.

First, Strat Fan addressed all the Strat-O-Matic sports games. So while Strat Fan mainly focused on the

baseball game, it also addressed in order of prominence, basketball, football and hockey.

This September 1997 issue is 24 pages including the last page which is the Gamer's Marketplace with what we could call classified ads. The only "ad" is from Strat for the RATINGS BOOK.

Being the September issue, there are more articles for the Basketball, Football and Hockey games

than in other issues. There are still 7 pages related to baseball but that is less than usual. There are 4 pages

on Basketball including interesting articles on "Should You Run the Fastbreak?" and "Basketball Playing Tips". There's 3 pages on Hockey and 3 on Football. The rest are of general Strat interest.

The Baseball articles:

Some complaints with the game followed by a reply, much more a rebuttal, from Bob Winberry, the computer

programmer for the game. As is the norm, his replies to nearly all the complaints are that Strat is always

right and everyone else is wrong. At least that's how I read it.  One of the main complaints was about Strat's

terrible customer service and lack of followup with problems. They "improve" aspects that aren't really a problem while ignoring those that are. Winberry's answer to most of the complaints was that in order to improve, they would have to hire more staff which would increase the price of the products. "Customers have told us that they do not wish to pay more for the product" was his answer in summation of all the problems.

Another article was "Anatomy of a Startup Draft". Of interest here was the idea that the priority is to start with a great LEAD OFF HITTER. Hmmm. 

The article I want to address was only 1 page long. It's entitled "Another Mighty Swing at Those Lefty Bashers". A reference was made to an earlier article which apparently featured a promise by Hal Richman

(Strat's creator) to modify the Lefty Basher Syndrome. 

There's a lot said, but here's the gist of it. I've used quotes when citing the article directly.

Strat does adjust some heavy stats, reducing them slightly vs LHP.

When SOM adjusts a player, they move his stats from one side of the card to the other so that his overall

stats will not be altered significantly. This is actually aimed primarily at keeping his team's stats in line rather than the individual player involved. Remember that Strat maintains that the majority of it's gamers are not in Draft Leagues like ours, but rather use STOCK TEAMS to run complete seasons. They are more interested

in the stats of the league and teams rather than the player. The big difference is that that group is more likely

to use the player realistically than we do. In the USPBL, we might have a player that's lopsided so we use

them only against the pitcher for which they excel where as in reality they were used to match what they would have faced in their Major League season.

Hal Richman takes the  approach that he wants the game "to be credible, and to have that, SOM should not

encourage a gamer to use a player unrealistically". Therefore the idea is to weaken the player who is lopsided vs LHP while improving them vs RHP so that they are more likely to be used realistically.

Even with whatever minor adjustments that were made over the years, these extreme lop-sided cards still exist. The MAX RULES have an option for "Throttle Back Monster Cards" which will make Hal's adjustment even more pronounced for those running Stock Teams. 

As for the LH pitchers themselves, the adjustments are made to the hitters and not the pitchers which in turn makes the hitters a little better and the pitchers a little worse.

Probably the most important thing to watch for when looking into how much a player will be penalized for being overly lopsided is on the card itself (and available in most stats). On the cards for both hitters and pitchers (though the matter here regards hitters) there's a section for LEFT/RIGHT. This shows:

B) L, R, or S

BAL) The 3R, 5L, E and so on. You get this.

VS L)  This is the key here. This number percentage should be around 22-30%. 

This percentage is important because if it's lower, the player didn't face LH that often and the game doesn't want you to have them face LH often either. So they have penalized the player somewhat, especially if they

played a lot mostly facing RHP.

Betts is an 8R that played everyday with 25% facing LHP. If you use him on a stock team he would be used everyday, probably face lefties 25% of the time, and probably hit close to his actual stats. In a draft league,

he might play only against LHP giving him less ABs but a greater numbers in the percentage categories. 

In the USPBL, the owner did use him everyday and his numbers are remarkably accurate!

But when it comes to those with less ABs, especially those with less than 250, their numbers can be out of whack if overused vs one pitcher or the other.  Take Kyle Higashioka for example.

He's 150 AB guy (with our pro-rated numbers) who hit .250 with 12 homers and OPS of .771.

He's an 8R with 33% vs LHP.  In the USPBL he was used for 146 ABs vs RHP and 4 vs LHP. That's just

3% instead of 33%. He hit .300, 17 homers and OPS of .985. He wasn't used like he was supposed to be

used and benefited from that mis-use. In Hal's world, he would have been used for 50 ABs vs LHP and 100

ABS vs RHP so his stats would have better reflected reality. Oddly, this is an example of a player doing so

much better vs a RHP.

Garrett Cooper is an 8L, with 33% vs L. He was used for 48% vs LH and his OPS was +114 over actual.

He was used for more ABs vs LHP than actual and he made the most of this.

An example of real Lefty Bashing is a player who's lopsided in favor of LHP but didn't actually

face LHP that often. Take a hitter like Jordan Luplow. He's a 6L  47% vs L.  He was used for 168 ABs.

So he should have 79 ABs vs LH and 89 vs RH. But he was used 137 L / 31 R and his OPS was +78

and he had as many extra base hits with far less ABs.

Wilson Ramos is a 2L with only 28% vs L. He was used vs L 77% of his ABs and performed better. Not much better, but better. 

The point is that there are some very lopsided "vs L" hitters that can use all their ABs against the LHP

making them more dangerous than the "vs R" hitters. And if their "Vs L%" is actually low, they will have their stats reduced to discourage gamers from using them vs LHP. So you might have a hitter who actually

hit .350 vs LHP but only had 12 of their 120 ABs vs LHP (10%). Don't expect their card to reflect this .350 batting average.

TEAM PAGES

(submitted by Mike Carpenter of Team 1 BRM)

BLUE RIDGE REVIEW

The 2021 Blue Ridge Mountain Menace season was another disappointing campaign, but we expected it.

We actually did a little better than the front office thought, not reaching 100 losses and having seven other teams finish below us. How?

The offense was led by DH Corey Seager, a Musial League All-Star. Despite hitting in a pitcher friendly

park, he finished with a .927 OPS, .289 batting average, 42 doubles, 45 homers and 119 RBI. Almost all our other hitters didn't reach expectations. inclusing 4 regulars or simi-regulars hitting below the Mendoza line.

Eloy Jimenezhit .233 but did rip 30 doubles and 29 jacks. Aaron Judge had 24 homers but struggled otherwise and our team batting average was .215 was the lowest in the league. The team OPS .651 was the lowest by 50 points as everyone else was over .700.

Gerritt Cole, the ace of the staff, struggled to pick up wins and was in danger of reaching the 20 loss plateau the last month of the season. He had a 3.91 ERA with 311 strikeouts in 260 innings, but was only 7-19 and 160 K's in 144 innings. Masahiro Tanaka ended his BRM career with a decent 9-11 mark, a 3.71 ERA and an 193 strikeouts in 191.2 innings. 

The season ends on a sad note as long-time Menace starters Tanaka, Johnny Cueto (10-10, 4.72 ERA) and David Price (opted out) will not be on the roster next season and Matt Carpenter ended his Blue Ridge tenure by hitting .141. Good luck gentlemen. 

Glad it is over - and next year we welcome back one of my favorite players, Buster Posey.

Hitter of the Year - Corey Seager

Pitcher of the Year - Vivtor Gonzalez

RULES?

The Constitution rules posted here are just the basic rules which will primarily be useful for recruitment.

The full Constitution is still posted on the HOME page but is not entirely up to date. It's from 

2018 though very few changes have occurred since then.

The updated version will come soon.

The few rules that have been updated since the 2018 version

are that that the Minimum Relief

for rosters is 350 Innings. The period for changing ballparks now extends to most of the off-season, from October-mid March. A minor playoff rule regarding relief pitcher usage has been clarified rounding usage to the

nearest 1/3 inning.

UPDATED in JANUARY

A ballot with a proposal as to

whether allow Playoff Rosters to

change after each round passed

by a 12-1 vote.