WHERE TO TAKE YOUR BASEBALL ADDICTION

Reporting by Jonas Fortune

It was 8:32 p.m. on a Tuesday night and I was taking it easy, just having a couple of drinks and hanging out with a few friends.

My phone rings.

“If you really want (Cleveland Indians reserve catcher Kelly) Shoppach, I am sure we can work something out,” I tell the guy on the phone. “I’ll only be looking for another backup player, maybe a relief pitcher in return.”

My friends quickly began to moan. “Another trade!” I hear tumble out of their collective mouths in unison and disgust. They have all seen me do this before; they sometimes even call me obsessed. Yet I don’t care, this is fun to me.

No, I am not Cleveland Indians general manager Mark Shapiro. I am just a regular, ordinary guy who loves the game of baseball. I am actually playing a game of baseball, Strat-O-Matic to be exact.

Yet don’t confuse this with a fantasy baseball league, that’s for amateurs.

Strat is for the baseball diehards. For those who want to look much deeper than a batting average and home run total. No offense to fantasy — I typically have two or three of those teams a season, but Strat puts one in control of a team like nothing I have ever played. You actually do play the games out-by-out, all nine innings.

The game is purely based on statistics and probabilities with ratings systems in place for fielding range, throwing arms, bunting, base running and anything else you can think of.

If Jason Varitek is on first base and David Ortiz singles to right field, one may not want to send Varitek to third base if Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim’s Vladimir Guerrero is waiting in right field.

The chances of a slower runner, like Varitek, getting to third base with Guerrero’s cannon for an arm in right field are slim to none.

These situations, which are fruitless in singularly stat-counting fantasy, make all the difference in Strat.

To dominate this game, one has to take everything into account. Florida Marlin’s shortstop Hanley Ramirez can absolutely rake at the plate, but how bad will he hurt a team defensively?

It’s also important to know that New York Yankees all-world third baseman Alex Rodriguez is just as likely to walk or single against right-handed pitchers, as he is to hit a home run off them — he does all three about 15 percent of the time. He is more likely to strike out though, which he does 19 percent of the time.

Regardless, anyone is foolish not to take him.

The ordinary person doesn’t have the disposable income to throw at free agents. They can’t sit in the dugout and tell David Eckstein to do a hit and run in the sixth game of the World Series.

Yet to Strat-O-Matic players, the feelings and emotions are as about as close as you can get without putting on a jockstrap and smearing on eye black. 

With this game anyone cane build a franchise and succeed without having to spend millions upon millions in the process.

What is Strat-O-Matic baseball?

Stra-O-Matic baseball isn’t exactly a new concept. In fact, it’s a game that has been around since the ’60s. The game was originally, and to many traditionalists still is, a board game that features a player card for each individual player in Major League Baseball with the ratings and probabilities for that particular player.

Users would then roll dice and match up the dice to the player card and charts for the specific situation to figure out what happened on the play. The game is amazingly accurate, but who knew baseball was so scientific?

Computer play is much simpler because the player only has to worry about decision making and building the team, as the program factors out the probabilities and on-field performance.

Both platforms, which have a cult following dating back nearly 50 years, they continue to offer a unique and intelligent look at the game of baseball.