Returning to Stratomatic Blogging

Natural Stratomatic League – Seattle Pilots

Background and update

After a 7+ year time out, I’m back to blogging about Strat baseball. I am the manager of two teams, The Seattle Pilots in the Natural league and the Bellingham Bozos in the SOMISA league. I’ve been in the SOMISA league since 2003. Additionally, I’m beginning to do Strat-o-Matic season replays. I will provide updates on all of this in the upcoming days as I update my Blog to bring it current.

In the Natural League, I inherited a team last year that finished as the 3rd worst but it should be very good for the coming season. I made several big changes trading away the 3rd overall pick (Lindor? Seager? Syndergaard?) plus my 3rd round pick (#43 overall), Odorizzi, Moustakas, Suarez, Carlos Gonzalez, Detwiler, Paxton and Gyorko. In return, I received Boergarts, Cueto, Estrada, Cecil, Strop, JD Martinez, Casilla, Clippard and the 9th overall pick.


This gave me a great starting shortstop, two quality starters and three excellent relievers. With a team that was too Left handed, Gonzalez for Martinez helped balance the line-up. The hope is that pick 1.9 will yield a good player like Sano or Buxton. Pick 2.3 should yield a young starting pitcher.


The team now looks like this..

  • 1st base…       Chris Davis
  • 2nd base…      Brock Holt
  • 3rd base…       Manny Machado
  • SS ……..         Xander Boergarts
  • LF………         Andre Ethier/David Peralta
  • CF………         JD Martinez
  • RF………         Jason Heyward
  • Catcher….      Yadier Molina/Nick Hundley

_________________________________________________

Starting Pitchers

  • Johnny Cueto
  • Marco Estrada
  • J.A. Happ
  • Jason Hammel
  • John Danks

__________________________________________________

Bullpen

  • Aroldis Chapman
  • Pedro Strop
  • Santiago Casilla
  • Brett Cecil
  • Tyler Clippard

__________________________________________________

With the addition of the top two draft picks, it is expected that this team would win 85+ games and make the playoffs. the hope is this is a top 4 team that can compete for the championship.

More to come after the draft, unless a mega deal changes things significantly.

Advertisement

2015 Somisa Stratomatic Season

2015 Somisa Season 

Preparation for the season

The 2015 Somisa season was an amazing experience. My team is the Bellingham Bozos. I have been in this league 11 years finishing no better than the loser in the ALCS in the best two years. The team had talent but not enough to win anything.  After finishing out of the playoffs in 2014 and with a slightly better than average team, I decided to take a bunch of risks and make wholesale changes and see what the result might be. This was a huge departure from previous management style, giving up the top players in two drafts to have a ready to win team.Through trades, the team had three first round picks including 3rd overall, in order to turn things around and compete those picks had to be moved. The biggest risk was trading three 1st round picks in 2015 for Beltre and McCutchen. 
On the draft side, there were two targets, a reliever and an outfielder. The 23rd pick was Brock Holt. An unusual pick in that I don’t want Red Sox on my team but due to his positional flexibility, it seemed to make sense to add Holt. The 28th pick was Ken Giles, who appeared to have the inside track to be the Phillies closer if they traded Papelbon. He had good stats for 2014 so he would be useful in the coming Strat season. (Papelbon did get traded but so did Giles and he starts 2015 as the closer for Houston.) Both players had key roles in the team’s success.

Results

One third of the way through the season, BEL was 27-24 and not particularly showing great things. 

At week 18, two thirds of the way through, BEL rose to 60-45 or a record of 33-21 during this part of the season.

At the end, BEL was 99-63 which meant the last third was 39-18 as many teams faded due to player availability due to limited usage.

The team had an exciting year featuring great performances by Wainwright, Beltre and McCutchen. Phil Hughes won his 1st 11 decisions before cooling off significantly afterward.
Beltre, McCutchen, Markakis and Reyes all batted in the .290 range with Wainwright going 19-4. The bullpen of Betances, Chapman, Bastardo, Ottavino and Giles performed outstandingly and kept the team in many games with high quality relief. One somewhat secret weapon was Mike Fiers who qualified to start or relieve and he was a critical player down the stretch with big plans to use his flexibility in the upcoming playoffs.
The team finished 99-63 qualifying as the top team in the AL with home field for the playoffs. The expectations were high that this team would advance at least through one round as the first opponent, WYN, seemed to be on a downward trend as the season ended.

Here is the summary of how those trades turned out…

Traded Away   Received back
2016 pick 1.18    2016 pick 5.16 
2016 pick 2.18   Adam Wainwright
Aaron Crow   Adrian Beltre
Alismendy Alcantara   Andrew McCutchen
Buddy Carlyle   Brad Hand
George Springer   Brock Holt
Hiroki Kuroda   Chris Stewart
Howie Kendrick   Collin Cowgill
Jacoby Ellsbury   Dellin Betances
Jake Odorizzi   Eric Sogard
James Loney   Francisco Cervelli
Jesse Hahn   Ken Giles
Jon Singleton   Kevin Quackenbush
Josh Beckett   Kyle Crockett
Josh Rutledge   Phil Hughes
JP Arencibia   Santiago Casilla
Matt Moore   Scooter Gennett
Mookie Betts   Stephen Vogt
Rafael Soriano    
Tommy LaStella    
Yasmani Grandal

 

    

1960 Stratomatic Replay

Replaying the 1960 baseball season using Stratomatic

            1960 yankees small                    1960 pirates small

Why?

My first real awareness of Major League baseball was in 1962 when I saw the last game of the World Series won by the NY Yankees in seven games. The game was kind of boring as I remember the Yankees scoring a run on a bases loaded, double play ground out. The final play was quite exciting (a Willie McCovey line-out to Bobby Richardson with two runners on base). I had no idea who McCovey was but I did know Willie Mays who was on deck.

 

I don’t remember much of the 1963 season either although I did come home from school in time to see Ray Barker strikeout for the last out of Game 1 of the World Series. (Koufax complete game with 14 Ks) I also remember a HR in Game 4 by Mickey Mantle, the idol of my youth, off Koufax but the Yankees ended up on the short end of a 2-1 game and a four game series sweep. I was hooked on baseball and love the NY Yankees and have been a lifelong fan.

 

In my early days of playing Stratomatic baseball, My first set of teams was the 1966 season for Yankees, Mets, Giants, Dodgers, Orioles and Twins.  I also bought a set of “old-timer” teams. One of those teams was the 1961 Yankees featuring Roger Maris and his 61 HRs and a record setting team. (Other teams were 1922  Giants, 1927 Yankees, 1934 Cardinals, 1941 Yankees, 1940 Reds, 1941 Dodgers and the 1946 Cardinals.) I started playing with the 1922 Giants and found out that Casey Stengel, the withered and buffoonish manager of the early Mets teams, had actually be a ball player too!

I have no real knowledge of baseball in those days just before I became a big fan and annual baseball card collector. I bought many packs of cards with the hard pink gum sticks in them. Baseball cards were a great way to become familiar players and statistics. I was very interested in all of these things as I became aware of the game of baseball, statistics that drove the game and strategy of how the game was managed.

 

Outside of the famous players like Mays, Aaron, Kaline, Clemente, etc., I don’t know much about the teams or players from the late 50s or early 60s except for those who were still active in the mid 60s.

 

How?

Stratomatic makes it easy to play teams vs. others from the same year, across generations, separated into draft leagues, etc. there’s practically no limit to the possible permutations and combinations of potential replay seasons.

 

To get a true feeling for the teams and players, I chose to play all of the games for the Yankees, White Sox, Pirates and Braves. The 1960 was the last season before expansion began so there were only 8 teams in each league and the schedule was 154 games. When the teams are playing each other, I plan to play as the Home team and let the Computer manage the Visitors. For all games not involving any of the teams mentioned above, the Computer will manage the games. This means each team plays the other teams 22 times per season and the entire league game total is 616. For the replay, this means I will play 286 games to complete each league’s season.

What happened in MLB in 1960?

My recollection of baseball history for 1960 is from reading about one specific play… Bill Mazeroski hit a HR off Ralph Terry in the bottom of the ninth inning in Forbes Field in Pittsburgh to win the World Series in a walkoff. (Note: This is the same Ralph Terry who was pitching in the bottom of the ninth with the tying run on 2nd in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series.)

The key official records from that season (from Wikipedia)…

 

What will I report on?

The plan is to report on each league, each month. I plan to discuss the team and league leader results and stats and report on any weird or wild games that I am involved in.

PLAY BALL