THE TALK SHOW

Host: Glenn Guzzo

Reminder: Send us your “‘Great Moments in Strat” – your playing experiences that you just have to share.

 

THE DOG DAYS OF A STRATO SUMMER

My dog Astro "playing" Strat-O-Matic yesterday.

 

Ironically, my wife gave me this young lady on Feb. 25, 2017 (my 59th b-day) and she was 12 weeks old.  We named her after the Jetsons’ dog.  I always tell my wife how baseball can be linked to every part of our lives and, lo and behold, who ended up being the 2017 World Champions?! (Had I known this "cause and effect," I would have named her Yankee!)

 

             Hopefully you can somehow share this photo with other Strat fans!

 

Larry Wigbels

 

            Proof that Strat-O-Matic is fun for the whole family. Love it!

 

 

 

DETAILS, DETAILS

 

For rule 27.55, is it earned runs or runs for the pitcher to become fatigued?

 

CATCH-X, Fly (lf) X, Fly (cf) X, and Fly (rf) X, and even some GB Xs are almost always located on the same dice splits for all pitchers. Especially CATCH-X is always 4 or 10. This can’t be constant throughout the MLB and I have always wondered the reasoning behind it.

 

Pitchers should have hit by pitches on their cards especially since some pitchers are way wilder than others. It shouldn’t be only on hitters cards.

 

For rare plays some of them are repeated and I think there should be one where a baserunner passes another baserunner.

 

There should be triple plays that can occur other than from the lineout into as many outs as possible.

 

Andrew Horvath

 

1.     Runs, not earned runs.

2.     X chances to each fielder occur on the same number of card chances for every pitcher: seven chances to the SS, six to 2B, three each to 3B, CF and C, two each to P, 1B, LF, RF – 30 card chances in all. That’s the way the game was designed. With only three card chances, the placement must be on a roll of 4 or 10, or else a combination of 2 or 12 with 3 or 11. For a result on two card chances, the placement has to be on either 3 or 11, or a combination of 2 and 12. There are no other possibilities.

3.     You aren’t the only one to suggest this for HBP. When SOM made that decision nearly 50 years ago, it would have been all-but-impossible to assign the responsibility for each HBP to the batter or pitcher. As far as I know, that data still is unavailable today. We do know that for pitchers in 2017, the range of HBP was 0-14, while it was 0-24 for batters – despite that the typical regular starting pitcher had about 100 more Total Batters Faced than the typical lineup regular had total Plate Appearances. That suggests the batter is more influential in causing HBP. I suppose SOM could decide arbitrarily that, say, 40 percent of a player’s HBP should be assigned to the pitcher card. I don’t know if such an arbitrary rule would satisfy purists, but as of now a more accurate way to do this doesn’t occur to me.

4.     If we spent 30 minutes discussing rare plays, I’m sure we could come up with hundreds of other possibilities. To include them, SOM would have to include several pages of charts, at a dollar cost to you and a playing-time cost.

5.     I think your triple-play suggestion asks for a difference without a distinction. A triple play always will end the inning. Who gets the putouts and assists is of no consequence to any SOM stat-keeper I am aware of. The triple plays you request would be very rare plays. However, if this is important to you, innovate: On any triple-play roll the dice again, if it’s a triple 6-6-6, make it a groundball 5-4-3 where the first out is a putout by the third baseman. You could add more freakish triple plays involving outfielders and/or run-downs on 1-1-1, 2-2-2, 3-3-3, 4-4-4 or 5-5-5.

 

 

BEEN WAITING SO LONG

 

I’m hoping Strat is coming close to reprinting the 1962 Baseball Season. That was the first year that the Company printed entire season, and what a season it was. The Giants and the Dodgers both winning over 100 games forcing a two-out-of-three game playoff, which San Francisco won in dramatic fashion in the ninth inning of the third game.

 

Players like Mays, Aaron, Frank Robinson, Mantle, Kaline, and others had tremendous years. And the most famous last place team in history, the expansion New York Mets losing 120 games, finishing 80 games under five hundred!

 

Phil S., Passaic NJ

 

            You get no disagreement here about the merits of upgrading 1962 to Super Advanced form, both in terms of baseball history and Strat-O-Matic history. (In fact, I recently completed a replay of the 1962 American League, having completed a 1962 NL more than 25 years ago.) This year, with the release of an upgraded 1968 on the 50th anniversary of that season, perhaps SOM is newly attuned to anniversaries as marketing hooks. If so, 1962 could be the one for 2021 (SOM’s 60th anniversary), 2022 (60th anniversary of that season) or 2023 (60th anniversary of that season’s initial SOM release).  But if SOM waits that long, I expect we will have several more appeals from Phil and others before then.