Simulation Baseball

 All Time Baseball League-simulation baseball

Many years ago, I bought my first computer, a Commodore 64.  This was back in the early ’80s, and the best part about having a computer was the ability to play games.  I had purchased an external floppy drive for my C64 just so I could run a baseball simulation game.  The game came on a huge 5 1/4 inch floppy disk, and these things were fragile (unlike the small 3 1/2 disks of my early word processing days).  I had seen an ad for the baseball game in some computer magazine (we didn’t have the fantastic internet resources of today back in the early days of personal computing) and I had to snail-mail my order and wait for the disk to arrive for what seemed forever.  But when I received the game, I was well rewarded for my patience.  The best part about the game was the ability to assemble All-Star teams to play against the computer, set your lineups, pull your starter for a middle reliever, pinch hit, hit and run…you get the idea.  For such a simple program, it had a lot of options and I played it until the disk wore out.  At that point, video games had begun to arrive, although I never found one that was a simple to play and had the complexity of options until my sons began to acquire PlayStations and X Boxes for birthdays and Christmas.

During my younger days, I played APBA and Strat-O-Matic baseball with friends or solo for many hours.  Of course, the neighborhood kids played baseball and football outside when the weather was good (or at least not terrible), but rainy days and late summer evenings were special times to indulge in baseball simulations.

I began to play fantasy baseball seriously 5 years ago  and that has proven to be a rewarding if time-consuming pastime.  While trolling the internet for fantasy baseball information, I discovered a site run by Lou Poulas entitled Sweet Lou’s Baseball Lab (that site, unfortunately, no longer exists, but the link will take you to his new site, Fantasy Baseball Hall of Fame).  On one of his posts, Lou talked about a baseball simulation league he ran, The All Time Baseball League (ATB, for shortcut purposes) and was asking if any readers wanted to join him and his friends in playing a simulated baseball season.  I immediately applied and was accepted, increasing my level of joy by many degrees.

The software that makes the simulation possible is Diamond Mind Baseball (much more information about DMB can be found on the internet).   The software is simply amazing:  not only does it handle player stats, it also makes allowances for ballpark factors, hitter and pitcher production by era, fielding abilities of players, and many other esoteric permutations concerning a team or player’s performance.  I recently starting reading Fantasyland by Sam Walker and was not all that surprised to learn that the software was used in preparing for the Tout Wars draft by the author.

Injuries also play a major role in DMB and by extension, ATB.  If your ace goes down with an injury, you need to pray that your 6th starter can fill in for you until the injury timeframe expires.  This season, at last count, two teams had lost 131 games to injury, and my squad had lost its ace, Greg Maddox for 12 games in May (thank goodness for Liriano!) and my starting catcher, Jason Kendall, for 53 games.

Players will invariably slump during the simulated season, as well as go on hot streaks.  This season, we are playing 4 simulation sets per week, which results in 15 games or so being played per week (rainouts are an infrequent, but expected occurance, depending upon the home team’s ballpark).  The key, as in all baseball, is to ride out the hot streak and bench the struggling players.  The commissioner has set up a nifty lineup spread sheet that is to be submitted prior to the week’s simulation, but this year, I’ve pretty much left my original lineup choices intact.

For this season, my team is playing consistently well.  I am, unfortunately, in the division with the best team in the league so far, so have had no chance to taste first place, but barring a horrible collapse, should place as a wild card team.  I base this optimism on the  manner in which I drafted my team this year.  In my first year, I was so enamored with being able to draft my favorite players that I rashly added players to my team that had never performed well in the world of ATB, like Denny McLain and Jose Reyes (granted, Reyes was a very late round pick, who I added as a potential pinch runner).  I started off hot that season, but soon dropped to mediocrity even with Barry Bonds on my team.  I missed the playoffs, having played 17 of my last 29 games on the road.

The next year was an unmitigated disaster.  I joined with another fantasy baseball player I know well, and we pooled our knowledge to draft what we thought was a great squad.  We went with power hitters and pitchers with lots of strikeouts and low WHIPs.  We finished dead last in our division, having ignored the adomnition to draft for defense.

My third attempt has been much more rewarding.  I don’t take the algorithms to the extreme that our commish, Lou, does in determining player values, but for my draft technique this year, after the first few rounds where the absolute studs are selected, I tried a new tack.  I drafted the best available player that had an excellent or very good defensive rating and who batted from the opposite side of the plate of my starter for hitters.  As for pitching, I selected thsoe starters with the best WHIP and RC27 ratings possible, using ERA and K/9 as secondary selection qualifiers.  I was pleased when at the conclusion of the draft, Lou told me he liked my team (not as much as his, since he has the best squad to date).

One thing that my ATB participation has done for me, as a fantasy player, is improve my Excel skills, since with all the information available, and all the players that have histories in the simulation, an owner can get overwhelmed with data if hs isn’t selective at what he uses to value his draft picks. My team, as drafted for anyone interested, is as follows:

Batter                    P

Ben Chapman         2b

Dave Concepcion   ss

Jim Edmonds          cf

Gary Gaetti            3b

Mark Grace           1b

Pete Hill                 cf

Jason Kendall         c

Buck Leonard        1b

Eddie Mathews      3b

Darrell Porter         c

Joe Tinker              ss

Chase Utley           2b

Larry Walker         rf

Zack Wheat            lf

Frank White          2b

Willie Wilson          lf

Rudy York             1b

Pitcher                     P        T

Manuel Corpas        rp        R

Octavio Dotel          rp         R

Joey Eischen           rp         L

Chad Fox                 rp         R

Joe Horlen               sp         R

Al Hrabosky            rp         L

Francisco Liriano    rp         L

Greg Maddux         sp          R

Tom Niedenfuer     rp         R

Fritz Peterson         sp         L

J.J. Putz                    cl          R

Charley Radbourn  sp          R

Jose Rijo                  sp           R

I drafted Maddux first, and followed that pick with Eddie Mathews.  At that point, I proceeded to fill my lineup, except for catcher, which after the top 5 or 6 really drops off in quality.  I grabbed pitchers at what I thought were proper value points in the draft, never reaching but always trying to snag a quality arm that would give consistent results.

Currently my team is at 45-34, with a devastating 4 loss streak at the end of the last sim to overcome.  That losing streak coupled with a 10 game win streak by the current second place team in my division leaves me 14 1/2 games behind the leader, but still in second place for a wildcard berth.

Time to scour the free agent market for a backup catcher, as I now only have Darrell Porter as my backstop and that concerns me.