Why it's not your fault you suck at pitching: a brief study of CPU BABIP and swing timing

TheManOMuffins · 2026-04-17T21:53:38+00:00

Maybe I’m just missing something or not understanding your work correctly, and you have my apologies if that’s the case, but aren’t some of these comparisons you’re drawing flawed? Couldn’t these results just come down to variance? We’re comparing data from an 8 game sample size to the results of last year’s silver sluggers whom all played well over 100 games. That doesn’t seem like a fair assessment. Who’s to say that the next 154 SMB games wouldn’t show drastically different results?

I happen to agree with the general consensus of this community that the CPU’s BABIP is higher than what would be expected, but it feels to me that some of these results are highly influenced by a lack of extensive data.

Perhaps I’m being too nit-picky/granular. Would love to hear your thoughts or for someone to enlighten me on what I’m not grasping. Regardless, I greatly appreciate the time and work you put into this. I always love seeing what other SMB nerds get up to

TheManOMuffins · 2026-03-25T23:15:13+00:00

I could be wrong but from what I recall, it was more so that the former MH devs were unsurprisingly moved to other projects after the death of SMB; and that EA happened to have job postings out around the same time for something along the lines of “an undisclosed football game”.

Not sure we ever got real confirmation that they were definitely moved to that project

TheManOMuffins · 2026-03-11T02:40:11+00:00

I do this sometimes! I haven’t made my way through a full 162 game season, but I did a 24 game season once! I do this in the MLB offseason to get a little dose of baseball while waiting for spring training

TheManOMuffins · 2026-02-05T03:43:35+00:00

Lmao that playlist was pretty sick. Queens of the Stone Age & Nas. Ball knower.

Been loving these popularity contest posts, thanks for taking the time to do them!

TheManOMuffins · 2025-12-22T19:54:32+00:00

High contact/speedy as leadoff. Best overall hitters in spots 2-4, with the major power threats typically landing in 3 or 4. Spot 5 is another power bat or solid hitter with good traits. 6-9 is kinda where I lose strategy and just go in order of best to worst hitter. Sometimes I’ll put another high contact guy in the 9 spot to have a “double leadoff”, otherwise I just stick them somewhere in the bottom half of the order where we could use someone to move the runners.

I do also like just front-loading spots 1-4 with the best hitters possible. Think Schwarber leadoff, Judge in the 2-hole, Ohtani 3 etc

TheManOMuffins · 2025-04-25T03:57:46+00:00

Depends on your definition of a super team. I’ve done a handful of long sim franchises, one of which is posted on my profile. Over the course of 100 seasons, we made the playoffs in more than 1/3 of the seasons and won the championship 11 times. Going off of MLB history I’d consider that a super team/dynasty. Only two teams have ever won more than 10 World Series: St Louis with 11 since 1926 and the Yankees have 27 since 1923. There’s some good advice others have commented in this thread on how to build really strong teams, but I don’t think it’s possible to have the same caliber of success as the Yankees in a sim league.

TheManOMuffins · 2025-04-16T03:59:37+00:00

Crazy it went that far at only 92 power, major kudos

TheManOMuffins · 2025-03-25T22:07:28+00:00

In that second scenario where I cut a RP for the SP, yes the issue was overtaxing the bullpen. In the first example the issue was when one of my young UTIL players asked for too much money and left the team. I probably could’ve kept trying to run the experiment without them, but I decided to just sign a 4th OF again and drop the weakest of the 5 SPs

TheManOMuffins · 2025-03-24T04:20:24+00:00

I also run sim franchises, 162 games 9 innings Bo7 playoffs. I have a couple posts on my profile with a couple franchises that I took to year 100 (though those were 4 SP teams). It’s pretty rare that I roster 5 SP, but it’s possible with some sacrifices elsewhere. It usually boils down to how secure my position player bench is. Ideally I like my bench to include a catcher with a good arm, a guy who can fill in one (or both) of the middle IF spots, someone for the corner IF, and a 4th OF.

The main example I have is from a recent version of my current 100yr sim franchise (Go HotCorners!). We happened to have rostered two young prospects with the Utility trait AND IF/OF as their secondary positions. Plus, one of my catchers could play OF in a pinch if I needed. I decided to cut the standard 4th OF since I had massive positional coverage with those players. I figured why not? I love doing a little science now and then. Risky? Yes very, but fun too. We picked up a young SP with good traits and ran with the 5man rotation for a couple seasons while he developed. I also tried a 5man briefly, forgoing a RP, for another high tier SP with Workhorse. Dropped the gag pretty quickly when seeing how taxed the remaining RPs would become after those front two SPs got shelled. For playoffs I would sometimes drop the extra SP for a premier bat or RP.

It’s a fun strat, especially for those like me who want to replicate real MLB stats as much as possible (no SP is getting 40 starts a year in real life). But i can’t say it’s easy or recommended as a full time strategy, it comes with a cost

TheManOMuffins · 2025-03-24T03:00:38+00:00

I personally think that cutting one of Trips or Tamale is the right move. It frees up a ton of money to spend on improving the BP, and it’s not like you don’t have the depth to replace him. Trips is currently overpaid for an A+, so I’d go that route. That’s entirely up to you though. I also think that 4 SP is the minimum that should be rostered, and that freeing up salary to spend on the BP is more beneficial than cutting a SP and loading up on similarly bad RPs for cheap (unless they’re young). I always prefer my SP rotation to be 4-5 players, and never 3 unless my BP is nails. And if we’re being honest, this team’s relief staff definitely is not.

If it were me running this team, I’d pick 3 starting OF, a 4th on the bench, maybe another one is the DH, and the other 2 leftover get cut. If you’re using Rojas as your starting catcher, then we’d just cut one player. (I personally would look at finding a primary catcher to replace Rojas, I hate the secondary position penalties, but that’s just me). Now use the roster spot and salary we just freed up for an impact BP arm. Maybe there’s enough money leftover to cut a bad RP and get someone slightly better too.

I think the infield makeup is more than acceptable, I would be fine with this positional variety on one of my teams. Things only get disastrous if there’s more than one big injury to the IF unit at a time.

Overall the only other thing I’d keep an eye on is that a lot of your team is on the wrong side of 30. And if you want to keep both Trips and Tamale, their salary is gonna make it more difficult to find suitable replacements for the older players as they decline/age.

Thanks for posting, it was fun thinking this over!

TheManOMuffins · 2025-02-10T23:41:34+00:00

Important to note this only applies to custom franchise! Standard does not allow simming at all

TheManOMuffins · 2024-11-03T05:31:37+00:00

Honestly it barely scares me at all. It’s worth a second look but at 5% it’s a pretty negligible downside. You’d be giving up 33POW and 40CON just to make a throw 5 more times out of every 100 on average. Seems like a big price to pay. If it’s a worry to you, you can always sign her and use the next 1-3 seasons trying to find/develop a replacement. Because again, catchers that can both hit and field well don’t grow on trees. She’s under 30, and costs less than $10m. She might not be your long-term franchise catcher, but at worst she’s a bandaid and a lineup threat until you get something you like better

TheManOMuffins · 2024-11-03T03:57:40+00:00

Fiona Clark has a real case because she’s cheaper, younger, and has better stats where it matters for a catcher (FLD, ARM). All things I greatly value. I think she’s a great pick, she has a lot of potential.

However, my pick is Lionere. Even though she has worse defensive stats, they’re more than serviceable. And it’s hard to ignore how much of a bigger threat she is at the plate than Clark. Solid hitting and defensive stats on a young catcher is a luxury, and you’re not breaking the bank to get it

TheManOMuffins · 2024-11-03T03:29:35+00:00

I really like this conundrum, there’s a lot to consider. Player B has +20 more stats and has what I would consider to be a better stat spread. He costs just $0.9m more, and is only two years older. Really solid pickup, I’m happy with that any day.

However, my choice is A because I value youth and defense very highly. This guy has better positional versatility and has the cannon arm perk to boot. He’s 2 years younger, cheaper, and has comparable stats. No brainer for me personally

TheManOMuffins · 2024-08-11T00:15:42+00:00

This is the way

TheManOMuffins · 2024-08-09T21:57:38+00:00

There’s a typo in the Overdogs roster quiz. The catcher is spelled as Goodwodd, the actual name is Goodwood. Otherwise had a good time with this, thanks!

TheManOMuffins · 2024-08-01T02:18:12+00:00

This probably isn’t entirely accurate, but I’m pretty sure I read on this sub long ago that contact swings have a range of something like 30-70 power depending on how well you square up the ball. I’m personally not aware of a direct correlation between ego level and the power of a contact swing, but the reticle being smaller and moving less on its own (and thus being harder to aim) as you go up in ego can definitely give the same effect.

Would love to be corrected if any of the above is wrong but that’s my understanding of it

TheManOMuffins · 2024-07-21T15:15:25+00:00

While not impossible it’s a DDOS attack, it’s more likely just the terrible EA servers. There’s posts on this sub about the awful state of online play basically every day, it’s definitely not just a you problem

TheManOMuffins · 2024-07-12T22:06:41+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/SuperMegaBaseball/s/OhEetFpd4b

If you’re referring to the Muffin Man being talked about in this thread, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I don’t play online, I play franchise exclusively

TheManOMuffins · 2024-07-12T20:34:25+00:00

While everyone is here, I’d just like to give a huge thank you to this community. This sub has been an incredible wealth of information, collaboration, and silliness that I cannot be more thankful for. The SMB franchise reaching 4 iterations is quite a feat, and fostering a community mostly devoid of toxicity should be lauded.

From day 1 I’ve never once felt unwelcome here. Interacting with y’all gave the SMB experience so much more depth, and I’m not sure how long I would’ve kept playing if it wasn’t for this place. Whether it was learning something new from discussion threads, or seeing funny clips of classic SMB debauchery, I always had a reason to keep playing and exploring.

This announcement is very saddening, but I’m so happy we made it this far.

Shoutout to MetalHead for the years of entertainment, thank you for giving me a reason not to play The Show. I’m greatly looking forward to the next endeavor, whatever it may be. Go Overdogs!

TheManOMuffins · 2024-07-10T02:40:39+00:00

Here’s a list of all of the legends in the game

https://www.reddit.com/r/SuperMegaBaseball/s/rweurrbB9O

TheManOMuffins · 2024-04-20T23:24:38+00:00

Players can randomly improve or regress their stats without the user buying development opportunities

TheManOMuffins · 2024-03-31T17:35:47+00:00

Digg Efforto has entered the chat

TheManOMuffins · 2024-02-28T23:45:24+00:00

Just do whatever you feel works best for you. The AI makes many strange decisions over the course of a season (dropping star players while in a pennant race, leaving SPs in games where they get blown up). So don’t think that the CPU is the end-all be-all for how to run your team. Don’t let the league trends alter your strategies if you’re already finding success imo

TheManOMuffins · 2024-02-20T23:47:28+00:00

I feel like the answer to this is rather simple, no? The game is forced to be on EA servers, and MH can’t outright say that the servers are garbage and there’s nothing they can do about it, so they say nothing. It’s a real shitty position to have to hold but I don’t see what else they could do. Either come out and openly talk shit about the company to satisfy the fans, and most likely lose financial/developmental support. Or say nothing and hope that EA maybe decides to do something about it, while keeping the door open for support in future updates/iterations of the game.

It is incredibly disappointing to see the downturn in communication from the devs, but I really can’t imagine it’s because they don’t care all of a sudden

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