RBI 2k5

[ultimate7]

I think DUsty is decent at managing lineups and I don't think he is terrible at managing his pitchers, he does seem to leave guys in too long, but they've really had no serious injuries since he's been there (knock on wood).  I think his real weaknesses are his propensity to have his hitter swing away in lieu of being patient, and his refusal to use young players (especially those that like to be patient like Choi and Bellhorn)

[BeefMaster]

I just went through the Braves' lineup - their bench (other than the esteemed Mr. Franco) has just about no MLB experience.  I am seriously tempted to put Mike Hampton as one of their pinch-hitters (Hudson and Smoltz have the SP slots) - his .172 with 2 HR is actually better than the guy filling the last slot on their bench right now.

Braves Lineup:
Furcal
MGiles
CJones
AJones
LaRoch
Estrda
Mndesi
Jordan

Franco
NGreen
EPerez
Betmit (Wilson Betemit, the .170/0 guy; he had the most MLB experience of the other backups listed on the Braves' depth chart)

Hudson
Smoltz
Ritsma
Kolb

[BeefMaster]

Just because I haven't posted it yet, here's the Twins:

Stewrt
JJones
Mauer
Mrneau
Hunter
Cuddyr
Rivas
Punto

Ford
LeCroy
Castro
Ojeda

Santana
Radke
Rincon
Nathan

[Scroope]

I think you should put the teams together the best you can and then adjust them at the start of the season.  And then adjust and change to teams that make the playoffs at the end of the season with end of the season stats.  I know of the Yankees suggestion that Bubba may not even make the team. 
You can start with my ROM that has all end of year stats with a few minor mistakes. I think Womack's stats may need to be fixed. And Bonds bats from the wrong side on the all star team.

2004 End of Season Stats Zip File

[BeefMaster]

I think you should put the teams together the best you can and then adjust them at the start of the season.  And then adjust and change to teams that make the playoffs at the end of the season with end of the season stats.  I know of the Yankees suggestion that Bubba may not even make the team. 
You can start with my ROM that has all end of year stats with a few minor mistakes. I think Womack's stats may need to be fixed. And Bonds bats from the wrong side on the all star team.

2004 End of Season Stats Zip File

I don't know that I have the ambition to keep modifying this all season... I was just planning on putting this together to get us back in the mood for baseball now that it's Spring Training time again.

[Scroope]

Put it together the best you can and someone will surely make the adjustments.

[BeefMaster]

Here's the first draft of the ROM.

Notes:

I didn't know if any of the pitchers were sidearm, so I left them all overhand.

Pitchers' batting statistics are correct for last season.  The only rating modification from the default pitcher batting skills was a boost to Jason Schmidt's power rating, since he had 2 homeruns last year.

Pitcher ratings are fairly arbitrary, because that's something I'm not really knowledgable about.

Hitting ratings are mostly based on last year's stats (2003's, in the case of Mark Ellis), although I took some liberties based on ABs and what I know of the players.

Let me know if you have any suggestions.  I'm sure I'll make some tweaks along the way as well.

[Scroope]

I just played NY v. Boston.  Randy Johnson hit for the cycle. (In the park HR).  Good ROM.  How did you get all of the stats onto the text document? Do you have some kind of easy way to insert stats besides for individually typing each players stats?  You should post a link to the text to the forum page about the new Family Stadium ROM.

[BeefMaster]

How did you get all of the stats onto the text document? Do you have some kind of easy way to insert stats besides for individually typing each players stats?

Nightwulf's RBI Editor automatically sets up the text file.  To do it for your own ROMs, on the Download/Export page under Export, click Export to: Player Stats.  That will create a .txt file just like the one I posted.  For some reason, I couldn't get Firefox to save the document directly, so I just selected the whole screen and pasted it into Notepad.

[capt_taco]

As much as I dislike the Yankees, It would be cool to have Randy Johnson in RBI.

2B. Tony Womack
SS. Derek Jeter
3B. Alex Rodriguez
RF. Gary Sheffield
LF. Hideki Matsui
1B. Jason Giambi
C.  Jorge Posada
CF. Bernie Williams

Don't you mean:
2B. Tony Womack
SS. Derek Jeter
3B. Alex Rodriguez
RF. Gary Sheffield
LF. Hideki Matsui
1B. Jason Giambi*
C.  Jorge Posada
CF. Bernie Williams

[capt_taco]

By the way, I have to say I had a hell of a time playing this ROM. I almost laughed my ass off when I picked Houston, and there was Clemns, the #1 starter. Same for when I hit a home run with Julio Franco, 18 years after the fact.

The one shame-on-you thing I'd say is that John Franco isn't in the game, even though he's still on the Astros' depth chart. You have to give a little love to an original RBIer if he's on one of the teams in the ROM. The only glitch I've found so far is when I'm playing LA, if I pinch-hit three batters in a row with one strike and a guy on base (all one after the other, without a pitch being thrown), it resets the game sometimes. Pretty minor, though.

Oh yeah, one other thing: Comparing the stats between this and the original, can you honestly say half the guys AREN'T on steroids now? When every team looks like the AL All-Stars, and the sixth guy on a shitty team has 30 homers, it does kind of jump out at you.

Makes you wonder if Cansco was really making everything up after all...

[BeefMaster]

I thought about John Franco at one point, then forgot about him when I actually put together the ROM.  I may correct that in version 2.

The glitch must be something in the original RBI code... I didn't make any changes other than rosters and team names/colors.

The Yankees are the best example of your steroid comment, I think - 7 of the 8 starters have 20+ homers.  Not much room to pitch around people.

[Nails]

The Yankees are the best example of your steroid comment, I think - 7 of the 8 starters have 20+ homers. Not much room to pitch around people.

Steriods, and a very large wallet.

[Nails]

Don't you mean:
2B. Tony Womack
SS. Derek Jeter
3B. Alex Rodriguez
RF. Gary Sheffield
LF. Hideki Matsui
1B. Jason Giambi*
C. Jorge Posada
CF. Bernie Williams

Actually, that would be:

2B. Tony Womack
SS. Derek Jeter
3B. Alex Rodriguez
RF. Gary Sheffield*
LF. Hideki Matsui
1B. Jason Giambi*
C. Jorge Posada
CF. Bernie Williams

[ultimate7]

The only glitch I've found so far is when I'm playing LA, if I pinch-hit three batters in a row with one strike and a guy on base (all one after the other, without a pitch being thrown), it resets the game sometimes. Pretty minor, though.

Are you sure this wasn't a coincidence, I'm still trying to understand exactly why you did this, you waited for 1 strike for all 3 guys?

[capt_taco]

The only glitch I've found so far is when I'm playing LA, if I pinch-hit three batters in a row with one strike and a guy on base (all one after the other, without a pitch being thrown), it resets the game sometimes. Pretty minor, though.

Are you sure this wasn't a coincidence, I'm still trying to understand exactly why you did this, you waited for 1 strike for all 3 guys?

What happened was, I had batted through to the #8 hitter my first time up, and I hadn't checked out any of the pinch hitters yet. So I subbed them in, one after another, just to see their stats. (The computer didn't even get to throw a pitch during this time. And the #8 guy had fouled off the first pitch and led me to believe he was a little bitch, which was why I decided to do the subs right then.) When I put the third guy in, the game reset for some reason.

I tried to duplicate it a couple of times with some other teams, and it didn't work. It did work one more time when I tried it with L.A.

Anyway, this is a pretty minor glitch, since I don't know why you'd ever make substitutions like that unless it was your first time playing with that team...

[capt_taco]

A couple small corrections:

For Oakland, Rincon is a left-handed pitcher, not a righty. Also, I don't think Kielty is on the A's anymore. I don't know who you'd replace him with that has actual MLB stats, though. Didn't like Eric Chavez's power too much, but that's OK, because in this version, Eric... Byrnes... is... God. And we all know that's the truth.

On the steroids front, I also started noticing that there are no more teams that can beat you with speed. St. Louis, New York and Houston sucked in the original, but from a real-baseball perspective, power has taken a lot of "team" concepts from the '80s out of the game. Instead of Vince Coleman and Lenny Dykstra giving you fits on the basepaths, you have Mark Bellhorn smacking the ball off the screen.

Did anyone notice that Bellhorn has more power at second base than Ryno did in the original version? Something about that just isn't right.

[BeefMaster]

Bumpst, because I'd like to update this for the end of Spring Training and post a final version for Gantry to release into the wild through the ROMs page.

I made the change to Ricardo Rincon as capt_taco requested (Kielty is still on the A's, according to the roster on their official website), and I also replaced Nick Punto with Jason Bartlett on the Twins, since Bartlett has captured the starting SS job and Punto may not make the roster (I adjusted his contact and speed both upward slightly, but his power is equivalent to Punto's).  I also saw that Dallas McPherson didn't make the Angels' Major League roster - does anyone know who will start for them at third base now?  Their official depth chart wasn't updated, and I only learned about McPherson's demotion in a passing mention with no details (like who the new starter was).

Any other suggested tweaks or roster changes would be appreciated.  I believe the first version's rosters were posted in a text file earlier in this thread.

[RedBarron]

I took issue with the Cubs roster. . . .

[fightonusc]

Bumpst, because I'd like to update this for the end of Spring Training and post a final version for Gantry to release into the wild through the ROMs page.

I made the change to Ricardo Rincon as capt_taco requested (Kielty is still on the A's, according to the roster on their official website), and I also replaced Nick Punto with Jason Bartlett on the Twins, since Bartlett has captured the starting SS job and Punto may not make the roster (I adjusted his contact and speed both upward slightly, but his power is equivalent to Punto's). I also saw that Dallas McPherson didn't make the Angels' Major League roster - does anyone know who will start for them at third base now? Their official depth chart wasn't updated, and I only learned about McPherson's demotion in a passing mention with no details (like who the new starter was).

Any other suggested tweaks or roster changes would be appreciated. I believe the first version's rosters were posted in a text file earlier in this thread.

Rob Quinlan is going to start at third while McPherson rehabs from his back injury. They expect him to be back by mid-April, meaning he might only miss the first few weeks of the season.