• At last, gamers will be able to program pinch-hitting and pinch-running pecking orders. Create priority lists for pinch-hitting vs. righties and lefties, and reverse righties and lefties.
• Set lineups for any type of pitching foe, defined by range of balance ratings (e.g. one lineup to face lefties with balance ratings of 6L to 9L, another to face lefties with balance ratings of 3L to 5L, etc.).
• You can do that lineup thing in as many varieties as you want, because the number of preset lineups for each team will be expanded from five to 50. Replayers will love it, too. Imagine setting lefty and righty lineups for every period of the season (weeks, months, etc.).
• Computer Manager Hal is going to be smarter about creating alternate lineups when a regular is unavailable or preset lineup is blank. “The game now senses situations where a player in the lineup can be moved to cover an open position (where no other available player is eligible to play that position),” the Help File reads. “It does this by subbing in a bench player who can play the newly opened fielding position. This code will reduce the number of times a player is started out of position.” 

 
ADD HOURS TO YOUR LIFE. Save tons of time with these “Easy Buttons”:

• A single button in the Update Computer Manager dialog will auto-fill your starting-pitcher schedule based on your existing rotation. No more dragging and dropping 162 times. Get your rotation started, click the button and the game will fill the rest, starting with the first blank spot. “This can be used as-is, or you can use it as a base to work from since you can edit the individual games on the Starter Schedule,” the Help File assures.
• Like to set certain standard Manager Tendencies, Super Hal Baserunning and Super Hal Bullpen Strategies for all the teams in your league? Hate having to do it one team at a time? With Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2014 you can import a single computer manager to another team, and another, and …
• Speaking of Super Hal Baserunning, a new button allows you to reset all baserunning categories to a particular percentage. “For instance, if you normally use 65% for baserunning advancement you can click the "Reset All" button and enter in "65," the Help File coaches. “All baserunning categories will then be set to 65%, and then you can edit some individual categories to adjust the percentage as you see fit. Before the introduction of this button you would have needed to set every category individually, which is time consuming — especially if you are setting computer manager baserunning for an entire league.”
• Once you are playing, there’s another new convenience: All the info on the current batter-pitcher matchup available via the Compare button on the lineup screen can be displayed without switching screens. Just select the new “Detail 4 Pie” option to get a text box on the game screen instead of the usual Pie Chart. The new box will display percentages in 10 categories.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. Even the ones we love can frustrate us from time to time. Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2014 offers stress relief:

• More Netplay Stability means fewer crashes. It means not have to reset ineligible players before every game in a series.
• An optional feature that logs player-move errors in “as-played” season replays will make it easy to see and fix potential problems when a player schedule to be in the starting lineup is otherwise listed as ineligible.
• Draft-O-Matic no longer will treat “double duty” batter/pitchers as separate players.
• More than a dozen bugs have been exterminated. Some involved statistical reports, boxscore and game-story items and an occasional issue with the Out of Town Scoreboard.

DO THE MATH. Always a strength of Strat-O-Matic’s computer games, the stats are ever-better, including these number-crunchers in Strat-O-Matic Baseball 2014:

• The Player Compare data accessed from the lineup screen now includes on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Elsewhere, listings will display “OPS” and “WHIP” instead of other terms, saving you the chore of adding stats.
• Box scores will list seasonal totals for RBIs.
• Run-scoring differential, displayed in black (positive) and red (negative) will be added to the standings display.
• The Player Detail Report has a new section that shows Games Started at each position including games started as the Designated Hitter.

LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE. Stats aren’t the only way to communicate:

• Social-media updates for Facebook and Twitter are included.
• The Cuban and Dominican national anthems are options for games played in a Cuban or Dominican ballpark or involving Cuban or Dominican teams.
• Many new lines of play-by-play will include team nicknames. 

• On Base Percentage
• Slugging Percentage
• Groundball – Double Play percentage
• Strikeout Percentage
• HBP Percentage
• Walk Percentage
• Single Percentage
• Double Percentage
• Triple Percentage
• Home Run Percentage

• A problem with the compression routines which could result in intermittent crashes was tracked down and corrected. This situation was likely the cause of a number of seemingly unrelated problems.
• A new way of handling eligible players was created so that in subsequent games within a series batters and pitchers are no longer automatically become eligible.
• Better support for including scheduled starters in the list of eligible players (before this code was added a scheduled starter who was listed as ineligible sometimes caused a variety of problems).

• Added WHIP to Main Game Screen, Player Detail Report (on Averages Line), Team Detail, and Misc/Sabermetric reports
• Changed "OB+SL" heading to "OPS" on Player Detail Report, Team Detail, the Report Writer, and the Main Game Screen
• Change "PROD" on 2nd Grand Totals League Report to "OPS"  

• Minor league eligibles were being capped at 25 even if you didn’t have the 40/25 mode turned on.
• There was an encyclopedia bug with the "X F" type players (from back in the 1990s) where the SQL code was not handling players with 1 character first and last names.
• Fixed a bug in the Player Notebook where the Career Tab was not showing for certain players even though the encyclopedia was properly assigned to the league.
• Other encyclopedia tweaks were made to improve the matching of players. Fixes were made to match Double Duty pitchers better, and to match very low usage players better (their low usage sometimes caused trouble finding a unique matching record).
• On rare occasions the Super Hal Report would list a start that did not exist within the starter’s schedule.
• The computer manager substitution code had trouble recognizing when the team’s only backup at the position being subbed for was already in the game, this has been resolved.
• Game Story – A number of game story glitches have been cleaned up.
• There was a bug with the Eligibles button on the pre-game setup screen while using "as played" data. When there was a non-asterisk starter that started with less than 4 days rest the "as played" feature properly allowed the pitcher to start un-fatigued. But if you clicked on the Eligibles button before starting the game then the starter was being tagged as being fatigued. Note: a similar problem existed for Scheduled Starters (when not playing with as-played) and it has been resolved as well.
• The RISP 2-OUTS section of the boxscore was being miscalculated in some circumstances. 
• If a double-duty "starter-only" pitcher was used to pinch-hit then the computer manager was using him in relief instead of bringing in a pitcher who was rated as a relief pitcher. This, for example, would happen quite often with 1938 Red Ruffing because he was his team’s primary pinch-hitter that year.
• The Player Detail statistical report was showing an incorrect number of walks for the "Clutch" and "Loaded" categories.
• The Out of Town Scoreboard would sometimes show one or both of the current game’s teams. This was due to a file being left over from a previous run of the game.
• The corners were sometimes positioned In by the computer manager when not using the Super-Advanced rules (this was also happening in the Lite game).
• After a pitcher was added to a team’s roster the Superhal Bullpen pecking orders did not always show the pitcher, or it would sometimes show another pitcher twice.
• The Wildcard section of the League Standings had a bug where the magic number was not showing for some teams that were tied for the last available playoff spot.

• 6 new ballpark pictures – Los Angeles (day), Texas (day and night), Tampa Bay (day), Anaheim (day), Pittsburgh (day).
• 34 new ballpark entry pictures – Chicago-AL-6, Los Angeles-7, Texas-4, Tampa Bay-8, Anaheim-4, Pittsburgh-5

• Over 1,100 new lines of Nickname play-by-plays have been included!
• All 30 team play-by-play files have been edited and updated for 2014 season. 

• n.b. Some of these sets include Read notes inside the roster’s Zip file.
• 1876 <> 1900 AP files cleaned up (by using New Feature #10)
• 1876 Adds NYN Carver PB rating
• 1917 Adds new 99 set
• 1920NG 2 Name changes; 1 bat hand change
• 1931NG 1 Name change; SLG manager added
• 1961 Improved AL trn; corrected a few pitcher strikeout totals
• 1969 Improved NL trn
• 1969 Replaced NYN Jorgensen card
• 1973JL Replaced OSJ Gondo card; 1 Name change
• 1975 Added MON Dwyer CF rating
• 1982 Improved NL trn; improved CHN Default Lineup vs LHP
• 1992 Corrected CLA Alomar Name; edited team code ATN Glavine 99 card 
• 2012 Debuts Multi-card AP set; Improved lup, trn, and schpit