Update History:
1950-1959 seasons were updated on February 25th.
1960-1969 seasons were updated on February 11th.
1970-1979 seasons were updated on March 6th.
1980-1989 should be updated by March 15th.
1990-2022 will be updated in April and May.

(Seasons before 1950 haven't been released yet. 1919-1949 should be available before the end of May.)

I mentioned last year that I was working on the following improvements to the player cards:

• More accurate team colors. 
• Adding uniform numbers to all player cards.

In addition to the above, I've also made the following improvements:

1. Realistic distribution of outs among fielders. The number of putouts, assists and double plays by each position now matches real-life totals much more closely. This doesn't affect "high-level" stats like Batting Average and ERA; but it will improve the accuracy of defensive stats like Fielding Percentage and Range Factor.

2. Changes to some defensive ratings (Arm, Range and Fielding). As part of the above, I tweaked some ratings to improve the statistics produced. You might notice that Arm ratings were nudged up a bit for right fielders, and reduced a similar amount for left fielders. I don't think any rating was changed by more than 1 point.

3. Tweaks to pitcher Stamina ratings to create more realistic complete game totals.

4. Removed intentional walks from pitching stats before calculating card results. (I was already doing this for all batter cards). Most pitchers are affected very little by this change. But it will improve the cards for relievers that were asked to throw a large number of IBBs:

For the 2022 Season, I've added a small new feature to the Batter Cards:

For "aggressive" base stealers (with an Aggression of 3 or 4) the word 'Steal' is shown in red on their card (the mnemonic I'm using is "red = reckless").

For "selective" base stealers (an Aggression of 0 or 1) the word 'Steal' is shown in purple on their card (the mnemonic I'm using is "purple = prudent").

'Steal' is shown in black for all other players (those with an Aggression of 2).

To decide if a player will attempt to establish a lead:

1) Start with the baserunner's Speed.
2) If 'Steal' is shown in red, add 1 to this number.
3) If 'Steal' is shown in purple, subtract 1.
4) If this is equal to or greater than the catcher's Arm rating, roll to establish a lead.

I'm still working on some tweaks to the above rules based on the in-game situation (and trying to keep them simpler than the Auto Manager rules in the rulebook). Until then, these should serve you fairly well in terms of reproducing each player's season.

Baserunners in Season Ticket Baseball have two ratings that determine their success when trying to steal:

1. "Steal" determines whether the runner "establishes a lead" ("getting a good jump" would also be an accurate description). To establish a lead, the runner rolls both ten-sided dice and adds their Steal rating. If the total beats the pitcher's Hold rating by 10 or more, the runner has established a lead and must attempt a steal.

2. "Speed" determines whether the steal attempt succeeds. The runner rolls all three dice and adds their Speed. If the total beats the catcher's Arm rating by 10 or more, the runner is safe.

(Note: The same method is used for stealing second base or stealing third base. Stealing home uses the same system, but greatly increases the difficulty by bumping the catcher's Arm rating up to 12.)

However, there's a third rating that I call "Aggression" which measures how often a player tries to steal. "Aggression" isn't shown on the card, but I am starting to include it with the ".csv" files included with each season.

Aggression has 5 levels:

0: Only try to establish a lead if Speed is 2+ points higher than Catcher's Arm.
1: Try to establish lead if Speed is 1+ point higher than Catcher's Arm.
2: Try to establish lead if Speed is equal or higher than Catcher's Arm.
3: Try to establish lead if Speed is within 1 of Catcher's Arm (or higher).
4: Try to establish lead if Speed is within 2 of Catcher's Arm (or higher).

So, for a runner with a Speed of 5:

With Aggression=0, they only try to establish a lead if the Catcher's Arm rating is 3 or lower.
With Aggression=1, they try to establish a lead if the Catcher's Arm rating is 4 or lower.
With Aggression=2, they try to establish a lead if the Catcher's Arm rating is 5 or lower.
With Aggression=3, they try to establish a lead if the Catcher's Arm rating is 6 or lower.
With Aggression=4, they try to establish a lead if the Catcher's Arm rating is 7 or lower.

​I got an email recently asking if Season Ticket Baseball was "stable". I've made changes over the last few months, and they wanted to know if they could buy the game without worrying about the need to re-print or re-purchase everything a year from now. Here's what I said:

— I think the game was "80% done" in October of 2021 and it's now "95% done".​

2. The data is incomplete. Most data sources don't include the number of Sacrifice Hits (SH) and Sacrifice Flies (SF) allowed by each pitcher. Because SH and SF aren't counted as at-bats, they need to be subtracted from the number of Batters Faced (BF) to calculate the Batting Average allowed by each pitcher. We estimate SH and SF allowed by each pitcher, causing the "BA vs. L/R" calculations to differ by a few points from other databases.

Because of this, early versions of Season Ticket Baseball include K23 results on every catcher's Defense Table. But here's the problem: I don't like the K23 result. It's not fun or interesting. (It is fun and interesting when the ball gets away from the catcher and the batter reaches safely. But this play is much rarer).

It's also not realistic to describe all these "dropped third strikes" as 'K23'. Sometimes the catcher tags the batter. And sometimes the batter just walks back to the dugout and is called out by the umpire.

Finally, the rule is complicated. For example, if there is a runner on first and less than two outs, the batter is automatically ruled out — to prevent the catcher from intentionally dropping a third strike in order to create a double play — changing a 'K23' to a simple 'K'.

Therefore, I'm in the process of changing all K23 results to "2-3" ground outs (and adjusting the results on other cards to make up for this change). If you think the K23 result is interesting and you don't like this change, you can interpret all 'K' results on the catcher's Defense Table as K23. This will fairly accurately represent the number of dropped third strikes without altering strikeout totals.

Update: All of the Stadium Cards have been updated and can be found on this page. 

The Stadium Cards released over the last fewl months have about 6-8 too many hit results on them. For example, these are the Old and New versions of Fenway Park for 1986:

If you look at the top of the right column on each table, you'll see that the old card has 8 more die rolls (666-673) that result in a hit. ​Eight die rolls out of 600 possible results doesn't seem like a lot, but its enough to drive up batting averages by about 15 points (e.g. pushing a league batting average from .265 up to .280). New Stadium Cards will be uploaded here before the end of the week (Friday, January 21st).

If you've already printed cards (or purchased printed cards), the easiest workaround is to find 7 consecutive hits on your current Stadium Cards and change them to outs. For example on the above card you could change the rolls from 673-679 to outs. The type of out depends on how complicated you want to make things, but you could use the last digit (e.g., 673 = F3, 674 = F4, etc.) 

If you're curious how this happened, I had bad data for Sacrifice Flies and Sacrifice Hits, and these numbers are needed to calculate the total number of plate appearances in each season. Again, this may seem inconsequential, but removing a few thousand plate appearances from the data changes things.

Adobe Acrobat is the default application for printing PDF files. Unfortunately, it adds an (unwanted) margin around the entire page that can make the whitespace for each Player Card somewhat asymmetrical. To get around this:
1. Select “Properties” from the File Menu (or type Ctrl-D) and click the Advanced tab.
2. Change Page Scaling from “Default” to “None”.
3. Click "OK".

​However, I realized that real baseball doesn't work this way. Sometimes the defense switches things up in an attempt to fool the hitter. (A good example of this can be seen in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, where Wally Backman covers 2nd on the Hit & Run, despite the fact that the left-handed Wade Boggs is batting).
​
I looked into ways for the Hit & Run to create the correct benefits (increased batting average and prevention of the double play) without relying on the handedness of the batter. Digging into the math, the Hit & Run play in Season Ticket Baseball already increases batting averages by 30 points — by reducing the number of strikeouts. Being aggressive early in the count cuts down on both strikeouts and walks, and the rules correctly simulate this by changing both 'K' and 'BB' results into a 2-strike count that doesn't end the at-bat. In order to strike out with the Hit & Run on, you essentially have to roll a 'K' result twice.  This rule, by itself, increases batting averages by 30 points — exactly the amount that I was trying to design into the system.

These are the effects of the Hit & Run with the new rules:

​It's tough to confirm whether this table perfectly match real-life, mostly because it's hard to identify all the Hit & Run plays in the statistical record. But I'm confident that they are pretty close. If you'd like an idea of the research I did, I recommend starting with this article at Baseball Prospectus.

IMPORTANT: Many Stadium Cards for seasons before 2021 have an error (see attachment). Because this error added about 9-12 hits (“1B”) that shouldn’t have been there, it increased league batting averages by 15-20 points.
​
These will be fixed on or before December 17th. In the meantime, you have a couple choices:

1) Open the “RTF” files (e.g. in MS Word) and make the changes below before printing.

2) Print the PDF files and make these changes with a pen or pencil.