The Sporting News: 1986 stratomatic baseball

[Moose Milligan]

Found this, thought it was interesting.

It started on Nov 5th, but they're doing a day by day stratomatic replay of the 1986 season.

It's nice to have a daily box score in the winter...and some of the names bring up great memories.

This offseason, SportingNews.com will be partying like it's 1986 all over again. Using our Strat-O-Matic Baseball Online engine, we'll be replaying the 1986 baseball season, game by game, with 26 prominent members of the baseball community managing the original rosters through the original schedule, and basically see what happens. The setting is the same, but history will be rewritten with each swing of the bat. Will the Mets and Red Sox battle it out again? Or will be there a new team invited to the dance?

Play starts on Monday, November 5, and we'll have all the action covered right here, with daily boxscores, stats, standings, injury reports, analysis, and personal journals kept by our managers. As an added bonus, we'll be re-printing actual articles from the original Sporting News magazine from 1986, as if they hot off the presses. Will Darryl Strawberry be the first player to go 50-50? Do the 8 players who are asking for $1 million or more in arbitration actually deserve that much money? Is Bert Blyleven going to the Hall of Fame?

http://www.sportingnews.com/baseball/1986/about/

[Migrant Redbird]

It would be interesting to see if the 1986 Cardinals, who finished a distant 3rd in the NL East in 1986 despite winning the NL pennant in both 1985 and 1987, would be able to match the preseason predictions this time around.

I suspect it would depend upon whether the players' Strat-o-matic production is based upon career stats or upon their actual performance and injuries during the 1986 season. If they do the latter, then the Strat-o-matic results may not be that different from what actually happened.

[Boy Howdy]

It would be interesting to see if the 1986 Cardinals, who finished a distant 3rd in the NL East in 1986 despite winning the NL pennant in both 1985 and 1987, would be able to match the preseason predictions this time around.

It would help St. Louis if these guys forget the Joaquin Andujar for Mike Heath & Tim Conroy deal ever happened.

[Flip217]

From the '86 Home page:

That leaves only the Orioles with single digit wins, due in part by losses to the Royals which have to hurt.

*sigh*

[Boy Howdy]

From the '86 Home page:

That leaves only the Orioles with single digit wins, due in part by losses to the Royals which have to hurt.

*sigh*

The 1986 Orioles remain one of the most disappointing Baltimore teams of my lifetime.

They're remembered simply as the losing outfit that drove Earl Weaver back into retirement for good, but Earl had them sitting in second place the first week of August. At 59-47, the O's were just 2 1/2 games behind the Red Sox.

Then...man it kills me every time I type it...a 14-42 finish. Ouch!

[Migrant Redbird]

It would help St. Louis if these guys forget the Joaquin Andujar for Mike Heath & Tim Conroy deal ever happened.

Depend upon whether they used the 1985 or 1986 versions of Andujar. And even the 1985 version was more remarkable for durability (38 starts, 270 innings) than it was for ERA (an ERA+ of only 105, compared to 184 for John Tudor and a 124 for Danny Cox).

In 1986, Tudor's ERA+ slipped to 126 and Cox's rose slightly to 127. Bob Forsch bounced back in 1986 after three subpar seasons, but that wasn't enough to offset significant declines in the hitting performances of many regulars.

The principle reason for the Cardinals collapse in 1986 was the following:

Pos/Yr Player     G  AB  R  HR RBI   BA  OBP  SLG OPS+1B 05 Clark     126 442  71 22  87 .281 .393 .502 1491B 06 Clark      65 232  34  9  23 .237 .362 .422 1161B 07 Clark     131 419  93 35 106 .286 .459 .597 176OF 05 McGee     152 612 114 10  82 .353 .384 .503 147OF 06 McGee     124 497  65  7  48 .256 .306 .370  86OF 07 McGee     153 620  76 11 105 .285 .312 .434  942B 05 Herr      159 596  97  8 110 .302 .379 .416 1232B 06 Herr      152 559  48  2  61 .252 .342 .331  872B 07 Herr      141 510  73  2  83 .263 .346 .331  80

Other hitters had lesser declines in performance, or even improved slightly, but the main reason that the pitching staff won so many fewer games -- and didn't go as deep in the ones they pitched, was the reduction in runs support. The 1985 Cardinals scored 747 runs and allowed 572. The 1986 version of the team scored 600 runs and allowed 611. I don't think that the 26 starts and 155 innings that Joaquin pitched in Oakland at a league average ERA would have made much difference to the 1986 team.