Strat-o-matic in 2018, has upgraded the gaming experience this year with a revolutionary new service.  The New Cloud system has been largely, a welcome upgrade for leagues and the gamers who play in them.  All the game results, boxes, subsets, daily reports, and league files can be uploaded into the cloud, so all league members have easy access to this information which is done through an easy menu function.  League members can then download, at any time they wish, any and all of these same files right into their game folders making easy access to review the league status and stats.  No longer do you have to wait for your league commission to email you the information you need to decide your team's strategy and create a new computer manager.

This is an absolutely brilliant concept for SOM Baseball gamers.  In the past, leagues would have to post each week's results through various means to communicate with their members including independent websites, draft sites, E Mail groups, social media, and so on.  Now, all this can be transferred back and forth in a time saving manner through the cloud.  The multimega-byte subsets function files whose file space generally over a season exceeds what E Mail groups can handle, this can be done within seconds without any file attachments.  The end result of this new function through the cloud is not only time savings and easy access, but this presents a whole new statistical dimension that many gamers have never explored before, which is called subsets.

Let me given you some examples of the new type of statistics you may wish to begin to keep track of.  Take the day-night, home-road, monthly statistics for teams, this can now be accessed and compiled year long by each league.  This means league members can view their own teams tendencies and performances with more statistical detail.  I know for a fact, that attention to these specialized Subsets data that the computer game can track has been sorely lacking in many leagues.  This will enhance the gaming experience I am sure of it.  However, on the other hand, I do believe it will also take take away time from many marriages and leave many spouses a bit annoyed.

Extreme Bat1: Plus .200 OPS

Extreme Bat2: Plus .300 OPS

Extreme Bat3: Plus .400 OPS

Extreme Bat4: Plus .500 OPS

Extreme Pit1: Minus .200 OPS

Extreme Pit2: Minus .300 OPS

Extreme Pit3: Minus .400 OPS

Extreme Pit4: Minus .500 OPS

Are these setting good for Draft leagues?  The game company has decided to make this feature a non default setting weeks after the computer game's initial release.  It is a feature that many gamers will and should use to add realism to their replays.  How leagues are going to incorporate it will take time as the working minds in the leagues figure out ways to incorporate this feature into their league rules and structure.   Now, I am aware that there are some gamers who never like to see the dice results altered from the actual cards.  This feature will be using proprietary formulas that to compensate for the most extreme matchups will have to do just this.  Is this a bad thing?  What effect will it have on a league?  Let's explore this issue more.

Managers will certainly seek out the players who are most likely to get the most favorable matchups against key rivals and their pitching staff.  A smart GM's will exploit any weaknesses they can uncover in their opponents.  With this feature on, managers will certainly seek to gain OPS (Onbase + Slugging) by sprinkling their lineups with the players with potential to get "Extreme Matchups", levels 1, 2, 3, or 4 matchups.  It is tough to say without looking at the game information when you setup your lineup if the matchups will be extreme.  Therefore, its a tool mostly for face-to-face and netplay leagues or games more than it is and can be used with HAL (the brains that runs the computer games) running your games.  However, playing some mock games could give any GM an good idea which players on your team will get favorable situations during game play.  These "Extreme Matchups" however, are not given out to specific players that can be traded or drafted and utilized later.  The game generates and displays the "Extreme Situations" on a case by case basis.  Therefore it is hard to plan for except, when you are running your own sim leagues.

Draft a teams in large leagues will naturally have higher market values for obtaining quality righty starting pitching should see the value of more balanced Starters climb even higher as demand grows higher for having such balanced rated righty starters to avoid facing such "Extreme Matchups".

Now, my fear as a League Commissioner would be that some teams will do their best to avoid facing these "extreme pitchers" and thus this would create perhaps a slightly more imbalanced trade market in the long run.  Many leagues work to keep competition within their group so this will prevent apathy from setting in, or that there will be a whole pool of non-desirable pitchers filling out many of the league teams' rotations.  This could lead to some inflated values of these pitchers which means that potentially, those GMs who are disengaged won't have the resources to compete with the big boys, the playoff bound teams who have accumulated the balanced righty staff starters that can bring a league championship.

Considering the impact on the market for offense, we could see a proliferation by various teams who place a very high value on the more balanced matchup cards, as they try to avoid being faced with potential "extreme matchups" for fear of dropping some good OPS average.  By studying the individual game and rotational player matchups, GM's can see in a simulation which hitters or pitchers are likely to get an "extreme matchup" ahead of time as you do your homework and setup and test various lineups to promote the advantages or disadvantages of each lineup.

So in conclusion, your league will have to decide whether this rule is going to be relevant to your league theme and situation.  For those gamers who like to play closer with the traditional dice and card, any non-visible computer enhancement adjustment system is going to be non-desirable I would think.  However, in reality, I really don't see how this adjust can and will overall, take away anything from your league experience if you, as your GM do your due-diligence with your computer manager and preparation.  This new rule could affect the trade markets though by bringing a higher value to the balanced cards.  This could be very significant over a period of time.  Over all though, the addition of a new strategy can keep a game or league from going stale.  This is a feature that could be embraced without a significant impact upon a league, for its advantages could outweigh its negatives.  The trade market adjustment does not have to override the increased planning detail and strategy time needed to use the feature.   I think it's worth a try.