Team strategy
 

So I am very new to online play (joined my first league). I was wonder of those playing in online leagues, how many actually mess with the Team Strategy settings?

There are just soo darn many different 'situations': Inning 1-3 tied, inning 1-3 lead by 1, inning 1-3 trail by 1, inning 1-3 lead by 2, on and on and on.

How many of you mess with those settings and what is the general consensus on how effective they are?

I do not touch them, but I do set player strategies for all of my ML players and significant prospects every spring.

The only problem with overriding team strategy is that players will steal or run inappropriately. If you play out games no problem. Simming well... ...

I set it up for all times and situations. I will on occasion set player strategies.

All of those options (game situation and score differential) implies a lot more ability to micromanage things than is actually the case. As a general rule, many adjustments along those lines make very little difference in how the AI manages a team during games, compared to the basic programming that makes the AI follow sensible baseball practices (or least what Markus thinks those are :D). For example, the AI is very unlikely to pinch hit for a position player in the 3rd inning, regardless of what you do with that slider.

OTOH, ignoring this feature isn't a good idea. These exist to help you give weight in one direction or another to what the AI does. It makes sense to set these based on what you think are the strengths and weaknesses of your team. IMO, you can for the most part set them as you wish and copy them to all game situations and scores.

Then you can set player strategies for those exceptional situations where you want the AI to treat a player significantly different from the rest of the team.

FWIW

I can't remember exactly when it was removed, (a few versions ago maybe?) but at one time there was an "Ask Manager" option. I liked this because it would set them based on your managers managing style.


I use them now, but sparingly as like others, I find them too cumbersome. There's just too many options and choices to make/set.

Would very much like to see the "ask manager" option return.

I set them once, then copy them to all situations. I honestly have no idea how effective they are.

I'll rarely adjust the strategy for an individual player.

Honestly, I'm kind of scared by these buttons. I'm afraid I'll set things up terribly and break my team - have runners stealing home all the time, position players pitching, pinch hitters in the 2nd inning, sac bunts losing by 9 runs, etc.

I'm shocked people don't use these more often. I admit it's somewhat overwhelming to start, but done in increments it's really not that bad. Moving them, even to extremes simply alters the window the manager uses and doesn't shift the philosophy of the era/time completely.

My advice is to:

1. Set one (as someone mentioned above) and then copy to all situations.

2. Then go to the time and adjust it for the tied games at various times. At worst, you can then copy and past this manually to all situations at that time. This will at least have your own preferences and your manager will act like they are close games (but he still chooses relievers, etc.. appropriately as Steve P mentioned).

3. At that point it's then relatively easy to go in to each different score situation and make small adjustments.

4. I'll then go in to some players and adjust them (for example, my stealing is almost down to nil, but I adjust it for elite speedsters).

I love playing around with these, so much so that I wanted a feature added where we could set strategies for how our fielders and pitchers approach OPPOSING players.

So... Which one is how strategy works?

1) Settings are absolute possibilities of the player at bat performing an action. For example, every time he is at bat, there's a 20% possibility of a hit and run play. Regardless of outs and baserunners. So even on 3-0 pitches, he will try to swing aggressively, instead of earning a walk. On a 0-out, slow runner on 2B situation, he is still likely to risk it.

2) AI applies common baseball sense when deciding possibilities of actions and adjust them according to strategy settings. For example, on a 3-0 pitch, there's a 5% possibility of playing hit and run which is increased to 15% when the player is set to try it often. So basically, strategy sliders dictate how the AI is more/less likely to call different plays - compared to standard, neutral playcalling.

As for individual strategy settings, it would be nice if settings were relative to the overall team strategy. The team is running conservatively with quick runners somewhat more aggressively - but not as much as they usually do. But I guess that's not how they work.

I think it's 2. I use almost the same strategies but get different numbers based on era.

Just to confirm this. The AI plays the games according to its "sense" of what the right thing to do in the situation, and the sliders just modify this? So if I had lets say sacrifice bunts at neutral for both the 1st-3rd inning leading by 4 and 9th inning down by 1, the AI would be much more likely to bunt in the 9th inning, even though by settings have them equal?

If so, is there any way to know what optimum strategy the AI has in mind? i.e. if I wanted to hit and run very rarely, but that is also what the AI believes, I should be setting my slider to neutral?