Originally posted by fathersson: Well, we all know that Pitching can give you the most points in any one section of this game. But it comes with the chance of also giving you negative points. True not very often, but there still is a chance. A guy goes 0-4 or doesn't play doesn'thelp you that night, but he doesn't hurt you either. Now if a guy did go 0-4 and they took some points away then that would take it to a whole new level.
The occasional negative total you get from pitching (which makes pitching even more important) notwithstanding, the bottom line is that over the course of the season you can expect to get about 30% of your total points from pitching, so pitching is by far the most important facet of the game since the amount of salary cap value you spend is dis-proportionately low for the number of points you get.
As far as a guy not playing or going 0-4 not hurting you, I would disagree.
I think DB can explain this better than I can, since he probably knows the correct terminoly, but I'll give it a quick shot:
I'd guess that, on average, you can expect to get about 25-30 points a night from offense. A great nght would be about 60. An unbelievable night would be about 80. A horrible night is about 10. It's kinda like the +27 you start with every day in pitching, and then add and subtract from there.
So your expected value, per player, is about +2.5 or +3. When a guy gets zero, in effect, he has hurt you in a negative way because you got no points.
Think of it this way: The realistic potential spread in offensive points for a day is anywhere from 0 to 80, with an expectancy of about 25 or 30. So the guy that goes 0-4, in effect, got you a -4 for the night.
Same thing in pitching, except the fluctuation goes from maybe +40 to -40.
