Thursday (28 Mar) - Playing "What If . . ."

Thursday (28 Mar) - Playing "What If . . ."

The Strat-O-Matic computer game can be played in a lot of different ways, from manually playing the game batter by batter to auto-playing entire seasons in a few minutes. It has huge flexibility. Over the past few days I've put in a lot of work getting the Reality and Promise leagues ready to go for the start of the 2013 baseball season. The two leagues are ready to go. So . . . why not run a test simulation now? I could play the entire seasons of the two leagues to make sure that everything is truly ready to go. That would just be an excuse, though. I'm just really curious to see what the outcome would be. I'm still going to play out the season day by day. The auto-play would just give me another data point for comparison. The only funky thing is that I have to use the 2012 schedule of games. Which means that the Houston Astros will be playing a National League schedule of games even though the team is now in the American League. It probably helps the Padres a small amount - the Astros are about the only team that is worse than the Padres. I'm also not sure how the computer handles auto-playing inter-league games. Since inter-league play has been around awhile, I assume the computer manager knows when to use a designated hitter (DH) and when not to.

So . . .  of course I auto-played the two leagues. Here is the result:

Reality League Autoplay Results:
        W-L    Place    GB    BA        ERA        Runs
Reality    84-78    3rd    10.0    .243 BA    3.69 ERA    667 runs

This is reality! This is reality? First of all, it is stunning to see the San Diego Padres pull off a winning season! Ok, so they were ten games out with Arizona (94-68) winning the division and SanFran (91-71) taking second and earning a wild card spot.

So, who came forward to lead these Padres to victory? I'll get to that. One team stat that jumped out at me, though, is the terrible home record (38-43). On the positive side, they gutted out a lot of one run games (36-25). That Houston Street must be one heck of a closer, right? Let's see. Street did have a solid season (5-4, 30 saves, 1.65 ERA). Tops among the starting pitching was Edinson Volquez (15-9, 3.63 ERA). At the other end of the curve was Tim Stauffer (8-15, 4.64). Chase Headley (.268 BA, 38 HRs, 124 RBIs) was awesome, playing all 162 games. Injury prone slugger Carlos Quentin (.248, 14 HRs, 38 RBIs) played only 119 games. Rookie Yasman Grandal, he of the 50 games suspension, didn't do that well (.263, 7 HRs, 32 RBIs, 93 games) but then he's a rookie. And Jed Gyorko? Ah, well (.219, 7 HRs, 22 RBI, 85 games). If this season had been real, Miguel Cabrera (.331, 41 HRs, 123 RBIs) would win another MVP, Justin Verlander (19-7, 2.64 ERA) would win the Cy Young, and Cinncinati's Aroldis Chapman (2-1, 41 saves, 1.19 ERA) would win the Rolaids Relief with his 14.2 Ks per 9 innings. That guy can throw!

Now for the Promise League results. Shouldn't the Padres do even better? Here's the results:

Autoplay Results:
        W-L    Place    GB    BA    ERA    Runs
Promise    80-82    4th    10.0    .249 BA    3.81 ERA    688 runs
Reality    84-78    3rd    10.0    .243 BA    3.69 ERA    667 runs

Well, given that it's a simulation, I'd call that a statistical tie. The Promise team had a home winning record this time (43-38) but failed in one run games (20-30). Did Street stub his toe? He did. Street logged only 11 outings during the season, getting just 8 saves. Lou Gregerson picked up some of the slack with 18 saves. Headley (.278, 26 HRs, 90 RBIs) played 160 games. Quentin (.259, 7 Hrs, 27 RBIs) played in only 99 games, but he shared outfield time with Kyle Blanks, who hit .315 with 12 HRs in 79 games. If only he would do that in real life!

As of Saturday morning, Kyle Blanks was sent to the minors to get some at bats. Tyson Ross made the roster as the fifth starter (Ross is the pitcher I saw play in Peoria). I hope Ross does well, even though his prior major league experience was terrible, which will be reflected in both the Reality and Promise leagues. 

It will certainly be interesting to see if the team can reach 80 wins. The real life team, with all those injuries, has their work cut out for them.