MLB Showdown: '70-'74 Preview, Prize cards, Custom rules/additions.

Today I want to follow up with ideas that I briefly mentioned during my last post, and drop a few more small additions to showdown that might help your gaming experience.

One of the things I mentioned last time was tournaments and prize cards.  My league used to run 20-40 game seasons pretty regularly, but as we've gotten older and packed on responsibilities, tournaments became a reasonable option.  Our tournaments vary depending on how many people show up, but they follow the general rule that you play 4 seed games and the top 2 records play a one game championship.  

In addition to prize money, we wanted to add something special to each tournament since we knew we weren't getting together as often as before, so we came up with the idea of tournament prize cards.  These cards are given out to a tournament winner and have the special ability to be used for 1 at bat in any future tournament at no cost.  For example, our first tournament prize card was Hector Espino or "The Mexican Babe Ruth".  Tournament prize cards are typically seasons that wouldn't be covered otherwise  (different leagues, shortened season, playoffs etc), so some possible future examples will be shown in this post.

One thing my league has grappled with over time has been how to address tired pitching rules, specifically for relievers (since that seems to be an area that can be easily exploited). For instance, the Aroldis Chapman (Half season with Cubs) below would be able to throw 3 fresh innings in a 4 game series easily under the original showdown rules, and an additional 2 innings as a 5 control which is tons of value for 230 points. Instead, my leagues most up to date tired rules make relievers tire much faster than starters (like real life). Instead of losing 1 control per IP beyond listed, relievers lose 1 control each out after they've reached their IP threshold. A day off replenishes their IP and their control, but now relievers cannot just go out there and eat innings up without much of a penalty.

Starters still tire at -1 per IP beyond their IP threshold, so playoff Madison Bumgarner below has nothing to complain about.

Speaking of complaints, one of the things I noticed about original showdown that I didn't quite like was that intentional walks and stolen bases weren't automatic manager decisions. My league did away with that, but as a result some cards became weaker/stronger. In my sets I decided to fix that by taking away IBB from the calculation of batter cards to reflect what they did when they were pitched to. This doesn't seem like a big deal at first, since it usually just results in an earlier single on a chart. But it is a huge deal with cards like this:

The crazy .609 OBP he had including the 120 IBB he drew would drive his on base rating to around 15-16, but his chart would be full of walks and less power. By excluding the IBB we get a much better picture of the decisions managers (and you) would have to make when Bonds walked to the plate.

Another rule we play by is that the single + is not automatic.  It gives a boost of +3 to your speed on the steal attempt, but catchers/pitchers still have a chance to throw you out most of the time.  This matters because my league does not have a limit on how many steals you can attempt, its all up to the manager.  As a result, many cards like this Cesar Cedeno get lower speed ratings than you might anticipate when looking up his real life stats.  

Cedeno swiped 55 bages in 1972, but also led the league by getting caught 21 times, resulting in a 72% success rate, which meant that he could not earn anything above a 20 speed in a league that allows unlimited steals. A conservative manager will still be able to extract value out of this card if he picks his spots for stealing. Or they can just draft 2006 Ichiro.

I've written more than I expected on this post, and I posted more Giants cards than I would have liked, so how about a Dodger:

Note the PH position. This card can only be used as a pinch hitter, hence the low price point.

I'll get back to my classic '70-'74 set during on my next post. For now i'll just drop some previews:

If you're still reading at this point, I gotta ask, how does Pete Rose beat out Morgan for MVP in '73?!

See ya next time.