Leftie cheese revisited....

[Hertston]

I know we have discussed this before, and I respect everyone's opinion on it. But...

I'm currently observing the Diamond series in the league I played in. The two conference champions have records of 113-49 and 104-58. Both have primary line-ups of entirely LH and S hitters, entirely LH starters and an entirely RH bullpen. I would surmise (only) that a significant number of those relievers are used as openers, a tactic of course unlikely to be effective if they are both using it . Both teams include many of the usual suspects (including both of 'those' pitchers) mixed with a few choices particularly suited to that strategy, but overall player quality is no better than half the teams in the league.

My question is simply this. When does this game cease to actually have anything to do with baseball? I'll leave it at that.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Hertston

My question is simply this. When does this game cease to actually have anything to do with baseball? I'll leave it at that.

Immediately, when injuries are not allowed to happen. (Note: not complaining that they are not allowed).

Edit: and no aging insures a fantasy game.

[professor ape]

It’s an interesting comment. I constantly remind myself that while the core game is a great baseball simulator, PT is a card game which runs on top of a baseball structure.
Regarding the lefty cheese specifically, my problem with it is that it is only effective because most of us don’t have the time or inclination to micromanage our rosters and lineups to counter the strategy (which is not too difficult to do if you catch that you have such games coming up). The game did a good job of countering the similar dynamic with Openers by allowing us to set default vL and vR lineups when the opponent uses an opener. I’d like it if there was a way for the game to allow us to also set up default lineups if we are in a “cheese” game. The logic may be trickier.
One final point for now is that ai believe that while there are a few who have the time and drive to work this to their benefit on a regular basis, I think that most people who have “cheese” teams are sacrificing performance on the road to gain the advantage at home. They will almost certainly have better home records than on the road which creates a confirmation bias. In the end, most “cheese” teams end up average at best.

[ncap99]

I still think the primary reason this type of strategy exists is the imbalance of stats and where the thresholds are for productivity.

The basic premise of lefty cheese is to force your opponent to use right handed hitters by starting lefty pitching, then suppress right handed offense in your home park while inflating them for left handed hitters and running as many of those as possible. The most obvious counter to this strategy is to run left handed hitters to take advantage of the favorable offensive factors for lefties, even against left handed pitching.

The problem is there are very few cards that have good enough stats to be effective. You're better off running a righty hitter into suppressed ballpark factors most of the time. There are so many cards like Carl Yastrzemski who have such a huge drop off that it more than counters the benefits of the park factors, in particular with left handed hitters. Arky Vaughan, Joe Morgan, Jason Giambi, Oscar Charleston, Mel Ott, Enos Slaughter, Bill Dickey, etc...the list goes on and on. There are almost no lefty hitters that don't lose 15-20% of their stats against lefty pitching. Switch hitters like Rose, Wander Franco or Raines don't help, as they will turn and bat right handed playing into the park factors.

So basically to beat lefty cheese you either have to cheese them right back, beat the odds when playing them in their home park, or have home field advantage and win at home. You can't "counter" it because the cards don't exist to do that effectively, and because the difference between 95 avoidK and 85 avoidK or 100 contact and 90 contact are so huge it more or less turns the card into garbage. If you were to take two cards - one with 100 contact and 100 avoidK and one with 90 contact and 90 avoidK, you won't get 90% of the hits and 10% more strikeouts - one card will hit .300 and the other one will hit .220. If that doesn't come with enormous power and incredible defense (like a Schmidt for example) the card isn't worth playing at all.

As more cards get added you'll see different strategies emerge. Righty cheese is a thing now with cards like DiMaggio, Robinson, Luke Appling, etc that are righties who CAN hit righties. So you do the same thing as lefty cheese, except you play your righties-who-can-hit-righties lineup, force the other team to use mostly lefty hitters then suppress offensive for lefties. I still don't think this is a counter to lefty cheese though, as it doesn't actually help you beat it on the road against a lefty cheese team.

At least at the start of people doing it, it was somewhat of a calculated risk and not easy to pull off. You were missing out on some real quality right handed starters and having to start lefties who were clearly worse to pull it off. There was a reason guys like Noodles, Hubbell and Reuss were insanely expensive. Guys like Johan Santana were in rotations. Now the last few big releases added such a huge amount of very high quality lefty starters it is super easy to run a lefty cheese rotation without much drop off in starter quality, which means you're not going to get roasted as bad on the road.

[professor ape]

The best counter to the lefty cheese is to have lefty starters to throw at them. I have Eppa and Vida in my rotation at this time and have others like Johan, Glavine, and others available of I happen to catch an upcoming cheese series.
There have been a lot of conversations about how to limit this cheese strategy. I have been in favor of limiting the nerfing of stadiums but many have made strong arguments noting that there are many real parks with AVG and HR more extreme than the .900 to 1.100 limits in the game. I have revised my thoughts on this. My current thought is that I am fine with expanding the range somewhat but place a limit that the lefty/righty splits for the two categories cannot be more than .100 apart. Using the current ranges, if you set the AVG vR to 1.100 then the lowest you could set the AVG vL would be 1.000. If you set vR HR at .900 then the highest you could set HR vR would be 1.000. I think this could help the issue.

[ubernoob]

One solution is to just introduce ballparks into card packs. That way you can play in any number of historic venues, with actual historic baseball dimensions.

Nobody can bitch about "unrealistic" parks then. Maybe add a 7th card to packs and have it be a stadium card. They shouldn't be difficult to acquire.

That said the cheese isn't that strong this game.

Plenty of losing teams that do it, but any time you see one in the finals there's a confirmation bias. My diamond league was won by a balanced team beating a "lefty cheese team."

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by professor ape

The best counter to the lefty cheese is to have lefty starters to throw at them. I have Eppa and Vida in my rotation at this time and have others like Johan, Glavine, and others available of I happen to catch an upcoming cheese series.
There have been a lot of conversations about how to limit this cheese strategy. I have been in favor of limiting the nerfing of stadiums but many have made strong arguments noting that there are many real parks with AVG and HR more extreme than the .900 to 1.100 limits in the game. I have revised my thoughts on this. My current thought is that I am fine with expanding the range somewhat but place a limit that the lefty/righty splits for the two categories cannot be more than .100 apart. Using the current ranges, if you set the AVG vR to 1.100 then the lowest you could set the AVG vL would be 1.000. If you set vR HR at .900 then the highest you could set HR vR would be 1.000. I think this could help the issue.

Throwing lefties at them is effectively cheesing them back, which is about the only thing you can do right now. This isn't really a counter at all, just evening the odds as best as possible by participating.

I think generic RHB or LHB settings don't make any sense at all. How could you possibly control that? A guy like Joe Mauer's spray charts show someone who hits to the opposite field (left field for him, a lefty) more often than pulling the ball, but he would still be subjected to park factor LHB suppression. How do you make only left handed hitters hit worse? Dig a 2 foot hole in the lefty batters box? Longer fence distance or fence height, etc make sense but only if someone hits the ball to that side, otherwise how do you differentiate between a lefty opposite field hitter and a righty pull hitter with park factors? It is pretty dumb if you think about it.

[professor ape]

As comment on the last two posts; I like the stadium card idea. I think they should be fairly rare. You could start with a neutral park, a moderate offensive park (1.05 modifiers), and a moderate pitchers’ park (0.95 modifiers). Stadium cards would be mixed in like player cards. Those which play neutral would be Bronze level and more common. As you move to parks which are more extreme they would go up the levels to be more and more scarce. However, because you only use one park at a time, people could get frustrated getting more and more stadium cards as the season progresses. Perhaps new stadiums could be mission rewards.

Regarding the “cheese”; you are correct that throwing your own lefties is only evening the odds. Evening the odds is the goal of that counter strategy.

If you are called a spray hitter or opposite field hitter, it is rare that you hit more balls to the opposite field. The norm is to pull the ball so those players are just not pulling the ball as much. I’m sure there are some extreme outliers but a righty spray hitter will still be hurt by low vR modifiers.

[ncap99]

Originally Posted by professor ape

If you are called a spray hitter or opposite field hitter, it is rare that you hit more balls to the opposite field. The norm is to pull the ball so those players are just not pulling the ball as much. I’m sure there are some extreme outliers but a righty spray hitter will still be hurt by low vR modifiers.

There are plenty of outliers, I named one in Joe Mauer. I'm just saying that conceptually it is impossible to do something in your stadium to make only lefthanded hitters hit worse. You can make it so hitting the ball to right field is worse. There shouldn't be any stadium settings besides field dimensions, fence height and aesthetics. A lefty hitting the ball to left field should be no different than a righty hitting the ball to left field, but right now you can make it so there is a 20%+ difference just by manually entering some settings on your park factors.

[Warfsu]

There actually are examples of stadium designs that increase/decrease ability certain handedness.

One well known one was at the Ballpark in Arlington. For years, the way the wind came into the park created a wind tunnel for balls hit in the right center gap. While this doesn’t specifically help/hinder righties or lefties, most balls hit to right field are going to be done so by left handed hitters. So, essentially, this ballpark design will at the very least improve left handed HR power.

[chazzycat]

In theory there are ways you could affect righty or lefty batters via stadium design. Their vantage points are different so maybe you could have something in the background that makes it harder to pick up the ball from one side. Like a mural of a bunch of baseballs on the center field wall, slightly off center.

Too bad no MLB team will ever make me GM so we won't find out.

[daves]

I agree and don't enjoy the lefty cheese. It too unrealistic. You can improve home runs, but not sure how singles AND homers can favor one side? Sight lines, infield quality, type of grass, foul ground size and home run fence dimensions affect various factors.

But I can't figure out what helps lefties or righties 100% for hits and homers over the other?

Love to see this part of the game change!!!

[I_Got_Wood_34]

Originally Posted by professor ape

The best counter to the lefty cheese is to have lefty starters to throw at them. I have Eppa and Vida in my rotation at this time and have others like Johan, Glavine, and others available of I happen to catch an upcoming cheese series.
There have been a lot of conversations about how to limit this cheese strategy. I have been in favor of limiting the nerfing of stadiums but many have made strong arguments noting that there are many real parks with AVG and HR more extreme than the .900 to 1.100 limits in the game. I have revised my thoughts on this. My current thought is that I am fine with expanding the range somewhat but place a limit that the lefty/righty splits for the two categories cannot be more than .100 apart. Using the current ranges, if you set the AVG vR to 1.100 then the lowest you could set the AVG vL would be 1.000. If you set vR HR at .900 then the highest you could set HR vR would be 1.000. I think this could help the issue.

I think your ballpark should be randomly generated upon account creation and then you can build your team around those factors. I don't think you should be able to adjust your ballpark factors on the fly every year.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by I_Got_Wood_34

I think your ballpark should be randomly generated upon account creation and then you can build your team around those factors. I don't think you should be able to adjust your ballpark factors on the fly every year.

Well, in real life owners build the stadiums that they want and do tweak fences at times so being able to change your stadium is realistic. How about this, everyone starts with a neutral park but you can only make limited changes each week. Say that you could only change the AVG and HR vL/vR by .020 and the Double and Triple settings by .050 each week. You could slowly nerf your park, but if you go to an extreme and later decide that you want to go the other way then it would take a while to get away from your settings.

[Hertston]

Originally Posted by professor ape

Well, in real life owners build the stadiums that they want and do tweak fences at times so being able to change your stadium is realistic.

Tweaking fences is not the same as the wholesale changes to stadium architecture that the game permits. And in either case, when were such changes ever followed by packing that teams roster for the year according to handedness in order to pursue a 'cheese' strategy?!

[dac4m]

Question- How does one set openers? I have my slider set to frequently but the only way I can see to assign one is secondary bullpen role- Is that it? If so, does the AI just determine when to use one?

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by Hertston

Tweaking fences is not the same as the wholesale changes to stadium architecture that the game permits. And in either case, when were such changes ever followed by packing that teams roster for the year according to handedness in order to pursue a 'cheese' strategy?!

Thus my follow up idea of limiting the amount of change you could make from week to week.

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by dac4m

Question- How does one set openers? I have my slider set to frequently but the only way I can see to assign one is secondary bullpen role- Is that it? If so, does the AI just determine when to use one?

Yes, the secondary bullpen role is the way. I like to leave the primary role as undefined so they don't get used in any other capacity.

If you are using multiple openers and want to dictate their order, you can actually put them in the rotation. However that way the followers will be chosen by the AI instead, so really it's kinda pick your poison. The AI will be involved one way or another.

Which is why I like to only use 1 opener so I always know who it is going to be. And keep followers in the rotation so I control that as well. To make that work, you want to mix in a couple full time staters in your rotation. 1 opener can cover 3 rotation spots if the full timers are spaced out and you set a 3 BF limit on the opener.

[idolatro15]

I like the idea of "stadium cards". I've set my ballpark dimensions to that of Kauffman Stadium in the past...but would love to see the fountains in the outfield!

[Orcin]

I mentioned in another thread that I wanted to try lefty cheese using the advice that I received from chazzycat. It took me a week to do it because I wanted to get McCarver first instead of going with two RHB catchers. After trying lefty cheese for a week, I went back to my normal neutral park and platoon lineups using the same players for comparison purposes. Here are the results...



Note that the runs allowed really didn't vary that much over the three weeks but the week of cheese added to the run production significantly. My pythag was over 90 wins in the final week so the difference was less dramatic than it seems but still... I only made the playoffs in the cheese week.

Guess what I will do next week.