I wish they would have matched the Negro League set to the HOF set, which is really, really nice. If you've ever played Strat, or wanted to, I'd strongly suggest picking these up. (Not that I've seen the Negro League set, yet.)

I'm seriously considering purchasing the Negro League set. The price is a bit high, but I've got a feeling it's worth it. How many players does the HOF set include?

I remember seeing some of these cards; IIRC, Cool Papa Bell's card has a roll (2-12, I think) that says "out: hit by own line drive"!

The Chicago Sun-Times had a quite similar article, but this one is better, I think.

The Negro League cards (which look a lot snazzier than the "regular" cards) are $39. The computer disk is $27.

Presumably due to their recent switchover to 21st century technology, they've also brought their formerly extra-high shipping prices down to nearly nothing, so that's nice.

How long has it been since Strat-o-Matic cards looked like this? Those are the ones I remember.

My son and daughter are just 4 and 0.87 now, but I can't wait to get SoM cards and dice to play with them. Age 7? Age 9?

My son and daughter are just 4 and 0.87

No need to ask what you do for a living, database boy.

Pardon my ignorance, but how does a company like Strat stay in business in this day and age? I would think it would be fairly trivial to reverse engineer their ratings, and that presumes that one considers those ratings gospel to begin with. What's their unique value-add?

What's their unique value-add?

Brands have a lot of value. You could ask the same of pretty much every packaged goods product produced today.

My son and daughter are just 4 and 0.87 now, but I can't wait to get SoM cards and dice to play with them. Age 7? Age 9?

9 seems late. It is more complicated than poker? My sister and I were 18 months apart and player poker for Halloween candy at 8 and 6, I think.

Pardon my ignorance, but how does a company like Strat stay in business in this day and age? I would think it would be fairly trivial to reverse engineer their ratings, and that presumes that one considers those ratings gospel to begin with. What's their unique value-add?

It's not easy to reverse engineer their ratings, but who would want to? It's been ca. 30 years since I played, but I still get the occasional card set and play the extremely rare computer game. Seeing that a guy is a "1" fielder remains an inherently cool thing to see and it's irrelevant how or why they get there.

From a purely business perspective, they have a system that prevents piracy of the computer stuff and have enough fans of the paper stuff to squeak out a decent living. Without the former, no decent living.

deputydrew, it appears that they have put the HOF set and the Negro League set together:




300 card Hall of Fame and Negro League Combo

It's $69.95, and it looks pretty cool.

How many players does the HOF set include?

I believe the Negro League set has 103 individual players, but several of them have both pitching and hitting cards. The HOF set has 192 players, all of the HoF players up through 2000, plus Rose, Jackson, and Mays.

Thanks, gents. I lost my first game versus the Sun-Times reporter(whom I allowed to load his team with the best Negro Leaguers), so with the Slate guy...I took the '27 Yankees...made him take the '27 Dodgers. Career record versus the media...1-1.

Brands have a lot of value.

Oh, of course. But this would be not all that far from where Apple was in the early days of OS X. A target market that is squarely amongst the people most likely to have the ability and willingness to use your products in ways that you don't want because it doesn't meet your revenue stream. I'm not bagging on Strat or anything, I'm just curious.

Seeing that a guy is a "1" fielder remains an inherently cool thing to see and it's irrelevant how or why they get there.

This is exactly what I mean, btw. If someone else sold a set with ratings for 1/3 the price with 1/3 the overhead, how loyal is the customerbase? Is that what their model is based on? It would seem so.

Pardon my ignorance, but how does a company like Strat stay in business in this day and age? I would think it would be fairly trivial to reverse engineer their ratings, and that presumes that one considers those ratings gospel to begin with. What's their unique value-add?

No, it's not fairly trivial at all to reverse engineer their cards. People have tried for years, and no-one has been able to do it. People have come close, but there are certain variables that Strat keeps as secret as Coca-Cola keeps its formula.

As far as the fielding ratings go, you have confidence in strat's rating simply because they put so much work into it, not only taking statistical ratings, but input from people inside the MLB organisations. You could make the ratings yourself at a cheaper cost, but you wouldn't have access to the many sources that Strat has gathered over the years.

People buy Strat because they have confidence in the product - the people that work there know what they're doing, and work incredibly hard to make the most realistic game they can. A startup firm trying to do the same things would never have an inch of the confidence you feel in Strat, that they try as hard as they are humanly able to get things right...

No, it's not fairly trivial at all to reverse engineer their cards. People have tried for years, and no-one has been able to do it. People have come close, but there are certain variables that Strat keeps as secret as Coca-Cola keeps its formula.

Aha. Interesting.

So it seems from the second paragraph that for a commercial competitor there'd be a rather large barrier to entry, and a cheapskate who wanted to make his own cards wouldn't be able to do so efficiently (remotely), both due to the existing relationships with MLB people. And that combined with the goodwill would seem to be the value-add.

This is why you ask questions. :) I don't know why I got so curious about this, but thanks!

How long has it been since Strat-o-Matic cards looked like this? Those are the ones I remember.

Probably quite a while. I've been playing since '87, and I seem to recall them always at least having a color scheme (blue on the left-hand side, red on the right-hand side.)

how does a company like Strat stay in business in this day and age? I would think it would be fairly trivial to reverse engineer their ratings, and that presumes that one considers those ratings gospel to begin with. What's their unique value-add?

I'm not sure this is the right question. You could "reverse-engineer" the cards, more or less, in the sense that they're based on probability, and you could figure out all the relevant probabilities for each player. e.g., assuming his card will be rolled 50% of the time, what chance of a hit should we assign a player who got a hit 30% of the time, in a league where the average player got a hit 25% of the time? Figure that out for every offensive category, and every player. Then do the analogous thing for the pitchers. Very simple ;-)

You can't "reverse-engineer" the defensive ratings, in the sense that you probably don't have access to talk to the reporters, scouts, etc. to whom SOM talks. But since the ratings are subjective (largely based on reputation), you could just make up your own ratings, and they wouldn't be provably any worse than anyone else's.

So sure, if you had a few hundred hours per year to spare, you could devote it to doing all that. SOM's "value-add", presumably, is doing it for you.

(The PC game will in fact let you enter cards. You do have to have the set that you're claiming the player is from -- for instance, if you say the player is from 2005, it won't work unless you have the 2005 set. But I suppose you could just call every new season "2005"; it's not like that matters in the game.)

No, it's not fairly trivial at all to reverse engineer their cards. People have tried for years, and no-one has been able to do it. People have come close, but there are certain variables that Strat keeps as secret as Coca-Cola keeps its formula.

As District Attorney says it isn't that hard. I created a whole set of hall of fame cards based upon each players second best seasons one summer. And this was many years ago so I didn't have the benefit of a computer. Now it was time consuming and I wouldn't do it again and hence the value added.

Now diamondmind is so much a better game that the real question is why, other than nostalgia, does anyone play strat when they could play diamondmind.

Isn't Diamond Mind computer only?

That would be the biggest reason that our league wouldn't switch over. We play face to face, with cards and dice.

I'm not sure this is the right question. You could "reverse-engineer" the cards, more or less, in the sense that they're based on probability, and you could figure out all the relevant probabilities for each player. e.g., assuming his card will be rolled 50% of the time, what chance of a hit should we assign a player who got a hit 30% of the time, in a league where the average player got a hit 25% of the time? Figure that out for every offensive category, and every player. Then do the analogous thing for the pitchers. Very simple ;-)

No, it's not, for a couple of reasons. You've got two variables that are going to throw things out of whack. The first is the "X" rolls that come only off the pitcher's card, which represent rolls that involve the fielders. SOM incorporates the results that will happen from the fielders cards into the pitchers card; i.e. a pitchers cards from a team with a great defense will be different from a card of a pitcher who played in front of a lousy defense, even if both had the same stats, because the likelihood of getting hits off the "X" rolls is built into the game, and is different for each team. If you don't know the fielding ratings for the defensive players, and you don't, you can't build a pitchers card based on just stats.

You also don't have access to the ballpark ratings; the cards take into account how each ballpark affects both home runs and batting average for both lefties and righties, and this is also figured into both pitchers and hitters cards. You could make an attempt to figure this out, but you wouldn't have the exact figures. There's also a formula for exactly what percentage of home runs by a batter or against a pitcher will come from straight home runs, or from the ballpark homerun, and SOM doesn't release that, either.

So even though we do indeed have the basic stats for each player, if you tried to make a card for a player, it wouldn't look like the card that SOM comes up with...

I've played SOM for decades; I've only played the Diamondmind demo, but off that experience, I prefer SOM.

Very simple ;-)

No, it's not

Yeah, I know ;-) You could do that same type of math with the fielding ratings you make up, of course. And I'm sure the ballpark ratings can be closely predicted from the real-life ballpark effects in that given season. But seriously, why the heck would you do all this?? I dunno how little your time would have to be worth to make it cost-efficient to put in all those hours rather than spend $50...

Isn't Diamond Mind computer only?

That would be the biggest reason that our league wouldn't switch over. We play face to face, with cards and dice.

Yeah, it is computer only. However, I've played against someone face to face on a laptop. But I do know some guys who are hardcore Statis-Pro freaks.

Statis-Pro was the first one I played, long ago. I loved it...because I didn't know any better.

I miss the crazy 'Rare Event' tables though. :)

No, it's not, for a couple of reasons. You've got two variables that are going to throw things out of whack. The first is the "X" rolls that come only off the pitcher's card, which represent rolls that involve the fielders. SOM incorporates the results that will happen from the fielders cards into the pitchers card; i.e. a pitchers cards from a team with a great defense will be different from a card of a pitcher who played in front of a lousy defense, even if both had the same stats, because the likelihood of getting hits off the "X" rolls is built into the game, and is different for each team. If you don't know the fielding ratings for the defensive players, and you don't, you can't build a pitchers card based on just stats.

You can adjust for all of these things. Moreover at the time I checked to see if the number of X rolls was standardized and it was. Every pitcher had the same number of X rolls. Once you know what it is, you can adjust for it. Now I was working off of the hall of fame cards and maybe they use more sophisticated methods for other cards but I doubt it.

You also don't have access to the ballpark ratings; the cards take into account how each ballpark affects both home runs and batting average for both lefties and righties, and this is also figured into both pitchers and hitters cards. You could make an attempt to figure this out, but you wouldn't have the exact figures. There's also a formula for exactly what percentage of home runs by a batter or against a pitcher will come from straight home runs, or from the ballpark homerun, and SOM doesn't release that, either.

I wasn't trying to replicate the advanced cards. In any event it wouldn't be necessary to replicate strat-o-matics formula since there is no reason to believe their way was the best way.

That would be the biggest reason that our league wouldn't switch over. We play face to face, with cards and dice.

That, of course, is different and sounds very fun. However as far as the computer games go, I've played them both and I don't think they are particularly close in any area.

You can adjust for all of these things. Moreover at the time I checked to see if the number of X rolls was standardized and it was. Every pitcher had the same number of X rolls. Once you know what it is, you can adjust for it. Now I was working off of the hall of fame cards and maybe they use more sophisticated methods for other cards but I doubt it.

Yes, every pitcher has the exact same formula for how many "X" rolls are on his card. You'll have 3 possibilities for a GB(3B)X out of 108, 2 for a FLY(LF)X, and so forth. That's the same for every pitcher, and it always has been.

What I'm saying is that SOM constructs its pitchers cards for each individual season differently, and that a pitcher whose defense gives up more hits than an average team will have correspondingly less hit chances on his card than a pitcher with the same stats who plays in front of a team with excellent defense. The chances for an "X" roll are exactly the same for each pitcher - the results of those chances are not, and are figured into the construction of each individual card.

Vortex, I've played both Strat and Diamond Mind on computer, and I prefer Diamond Mind. The simple reason is that it handles platoon splits and fatigue better, although I could give a more detailed analysis. I'm curious what you think the strengths and weaknesses of each are since your vote goes the other way.

Vortex, I've played both Strat and Diamond Mind on computer, and I prefer Diamond Mind. The simple reason is that it handles platoon splits and fatigue better, although I could give a more detailed analysis. I'm curious what you think the strengths and weaknesses of each are since your vote goes the other way.

To be perfectly honest, as I mentioned, the only time I played Diamond Mind was a demo, (I remember one of the teams was the 1969 Cubs, and I think the other was the 1969 Mets), from the late 1990s. I checked the web site, and they no longer have a downloadable demo, so I can't do that anymore, and the computer that held the old one is long gone.

From my hazy recollections, I disliked the fact that it's a pitch-by-pitch simulation, rather than a batter-by-batter simulation, which seemed less user-friendly to me. I also seemed to remember that it lacked the player entry/edit feature of Strat, and I believe, the auto-trade option, although I'm not certain of that. I can't really remember much more, except that I played several games, and it just didn't enjoy it as much as Strat, so I never bothered playing it again.

Part of my reasoning for not changing now is that I've spent a decade-and-a-half fine-tuning my SOM solitaire league to include 195 draft teams and over 6,000 players from MLB, NPB, AAGBL, and the Negro Leagues, from all eras. I've put a huge amount of work into it, and trying to do it all over again is a task I don't even feel like contemplating...

You can create and edit players in the latest version, but it still doesn't have the auto-trade option. Pitch-by-pitch is another thing I put in the balance in its favour, possibly the most important one! How'd I forget it?

Anyway, I was just curious, I'm not trying to convert you.

My favourite feature in Strat is the bullpen manager, where you can set a given game-state where an order of preferences for relievers can be specified. That's way better than Diamond Mind's role depth charts.

I also seemed to remember that it lacked the player entry/edit feature of Strat, and I believe, the auto-trade option, although I'm not certain of that.

DMB's player entry feature is way better than Strat's. I created an entire season disk for 1918 using it, and other gamers have filled in I believe all the remaining seasons before DMB's earliest "official" season of 1927. Does Strat still limit the number of players you can create per team? When I quit playing SOM c.1995, I think you were capped at creating 12 "fringe" players per team.

One idea on my long-term radar is a DMB season disk based on composite player "cards" of MLB stats grouped by college attended. Southern Cal and Arizona State have some pretty ferocious teams. Despite all the players Texas has sent to the majors, they have surprisingly little offense to speak of among the top-tier college programs.

DMB does not have any auto-GM features which gamers have asked about for years and do remain a significant difference between the two games.

Now diamondmind is so much a better game that the real question is why, other than nostalgia, does anyone play strat when they could play diamondmind.

Concern for the future direction of DMB after the catastrophic Tippett/Meyers ownership changeover might be one.

Did anybody here like the old Bill James Classic Baseball?
If so -- what's the nearest thing to that out there, now? I liked BJCB a lot.

I made my own based on the d20 system, which is nowhere near what you would like in terms of granularity for a whole season, but for one game or a series it works just fine. I wanted to be able to play a whole game in about 10 minutes.

Pardon my ignorance, but how does a company like Strat stay in business in this day and age? I would think it would be fairly trivial to reverse engineer their ratings, and that presumes that one considers those ratings gospel to begin with. What's their unique value-add?

I think that baseball simulation board games is one market where being the Mac to Strat-o-Matics PC in market position would be tough, at least if one likes to have enough money to pay for rent or food.