Sunday, April 9, 2023

Mets Avert Consecutive Reds Upset Bids with 5-4 Rallies

Once we post the annual Statis-Pro baseball cards, we try to immediately play one series just to catch any glitches. After the Mets had to rally twice for identical 5-4 wins against the seemingly weaker Reds cards, seems all is good including one new rule tweak.

Reminder Note: To play our own Statis-Pro Baseball games, click and print the batters cards here, then these pitchers' cards and finally the Statis-Pro rules which will have everything you need to play. Also note that we had one error in earlier notes - the adjustments listed at the bottom of some pitcher cards to the batters they face (changing a HR to Out or vice versa) must be used every time they pitch, not just in road games as previously listed.

The Reds led 4-2 in the top of the 10th inning in the first game in New York, then led 4-2 again after six innings in the 2nd game in Cincinnati before losing that one.

A couple of notes on new tweaks this year.

1. I've been having double headers both at one ballpark to keep everything on one page, but it was becoming too messy and I decided to instead make these all home and home series to see two different ballpark effects each series.

2. I also tweaked the pitcher cards with a note on the bottom that calculates to balance the impact of the adjustment to batters' cards for playing in those parks. This only impacts the teams' pitchers who are NOT at home. Therefore in the second game in hitter friendly Cincinnati, the New York Mets pitchers who benefit from half their games being in the very pitcher friendly New York allow a home run if the Random Number is the lowest OUT number on the batters card they are facing. That did not happen in the game in Cincy, but ...

In the game in New York any Cincinnati pitcher had an adjustment that the top two home run numbers on each batter's care are changed from home run to deep fly out (runners advance). This happened in our very first game when Nimmo drew a "31" that would normally have been 2-run homer to tie the game in the bottom of the 10th inning. However, his range home run range is 27-32, so the 31 was changed to an out and the Reds were one outs from a 4-2 win. 

However, the next four Mets reached to win the game. with Vogelbach (single), Marte (single), Alvarez (walk) and Escobar (game-winning single).

This adjustment does balance off the Home Run Ranges in the parks in which pitchers pitch, and that became evident in the second game in Cincinnati. 

When a game is played in New York, a DEEP drive is a Home Run only on an 11-13 with a 14-88 being a Sac Fly. The average park is 11-35 home run, but Cincinnati is 11-63 Home Run. With the Mets trailing 2-0 in the 4th, Nimmo hit a deep drive that was caught up against the wall on a "66.". However, the other three deep drives of the game were all by the Mets and all went out for homers to let them rally ...

Pham homered on a DEEP drive to cut it to 2-1 in the top of the sixth. In the 7th Alvarez hit a deep drive that went out to pull the Mets within 4-3, then two batters later Pham hit another deep drive that also went out for a 2-run game winning homer 5-4. All three of those homers would have been outs if that game had been in New York.

Both the batters' and pitchers' cards are adjusted when calculated to account for these ballpark impacts.

The second game included the Reds throwing five PB 2-6 relievers at the Mets since Weaver can only go a maximum of four innings, or he needs to drop from a PB 2-5 to PB 2-4. Having already thrown a PB 2-9 (Peterson) in the first game, the Mets still had three PB 2-7s left to get to their ace PB 2-9 and perhaps the best reliever in the game Diaz. 

The last 2-7 available, Raley, was the key as he came in with two on and one out and strike out Steer and N. Marte to end the 7th inning threat. The only runner allowed in the bottom of the 8th was an error by shortstop Guillorme with a bad E6 error rating who was only in the game because Lindor was thrown out of the game on a Z-play for arguing. In the 6th inning Guillorme had also failed to get to an RBI single that Lindor would have turned into an out on a Clutch Defense play.

While starters can pitch up to their Max Innings, relievers normally pitch one inning less by can come in to get a pitcher out of a jam as one of their innings - which is what Raley had to do. The trick is doing this makes it much more likely to get tired. Raley has an Max IP 2 meaning he can pitch any PART of 2 innings, and his RR endurance is 3 - which drops 1 any time it is his fault a runner reached a base or scored. However, outside of the error allowed, he retired all five so his RR only dropped one to "2" when the 7th inning ended.

Diaz has the most dominant PB 2-9 card in the game, but his RR is only 2. He walked Fraley to start the 9th and lower his RR from 2 to 1. he then struck out Solak. he then walked Votto to run out of RR when mean two men on base, one out, and for hitting an RR of 0 he dropped from a PB 2-9 to PB 2-8. He struck out Steer to get within an out of a save, but then walked N. Marte to load the bases and lower himself to a PB 2-7. That brought up Stephenson, who was 5 of 8 in the series, with a chance for a game-winning single. 

However, Diaz induced a foul out to catcher for a second straight 5-4 come-from-behind winner.






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