Fallout Boy

The Common Man wrote last week about his love of Balboni and of his induction into and fascination with the Strat-o-Matic realm. It inspired him to throw a couple of teams together and play a game or two. The terms were simple, The Common Man simply had to find each player interesting. Perhaps they were very good. Perhaps terrible. Perhaps still active or recently retired. Perhaps they end up on The Common Man's television these days, bloviating about the game they used to play. Or perhaps, like Balboni, they were just fun. Each team had 22 man rosters (with three starting pitchers each, since The Common Man didn't know how many of these he'd end up wanting to play), but only the starting nine hit for either team. Here's how they were constructed:

The visiting team
1992 Pat Listach, 2B (.290/.352/.349
1992 Deion Sanders, RF (.304/.346/.495)
1990 Harold Baines, DH (.284/.378/.441)
1992 Matt Williams, 3B (.227/.286/.384)
1990 Eric Anthony, LF (.192/.279/.351
1992 Brian Harper, C (.307/.343/.410)
1992 Sammy Sosa, CF (.260/.317/.393)
1990 Steve Balboni, 1B (.192/.291/.406, of course he made the cut)
1990 Ozzie Guillen, SS (.279/.312/.341)

1990 Nolan Ryan, SP (13-9, 3.44, 137 H, 74 BB, 232 K in 204 IP)

The home team
1992 Paul Molitor, DH (.320/.389/.461)
1990 Robbie Alomar, SS (.287/.340/.381)
1990 Ken Griffey, Jr., CF (.300/.366/.481)
1990 Kevin Maas, 1B (.252/.367/.535)
1990 Gary Sheffield, 3B (.294/.350/.421)
1992 Shane Mack, LF (.315/.394/.467)
1992 Mickey Tettleton, C (.238/.379/.469)
1990 Rob Deer, RF (.209/.313/.432)
1990 Jose Oquendo, 2B (.252/.350/.316)

1990 John Smoltz, SP (14-11, 3.85, 206 H, 90 BB, 170 K, in 231.3 IP)

It looked like it should be a bloodbath. Smoltz's team clearly had the offensive advantage, and was not terrible in the field either, with Griffey, Mack, Deer, Sheffield, and Oquendo. But, of course, baseball is a funny game, and Strat-o-Matic can be even funnier. Nolan Ryan pitched a 2-hit shutout and won 3-0, striking out 11 and walking 6. And of those 11, only one was Rob Deer (Mack and Maas went down three times each, and Tettleton twice). Ryan's dominance shouldn't be that big of a surprise, as he was facing a lineup that was prone to the K, and he was the ultimate strikeout pitcher.


Smoltz's shortcoming was the longball in this contest, as he surrendered a solo shot each to Baines and to Balboni (long live Steve Balboni!). Balboni's was particularly surprising, given his troubles against RHP. But a 5-4 roll meant that Smoltz was vulnerable, and the 20-sided die did not roll his way.


Smoltz did manage to strike out 12 batters in eight innings, before giving way to Nasty Boy and mouth-breather Rob Dibble (circa 1990), who struck out the side in the 9th (four of the victorious visiting team's 15 K's were from Sosa).

The second game featured the same lineups, with 1990 Oil Can Boyd going for the visitors (10-6, 2.93, 164 H, 52, BB, 113 K in 190.7 IP) and 1990 Greg Maddux (15-15, 3.46, 242 H, 71 BB, 144 K in 237 IP) for the homers. It has always struck The Common Man that Strat-o-Matic (and Diamond Mind, for that matter) perpetually undervalues certain pitchers for reasons that defy comprehension. As he replayed the late 1920s and early 1930s, for instance, on DMB, Lefty Grove consistently underperformed his real stats. Maddux similarly seems to struggle in Strat-o-Matic, perhaps because his pinpoint control and ability to generate weak contact is mitigated by the hitters' cards he is forced up against. Because of the nature of Strat-o-Matic, pitchers are just as likely to affect the outcome of an at bat as a hitter (because the odds of the results being drawn from the pitcher and hitter cards is split evenly). But perhaps certain pitchers are more likely to control the outcome of hitters' at bats than others, particularly those with pinpoint control and wicked movement, like Maddux.


Or maybe it's all been the luck of the roll. The Common Man would be interested in hearing what others' experiences are with the Mad Dog.

In this game, true to form, Maddux struggled, walking 4 and scattering seven hits through seven innings, but only let in three runs. Oil Can, on the other hand, was beaten around Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, giving up five runs in five innings of work.

Anyway, The Common Man has no idea when and if he'll play more of these games. But as these things tend to go, The Common Man will undoubtedly get his inner 13-year old up and make a couple more squads to battle on the basement floor (much to the amusement of The Uncommon Wife, who descended the stairs to find her husband sitting cross-legged on the floor, hunched over a board and a mess of cards, rolling some dice and keeping score like he was at the Metrodome. She ascended them laughing hysterically, after he told her Steve Balboni had just hit a home run, but that Nolan Ryan pitched a two-hitter.). He realizes that you may have no real interest in this phenomenon (too bad for you). But as long as the results were fresh and the outcomes interesting (and real games haven't started yet), he thought he'd share that his discussion last week has manifested itself in strange and peculiar ways. Now The Common Man promises to leave you alone about fictional baseball games being played in his house. Instead, he'll bring back some of the more interesting cards he finds, now and again, in an effort to highlight the very great, very bad, and otherwise noteworthy players in the box. And if you have any interesting cards to share, feel free to scan them in and send them The Common Man's way via the email address to the right. He'll be happy to pass along your finds to the rest of the class.

What-o-Matic?

A while back, The Common Man talked about getting to meet Steve "Bye-bye" Balboni, a mustachioed hulk-of-a-man who manned first base and designated hitter for the Royals in the mid '80s, before moving on to the Mariners and Yankees. While The Common Man has long been an admirer of the soup strainer, Balboni has particularly fascinated The Common Man since 1991, when The Common Boy received his first version of the Strat-o-Matic Baseball board game for his birthday. The box contained (and still contains, you don't think The Common Man threw the single greatest present he ever go as a child away, did you?) a cardboard playing field, little pieces to represent baserunners, three dice (one white and two red), and two sets of pick cards numbered from 1-20 (which The Common Man quickly replaced with a 20-sided di (suck it, cool kids, The Common Man totally had a 20-sided di. Thankfully, he did not complicate his social awkwardness further by playing D&D.)) Also, there were several complicated looking charts and 800 individual player cards from the 1990 season.

Using these cards, like with the amazing Diamond Mind Baseball of today, the 13-year old Common Boy could replay entire seasons and make the players perform just as they did in the pros. Of these cards, The Common Man's favorite was undoubtedly Balboni's. In 1990, Balboni got into 116 games for the Yankees, hitting .192/.291/.406, with 17 homers in just 307 plate appearances. That he garnered just 34 RBI only adds to the delightful all-or-nothingness of his season. Indeed, fully one-third of his hits were homers that year. He had just 6 doubles. And scored a total of 24 runs (meaning other players knocked him home just 7 times. And he struck out 91 times, or once every 3.37 times up. Because of this, and because of his massive platoon split (.162/.205/.267 vs. RHP, .211/.340/.497 vs. LHP), Balboni's card was a thing of beauty:


Veteran players will note how feeble Balboni looks against RHP, with virtually no chance to get on board. Against lefties, however, Balboni is a monster, with seven different places he can hit the ball out. The odds of that are complicated, however, related to the likelihood of a specific dice combination coming up. Still, the all-or-nothing approach Balboni showed that season meant that every at-bat he got on the floor of The Common Man's bedroom or the family room coffee table was an adventure.

From 1990 and 1992 (the only two seasons The Common Man can find), here are some of the other great all-or-nothing cards from the game. First, from 1990, here's Orioles 1B Sam Horn, a monster of a man who never really rose to prominence because he couldn't hit LHP (and couldn't field):


Look how bereft of good things his left-side columns are. Indeed, the best he can muster is a sac fly. Against righties he feasts, with several opportunities to do big damage. A Horn/Balboni platoon in 1990 would have been a great thing indeed. That year, amazingly, Horn totaled 280 plate appearances (his second highest total ever. Only 17 of those came against LHP. Horn hit .248/.332/.472 that year, with 14 homers. But, having never caught on, he'll have to be content with inspiring a terrific message board and a great story from Shyster.

1990 was also the year of Kevin Maas, another all-or-nothing, lefty first baseman in the AL East. Maas played for the Yankees that year, and became the fastest player ever to 10, and then to 20 homers in his career. But by September of that year, teams had found the holes in Maas's swing and his production was (forgive The Common Man), no Maas. Still, in 300 PAs in 1990, Maas hit .252/.367/.535, good for a 150 OPS+, with 21 homers. His card was awfully fun too:


One slugger who managed to have extended success was Cecil Fielder, whose 1990 stands out in an era of relatively low offensive production. Back from Japan, Fielder pasted the ball that summer, good for .277/.377/.592 (a 167 OPS+), 51 homers, and this card:


But among these all-or-nothing allstars, Fielder stands out as one of the few truly productive players (well, he and Rob Deer). Eric Anthony was a lot less lucky. Billed as a huge prospect by the Astros, Houston fans were understandably disappointed by his performance when he was rushed to the majors. So was The Common Man, every time Anthony came up in either 1990 or 1992:


That's pretty brutal, but the Astros somehow managed to ship him to Seattle and get Mike Hampton in the deal, so it wasn't too bad a bargain.

There are more cards The Common Man wants to share, but he's unsure how this post will be received, how much additional explanation of the game and what the cards mean will be necessary, and doesn't want any of the cards (or players) to not get their due because The Common Man just kept putting out card after card. So he'll close here with just one more. Because this list wouldn't be complete without acknowledging the greatest all-or-nothing, three-true-outcomes slugger of them all, Ken Phelps, who finished his 11 year career in 1990 in less than spectacular fashion with the Oakland A's and Cleveland Indians, as you can see:


Alas, a .150/.280/.192 line doesn't use as much black ink as it used to. But it still apparently gets you a bushy, bushy mustache and some comically oversized glasses.