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I love statis pro baseball, the old fashioned way. But in looking at the data and the old teams it was always a challenge with the great pennant races sets, 1978, and 1979.  Before 1980 they did not use pitchers and batters data per the David C Lesuer method in all star replay. They used standard charts printed in the rules.  This caused imo the 2-5 and 2-6 pitchers to be almost unplayable, especially a team like 1978 Chicago AL and Seattle where nearly every pitcher was in that category, 

Ive gone back to try to play those old sets and I’ve had to make a few tweaks.  You can of course take the standard batter’s cards and calculate projected BA / OBP and SLA, and what you find is those lower PBs are under carded as a class. 

Greatest Teams, 1950 AL: there is no saving the pitchers cards. I created new ones by the new system and also individual pitcher batting. This is located here: (note that this set would be intended to play only within this season):

Greatest Teams, 1967 AL: recommend using Jim Kaat’s card but bumping him to a 2-7; you use the rest of the pitchers cards as is with the following proviso:

2-5 becomes 2-5, 11 (12 chances / 36)

2-6 becomes 2-6,12 (16 chances / 36)

2-7 becomes 2-6, 10,11 (20 chances /36)

2-8 becomes 2-7,11,12 (24 chances /36)

2-9 becomes 2-8. (26 chances)

This flattens the season and makes it more playable for the teams that are really PB challenged. A White Sox player, however, might enjoy a straight replay with only the Kaat fix, the Sox show up midway between 2-7 and 2-8 and thus are capable of a shutout every night. You like no hitters? Try it that way! The fit is slightly better by team the first way, however. I love the players in this set. 

Greatest Teams 1964 NL:  Still thinking on this one. 
 

1978:  1978 has an interesting normalization Avalon Hill did between the AL and NL. Remember a season has two goals- replay each league, and a good World Series.  In 1978, the two leagues are not quite as far apart as, say, the 1972 AL and 1972 NL, but they do have two distinct run scoring environments.  The NL has pitchers batting and it’s league scores fewer runs even comparative to the AL’s run scoring in DH contexts.

(In the case of the 1972 AL it is the worst run scoring environment other than 1968 in over sixty years, and so without some degree of balancing this the NL winners would be much better teams than the 100 game winning World Series champion A’s. I balanced this by normalizing both leagues, adjusting hitters and pitchers.)
 

Well, Avalon Hill approached the 1978 season by putting both leagues pitchers in the same blender, and so the average AL pitcher is close to a 2-6.4 and the average NL pitcher is a 2-6.6 or better. The AL breakdown of 2-5s is around 20 pct; 2-6 is around 47 pct, and while 2-7s are found the number of 2-8s (6 pct) and 2-9s (3 pct) is vanishingly small. They did this so the good run scoring teams like Boston, Milwaukee and even to a degree New York wouldn’t just bury teams like the Dodgers or Philadelphia in the World Series, with or without the DH. 
 

Well I love this season, especially the batters, and here is my recommendation. For a 1978 AL internal replay (78 Sox!) there are three pitchers who were right on the bubble I would push up to 2-7s: Dennis Martinez of Baltimore, Sparky Lyle of New York, and Bill Lee of Boston. These guys were right on the edge anyway. It’s reasonably playable stock with a .718 ops projected vs .706 actual. That’s a deviation of plus 1.7 pct ops. 

 

But for really good results try the three guys fixed above plus: 

2-5 becomes 2-5,11,12  (13 chances out of 36)

2-6 becomes 2-6,12  (16 chances out of 36)

2-7, 2-8, and 2-9 are the same. 

Click on these: 

By PB, no change to splits:

By PB, with a change to the 2-5 (2-5,11,12) and 2-6 (2-6,12):

By Team, fit versus BA, OBP, and SLG with standard splits:

By Team, fit with amended splits for BA, OBP, and SLG:

Note the Team Pitching balance is nearly spot on.  The main differences are with teams that lost or gained pitchers in mid-year. 

This change to the two pitching classes that have more hits and walks than necessary (2-5 and 2-6) reduced the predicted OPS to .710 as opposed to a weighed target of  .706, a change of only plus 0.5 pct. 

1978 AL is a DH league and if you’re a team allowing the high BA and OB of the stock 2-5 and 2-6 cards an opposing team like Boston will bat around once a night. For the 1978 NL I’d have to look more closely at that data. Non DH leagues are a little more forgiving. Naturally the best choice is a fully normalized set of pitchers in both leagues, but then I’d have to change the batting cards, too. Big season. Lotta work. 
 

1979:  The issue with 1979 is rather like 1987 it was an outlier offensively, very high runs scored. I enjoy playing 1979 teams against each other but a decent 1979 team is better than a good 1978 team because the batting cards in the stock game are held static. Still I do like the 1979 set for the Pirates and Expos and Champ Summers, who hit three balls to me that summer while I was sitting in right field. 
 

1980: Great Set.  On the cards the 1980 Yankees are just a machine. 1980 Expos are a big favorite, In SOM too. 
 

1981:  Took me YEARS to get a full set of 1981. They are brilliant. 1981 NY Yanks are a sneaky team for pitching and power as are Dodgers. Real sneaky team is Astros with a devastating staff, and Oakland. 
 

1984: I think this set is okay. 
 

1985:  They went too far in AL with Saberhagen, Seaver, Blyleven and Jimmy Key as 2-9s.  This does not match the 1985 NL pattern. Other than that this is a fantastic set with the Yankees and Toronto and Kansas City. The NL is brilliant with the Cardinals and Mets and Dodgers. 
 

1987: by now they fixed the balance between starters and relievers and while the season is more like a steroid season it still has some great teams, including Detroit, Toronto, St Louis again. 
 

Fred