1955 World Series for Statis-Pro Baseball

 1955 World Series for Statis-Pro Baseball ⚾️ 

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All these years- I believe the 1955 World Series cards were published in the second volume of the third season of All-Star Replay, in 1979 or 1980- I knew the the pitchers for that set were wrong. The hits in the cards were just off.  But I did not know why. I had thought the David C. LeSeuer pitcher’s card corrections from the 1980 season (published in 1981) had been misapplied. But the set predated the publishing of those corrections. It was a real puzzler.  

(Original Set - From All-Star Replay, Volume 2 Issue Number 3):

SP1955WS.pdf

I’ve been working a bit with the cards from the Great Pennant Races teams, figuring out how the old pitchers cards and the newer versions interrelate. So I’ve been looking more at the old pitcher’s creation charts as well as other basic elements of the game. And one night I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea.  The strikeouts and walks  on the old charts were designed to be pulled from one chart; but hits from another. 

What if instead, at least for some teams in this set, they’d pulled the hits from the wrong chart?  What if they pulled the split counts from the walks and strikeouts chart? It would make sense that there would be too many hits on the pitchers so affected, since the walks and strikeouts chart is constructed differently. 

Sandy Amoros breaks Yogi Berra’s heart

Let’s look at a couple examples- 1955 Yankee pitcher Johnny Kucks. He allowed 122 hits in 126 2/3 innings (0.96 ratio).  On the walks and strikeout chart this would be 16 splits, which results in an erroneous 11-28 pitcher’s singles range, which is what we see on his card. But had Avalon Hill used the proper chart it would be only 12 splits, for a pitcher’s singles range of 11-24.  Brooklyn pitcher Johnny Podres has a ratio of 160/159.333 or 1.004.  On the walks and strikeouts charts this is 19 splits for a pitcher’s singles range of 11-33.  This is also what we see on his card, and once again the proper range from the hits chart for pitchers singles would be 11-24.  

Tommy Byrne in Game 7

You can certainly double check my math, but the following pitchers would get the following pitcher’s singles ranges:  (The other split counts for walks, strikeouts, wild pitches, etc. would remain the same as numeric counts but might have to be “moved”)

Example Pitcher’s singles, done right: 

Don Newcombe 11-23

Carl Erskine 11-24

Johnny Podres 11-24

Billy Loes 11-23

Karl Spooner 11-22

Russ Meyer 11-26

Ed Roebuck 11-25

Don Bessent 11-21

Roger Craig 11-22

Clem Labine 11-21

Whitey Ford 11-18 (original range was 11-17, not sure why)

Bob Turley 11-21

Tommy Byrne 11-23 (same as on card)

…etc.

There are thus two ways to solve the pitcher’s card problem -recard the 1955 World Series pitchers using the proper results derived from the original card creation charts from the First or Second Edition of the rules; 

Or -redo them fully as LeSeuer variant pitchers. In other words fully update them.  This would produce the best fits. I’ve elected to fix these issues this way, and furthermore I’m adding Sandy Koufax (in his rookie year) for the Dodgers, and Eddie Lopat, who was a spot starter and Jim Konstanty to the Yankees as a reliever. 

Konstanty is an interesting case, his overall stats are excellent, yet he was left off of the 1955 Yankee World Series roster and out of the Statis-Pro set.  It almost makes no sense when you look at his 2.32 ERA and 73 innings pitched. He’s exactly what the 1955 Yankees need out of the ‘Pen.  But if you look at his pitching logs you can see why- after a month of heavy usage in on July 31st he was pounded for 4 runs and 6 hits in a third of an inning, and from that point on he was completely ineffective and was used sparingly between that date and September 23rd.  In that period, Konstanty allowed 24 hits, six walks and ten runs in only 11 2/3 innings. Opponents batted .344 against him. His season was a tale of two different pitchers- a very effective early closer who may have been overworked by Mid-Summer, followed by a stunning collapse in August and September, where he just couldn’t get anyone out. I include him so fans of the 1955 Yankees can have a complete team, but he should probably not be on New York’s World Series roster. Neither should Lopat, who was actually traded to Baltimore at the end of the year. 

Koufax for the Dodgers would be an interesting “what-if”.  While he is wild, he is also very effective. He would have given Brooklyn a very powerful right/left top line rotation with Newcombe.  My guess is the Dodgers didn’t pick him for the Series because he was a rookie. 

One last quirk is the original cards had a different way to calculate relief points than later cards. Part of the reason for this was managers also used their starters as closers in some games.  I’ve kept those ratings as well as fielding bunting and batting card ratings. But if you wanted to use a more modern method, here are these results: 

Brooklyn:

Newcombe: SR: 13 RR: 7

Erskine: SR: 15 RR: 9

Podres: SR: 15 RR: 9

Loes: SR: 14 RR: 8

Meyer: SR: 16 RR: 10

Roebuck: SR: 0 RR: 9

Labine: SR: 9 RR: 6

Spooner: SR: 11 RR: 7

Bessent: SR: 8 RR: 6

Craig: SR: 11  RR: 7

Koufax: SR: 10  RR: 4

New York:

Ford: SR: 12 RR: 7

Turley: SR: 15 RR: 8

Byrne: SR: 14 RR: 8

Larsen: SR: 12 RR: 8

Kucks: SR: 12 RR: 8

Grim: SR: 12 RR: 8

Morgan: SR: 8 RR: 7

Sturdivant: SR: 8 RR: 7

Coleman: SR: 15 SR: 9

Lopat: SR: 14 RR: 9

Konstanty: SR: 0 RR: 5

Anyway- here is the set of new pitching cards to use with the existing batters:

1955-WS-Pitchers.pdf (New Pitchers)

Notes: 

• Tom Sturdivant is actually a right handed pitcher; he was mistakenly carded as a left hander in the original set.  
• Mickey Mantle played with a leg injury, which significantly limited his effectiveness and ultimately contributed to the Yankees' loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers. After missing the first two games, Mantle was forced to move from center field to right field in Game 3 due to the injury, played very poorly in game 4, and he was unable to play the field for the rest of the series. He did pinch hit in Game 7, but was out on a pop-up. Mantle’s injury is commonly considered the main reason for the Yankee’s loss. 

More Statis-Pro Baseball Musings…

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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

Statis-Pro Baseball Great Pennant Races 1950 AL (corrected pitching cards)

 

The Splendid Splinter batted .317 with 24 HR in only 89 Games for the Red Sox in 1950.

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Statis-Pro Baseball Great Pennant Races: 1950 AL (corrected pitching cards)

Note that I have every intention of finishing my 2024 baseball ⚾️ project; I purchased a copy of Great Pennant Races for my birthday, and decided I needed to try to quickly update the 1950 pitchers. I had to see if this could be done and if this would make the set at least playable, because the position player cards originally created by Avalon Hill were done very, very well.  But the pitchers cards as received from the Game Co. were very difficult to play. 

I’d owned this set at least twice before, and it contains the 1950 AL, 1964 NL, and 1967 AL.  But the cards were made by Avalon Hill in 1978, before they updated the pitching card methodology using David C. LeSueur’s revised methodology (All-Star Replay, Volume II, no. 4).  

AH All-Star Replay Vol 2 no. 4.pdf

The older versions of the cards, used for the 1978 and 1979 seasons as well as this set, were created by a methodology that was at best an approximation. You can apply this method from the second generation instructions, as they had the charts for pitcher’s results at the end as a service to gamers who wished to create their own cards.  These charts used the number of batter’s hits, walks (net ibb) and strikeouts that the pitcher allowed per inning, referenced against the pitcher’s PB rating to provide gamers with the number of splits that should be applied to the pitchers card. The replay results were disappointing, and so I sold the sets. 

It was David’s method that changed my line of thinking.  Mr. LeSueur’s example was two pitchers with a PB rating of 2-7, and a 1.0 strikeout to innings ratio. That’s 18 strikeout results on their cards. Let’s also assume the first has a walk rate of 0.20 walks per inning- that’s two walk results.  The second has a rating of 0.6 walks per inning- that’s 10 walk results. In actual play the first pitcher would have fewer strikeouts per inning because 8 results that are walks on the second pitcher’s card are outs on the first pitcher’s card. The effect was particularly pronounced for pitcher’s with 2-5 and 2-6 ratings; the results coming from batter’s cards were not removed from the chart’s columns the way they should have been, and so these pitchers allowed more hits and walks and received fewer strikeouts than they should have. Mr. LeSueur’s method changed this, and Avalon Hill used his method to manufacture the pitcher’s cards from the 1980 season on.  They were an immediate improvement; they introduced the concept of the “good” 2-6, a pitcher like 1968 Mickey Lolich or 1984 Milt Wilcox, good enough to outpitch a 2-7 with similar stats. 

When I had these sets before, I loved the batting cards, but the pitchers were an issue. The batting cards seemed like whomever made them really cared about the quality and balance of the players. But the pitching…. a good staff like the 1950 Yankees seemed to be embroiled in too many 13-11 games. But it wasn’t until I created a model with the std opponent and the stock cards that I saw just how far off these 1950 stock pitchers really were. 

You can model pitching results against the team’s opponents, for this excel is a handy tool. When you do this for the stock 1950 Boston cards it becomes obvious that the mid tier Red Sox pitchers, guys like Stobbs, McDermott and Masterson, get badly represented by this method. Since they handle about 40 percent of Boston’s opponents they make the staff unsustainably bad.  I’m not going to argue they are top tier pitchers- Parnell, Dobson and in particular Kinder held those roles- but all three of these men were actually winning pitchers, with a combined record of 27-16, a record that even with this historically great offense they would find difficult to match using these stock cards.

The predicted model from the LeSueur cards in the link above: 

Clearly, this is more like what you’d expect. You’ll get some rounding errors and the simple model estimates HPB and sac flies where the more modern cards I’ve created do not, and of course intentional walks aren’t included on the cards. But a pitcher like McDermott in particular, a hard thrower who walked a lot of batters but was hard to hit, is carded much more accurately in the “1980 plus” methodology. He’ll still make you nervous, but on the days where he is right or against the right type of lineup he can now be very effective. 

It’s instructive to also look at a better pitching staff, 1950 Detroit: 

The original model does them no favors, either, with the extreme pitchers, like Fred Hutchinson, now walking 28 extra batters, allowing many fewer hits, and low by more than ten percent on predicted strikeouts.  The average 1950 batter simply doesn’t strikeout on their card, so if pitchers are undercarded for Ks you will see profound deviations.  

The Tigers had the best control in the 1950 AL, so their deviations in this model will cause a lot of problems.  Overall, the effect is not as bad as it was with the Red Sox, but it’s still pretty bad. The net impact of these deviations is to make the predicted 1950 Tigers staff about as bad as the real Red Sox were (6th out of 8), and as noted above, the predicted Red Sox pitching becomes just unplayable. 

Above, 1950 Detroit pitching accuracy also improves using Mr. LeSueur’s model.  Adding these improved pitchers cards to an already strong batting card set will make this team (and league) fun to play. The beauty of this is adding and editing these pitching cards (from the original 80 to 92 now) is much easier than changing or adding batting cards. Batting cards take a ton of time to create. 

Note that this set is not normalized, meaning it’s not designed to be played against 1968 or 1977. It’s intended to be self-contained. Normalization I can also do, but it would require changing the batter’s cards, too, and possibly fine tuning that method for teams before 1960. I think before I attempt that, I’ll finish 2024. But, enjoy this pitching set!

Addendum: This wouldn’t be Statis-Pro baseball ⚾️ without a confusing off-card reference. There were several Pitcher’s Batting Cards done throughout their history. One set I have from 1983 (Courtesy Delphi Forum) is this set, which I would not use with the Great Pennant Paces cards:

SP_Pitcher_AB83.pdf

It’s not that these are bad cards; it’s that they don’t match up with the numbers on the pitcher’s cards and the actual hitting stats at all. Pitchers Batting Card 10 is the best card in this set, but the worst in the set that follows! 

This is the sheet that came in the Great Pennant Races game box (click on it):

And while I can’t be absolutely sure it’s the perfect match it does look roughly correct. 

For those who don’t like those cards, here’s Individualized Cards.

1950 AL Individualized Pitchers Batting Cards (Chart)

Jan 2, 2025:

Real cards for 1950 AL pitcher's batting.  Includes 7 extra players. Most pitchers use P for out column, 

but not all, some are real hitters, like Fred Hutchinson and Mickey McDermott, and they frequently pinch hit or played a position on occasion, i.e. Ned Garver. Use the column on the card for them. 

I've added extra players for positions without backups, i.e. Charlie Silvestri at Catcher for the

Yankees. Note that Pete Suder of Philadelphia also played 4 games at 1B with no errors (E0),

this should be added to his card so he can back up Ferris Fain.

50AL_Pitcher_Bat_Cards_extras.pdf

Fred Bobberts

Original Date of Publication: 12/17/2024