Moneyball

Moneyball combines euro-style mechanics and the latest in advanced analytics (Sabermetrics) to build a true 21st century tabletop baseball simulation. Moneyball plays faster, smoother, and more accurately than anything before it. Player cards are not jammed with complicated and unsightly dice tables, just 5 straightforward 1-10 ratings for hitters (Contact, Patience, Power, Bunting, Baserunning) and pitchers (Control, Velocity, Repertoire, Move, and Stamina). There are no dice rolls with multiples charts to reference, just a simple card draw for the pitcher and chit draw for the batter.

Run your front office like a real front office by evaluating talent using the same metrics actual scouts and GMs use today. Not the stats of yesteryear. With advanced Sabermetrics, we've learned there are just a handful of underlying statistics that determine a player's performance. For pitchers the only stats that really matter are his walk, strikeout and fly ball rate. It’s been statistically proven that a pitcher’s “stuff” has very little influence on the outcome once a ball is a play. It’s much more dependent on the stadium, weather, the defense behind him, and pure luck – all factors beyond his control. For hitters, strike out and line drive rates, more than anything, determine their batting average. Moneyball has been built from the ground up using these underlying principles.

Pitchers are streakier than hitters and are therefore modeled differently in Moneyball. Their performance is highly volatile and can vary greatly from game to game because your starting pitcher’s draw deck is constructed before each game. The pitcher deck, which determines strike outs, walks, and home runs consists of 108 cards. Your starter’s deck has only 36 of those cards and it is typically reshuffled several times each start. One of your roles as the manager is to evaluate his “stuff” as the game progresses. This creates fantastic “heat of the moment” decision making that does not exist in other baseball sims. If your starter is wilder than usual or has served up several gopher balls, it’s probably because he didn’t have his best “stuff” i.e. his draw deck has more walk and home run cards than usual. So recognizing when your starter doesn’t have his best stuff and yanking him is CRUCIAL to your success as a manager. Starters in Moneyball are not purely random dice rolls with a backwards cause-and-effect “fatigue” modifier added after they’ve already gotten lit up. Manage your starting pitcher like a real manager, not a dice roller…