THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Looks very interesting, but as a 20-year PTP and DLB player (funny that he never mentioned DLB in the email), which I consider the gold standard in this arena, I worry about trying to simulate too many additional variables. Usually, past some point, replicating more variables weakens the simulation, and that puts a real damper on realism. Most hardcore guys bitch and moan about the realism of the game.

I do love the idea of fielding difficulty on batted balls. I never quite liked how in DLB you don’t know how difficult it was to handle the ball until after the play is resolved. (I always interpreted a high number as “tough ball to handle” and a low number as “easy play”.)

I didn’t read the whole PDF, but I hope this designer considers a serious improvement to the injury system: separate ratings for frequency and severity. It always bothered me that a guy with a nagging injury (think McGwire’s heal) had the same injury profile as a guy who needed surgery. Part of what makes it tough to manage with a nagging injury is the risk of “can he play today or not?” and having such a player play 40 straight games then be injured for 52 days doesn’t capture that issue.

On that topic, I’d like to see a day-to-day injury system where the duration of the injury is in doubt. We don’t always know that a player will be out for exactly 5 days or exactly 7 days. If it could be 8-12 days, then you might not know for the first 3 or 4 days whether it’s worth putting the player on the DL.

Stealing always seemed too easy, but I don’t know how to deal with that situation.

I wish I had enough time to commit to playing the game. I would probably enjoy it.

The author mentions a baseball board game thread. Which thread is he talking about in particular?

Thanks for this PDF—this actually convinced me to *not* buy the game. I think it sounds fantastic; but I enjoy playing these games solitaire ... not having a solitaire option means I *need* another player to enjoy it ....

@3 My read-through of the PDF made me utterly unlikely to buy the game as well. The things he considers an improvement over DMB (still the standard) generally are not. And the IBL game, a PtP derivative, is free, if you’re looking for a card game, albeit without pitch-by-pitch but with weather, park effects, so on and so forth.

Clearly they are an improvement to SOMEONE, otherwise, they would stick with DMB.  I’d shy away from thinking that because *I* don’t like it, then it MUST be inferior.

He has gamer-led actions as he noted.  If that’s not your cup of tea, then it makes it inferior.  If it IS your cup of tea, then it’s an improvement.

That’s why a review of a game, or a movie, is based not on your personal feelings, but on how the creator intended for his work to be received.

Is cricket better or worse than baseball?  Well, that depends on who you are.

I thought the PDF was great - it sounds fascinating and I am impressed by the thought that went into development.  Unfortunately, not being able to play solo is a deterrent for me, too.  Looks like it would be very time consuming and I don’t know anybody in my circle of friends that would like to get into this level of detail as much as I would.  If only this were out when I was in college ...

I think I’m just a different type of gamer. I like games like OOTP and DMB because I like setting up rosters, evaluating players and seeing how the team plays out over the course of a season or a decade. I’ll micromanage the playoff “elimination” game but usually autoplay pretty much the rest of the season (though frequently spending 4-5 hours each season evaluating a draft or trading players around).

While the concept of letting a ball roll fair/foul is somewhat interesting, I don’t know if it really impacts things over the course of the season. Pitch-guessing against another opponent might be fun, but I’d almost rather play rock-paper-scissors since it would have similar end effects and, besides, a single game would take so long that I wouldn’t be real invested in my team. Also, I wonder how much of the guessing would be skill vs luck and whether there’s some repeatability.

And yeah, a solo mode would have been bice.

I have forwarded the 5 emails to Tim.  I am leaving it up to him to contact whoever he wants to offer a trial.

Whenever the person wants to publish his review, I will be happy to host that review here.