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Here is (more or less) Jim Barnes and Avalon Hill Statis-Pro Baseball history from Midwest Research to 1988:
That’s an eye chart, so I’ve included the main spreadsheet:
Statis-Pro-Baseball-History.xlsx
The essence of this history is that the game went through several eras of basic card design prior to a complete redesign in the early Nineties I don’t really cover here. The advent of PC Strat Baseball ⚾️ killed this game for me until the last ten years, when the idea of possibly improving the game started to appeal to me again. But the original card designs would be the Midwest Research teams, which predate the card creation conventions in the ruleset Avalon Hill published in 1979 with the 1978 season; the version 1 cards which would be 1977-1979 and the Great Pennant Races Teams, the 1980-1985 LeSueur Teams, with improved pitching, the 1986 set, which is its own odd duck, and finally 1987 on which had customized BD cards and 1-4 CD ratings. For the most part I prefer either the early sets or the 1987 methods the most.
But my preference is not really the point, the point is the game went through many iterations to find a good solution it could use for each season or retro season, and when you look at these solutions in detail it becomes obvious someone pretty smart was looking at this design every year. When you consider that I have Chat GPT, SQL and excel and can really look in depth at a baseball season’s data in a morning or two in 2026, their ability to craft a pretty good working model in 1978 or 1979 with the tools they had was an incredible achievement.
Design Elements:
The main changes were the pitchers cards, which changed in 1981 (1980 season) with the LeSueur model in All Star Replay. He pointed out the existing method in the rules would overstate hits on 2-6 type pitchers who also had high walks. His examples became the basis for changing pitchers cards in the 1980s. Barnes had performed a number of changes with batters cards- the hit and run numbers changed a bit, he would use customized changes to minimize the effects of rounding, but the batters cards looked much the same over this era, at least until the 1986 season.
Perhaps the most entertaining feature changes were the pitchers batting cards. Originally a set of ten cards that were referenced from the pitchers cards themselves, they changed to:
Individual pitchers batting cards for the 1979 season but on a chart organized by team;
Team batting cards for 1980 and 1981 - with the All Star magazine printing a whole new set of 1-10 batting cards in 1982 and also printing a reference sheet to use with 1981’s pitchers. The cards are completely different from the original 1-10 cards in Great Pennant Races;
1982 used these same 1-10 cards;
1983 went back to team cards;
1984 -1987 went to printed individual pitchers batting cards with the fielding ratings on them, too.
By the 1987 season the batters cards now had the 1-4 CD ranges and the customized BD extra base hits. These changes were more appropriate to the relatively high run context of the 1987 season. I’ve used these features for a few of the seasons I’ve created, in particular for the Normalized sets. They produce pretty realistic results.
Merely Good Pennant Races and the V1 Model
But a funny thing happened to me in late 2024- I managed to get a copy of Great Pennant Races and I was hooked on the three league’s Old School feel. I started replaying teams from the sets and I found I loved them, even if they didn’t quite meet the standard of the Leseuer pitching cards. When I looked at them closely the fact of it was they were close enough. Barnes did a lot of sneaky things to get his seasons to work, and once you learned these tricks, you found his early work still had a lot of merit. While it’s true 2-5 and 2-6 pitchers are probably weaker, there are simple ways to adjust for these factors that can apply to these run contexts.
Indeed the applicability of the early model is due to the run contexts of the time- 1950 is a very high run context, but the 1967 AL and 1967 NL work because their run contexts are around 4 runs per game. That seems to be the sweet spot, 3.8-4.0 runs per game for that old model. It will work well for most 1960s seasons, and the early Seventies, except perhaps for 1962, 1966, and 1970. 1968 and 1972 will card just fine internally, but may face issues versus neighboring seasons.
I also found I loved playing the old game, with old cards for Vada Pinson and Norm Cash and Al Kaline and Brooks Robinson. Sudden Sam or Jim Lonborg on the bump. There was something very nostalgic about the look and feel and playability of those cards.
So while the Game moved forward into new features, I actually moved backwards towards the cards and teams I’d had as a teenager. I’ve carded several of these leagues now in The Barnes Style (go AI!) and they are fun to play!
Fred Bobberts
Initial Date of Publication September 3, 2026
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